Khmer Rouge Take Over Phnom Penh

Category: Genocide`

KO, LM,CBJ

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge stormed into the Cambodian capital after conquering parts of the countryside. They overthrew Lon Nol's regime and executed all government officials (Cambodian, American, and otherwise)involved with the Nol regime. They also began to persecute all intellectuals, Buddhist monks, ethnic Vietnamese, and Muslim Cham. The KR wanted to cleanse the population of all foreign thought or intellectual activity. They were inspired by Chairman Mao's famous words: "A sheet of blank paper carries no burden and the most beautiful characters can be written on it, the most beautiful pictures painted." Citizens were force-marched into the countryside and forced to perform manual labor as part of the KR's plotted return to proletarian life. At the Tuol Sleng Examination Center, Cambodians were starved and tortured until they confessed to crimes they hadn't committed (like being accomplices of the CIA). They were then killed and buried in mass graves which are now called the Killing Fields. An estimateed 2 million of the 7 million people in Cambodia (renamed Democratic Kampuchea by the KR) were killed (some weren't murdered, but died due to malnutrition, forced labor, and exhaustion).