Transitional justice in Cambodia
Abstract
Between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979, around one quarter of the population of Cambodia died at the hands of the Party of Democratic Kampuchea (also referred to as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, or the Khmer Rouge (KR)). The catalogue of atrocity during the period of Democratic Kampuchea (the period during which the KR held power) is extensive. When the KR succeeded in their coup in April 1975, they declared a new start for the country – the calendar was reset to Year Zero, and the regime began to establish what it claimed to be a communist agrarian utopia. The results of this utopia were deadly. Somewhere between 1.6 and 1.9 million people died, most of them through starvation, disease and exhaustion that were either KR policy or foreseeable consequences of it. Up to 400,000 were tortured to death at a series of prisons set up around the country or executed in purges. Ethnic and racial minorities, religious leaders, professionals, educated people, government officials and people with contacts abroad were targeted in particular. Of those who did not manage to flee the country, almost 100 per cent of the Vietnamese were murdered, 50 per cent of those of Chinese descent, 40 per cent of the Thai and Lao and 36 per cent of the Cham. All but forty-three doctors and all but seven lawyers were killed, along with 18,000 teachers and 10,550 students. In addition to the loss of such a high proportion of the Cambodian population, Cambodian society was also all but destroyed. Cities were evacuated, and people were forced to work under armed guard on collective agricultural projects with little food and no medical care. Children were used as prison guards and spies and forced or encouraged to commit acts of appalling violence. Money was abolished, schools closed and Buddhism suppressed. An offence of ‘familyism’ was devised to punish people who showed attachments to anything other than Angka (‘the organisation’, i.e. the KR party), and marriages were forced. Angka controlled all aspects of people's lives and condemned many of them to death.