The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979 (Ben Kiernan, 2004)

Kiernan, Ben (2004). The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979. A Century of Genocide Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. Samuel Totten et al, Ed. New York, Routledge: 338-373.

Response

Ben Kiernan, in “The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979”, provides a detailed account of the Pol Pot regime’s systematic attempt to exterminate ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities from Cambodia. The essay is divided into three sections. The first is a facts-based retelling of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal campaign in the late 1970s, from the rise of Pol Pot to the excruciating details of how the regime attempted to subjugate or eliminate different demographic groups. The second section is a comparison of two scholars’ interpretations of the Cambodian genocide along with Kiernan’s own commentary. And the third is a selection of first-hand accounts from survivors of the Khmer Rouge as collected and transcribed by Kiernan and Chanthou Boua. Through these three lenses, Kiernan provides a factually rich and emotionally compelling perspective of a dark period in Cambodia’s history.

Pol Pot’s rise to power

In the first third of the essay, Kiernan recounts how Pol Pot, the leader of Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge, developed intellectually and came to power. Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar to a large family of Khmer peasants. Pol Pot’s parents owned 9 hectares of riceland and six buffalo, however, and even had royal connections—they were “peasants with a difference” (Kiernan 342). He would have no experience farming and would be relatively ignorant of village life. In 1948, Pol Pot received a scholarship to study in Paris and involved himself in political life. When he returned home in 1953 after flunking out of his program, Pol Pot responded to King Sihanouk’s declaration of martial law in Cambodia by following his closest brother to join the Cambodian and Vietnamese Communists. In 1966 the party changed its name to the “Communist Party of Kampuchea” (CPK) and in 1975 it was victorious over Sihanouk’s successor regime. They proclaimed the state of Democratic Kampuchea, with Pol Pot as secretary general.  

Having narrated the rise of the CPK under Pol Pot and his collaborators’ leadership, Kiernan details how the Party established and maintained control over DK. CPK leadership sealed off Cambodia from communications, closing borders, banning foreign language, and suppressing local journalism. They violently purged the Party of dissenters and individuals “too close” to Vietnam’s Communists. And CPK forces systematically took control of and purged each of DK’s major zones. With control over the whole of DK, Pol Pot and his collaborators began to execute a political program based on their “national and racial grandiosity” (Kiernan 346). Kiernan describes their belief system as such: Cambodia did not need to import anything, including knowledge, from its neighboring countries. It could recover its pre-Buddhist glory by rebuilding its society (and economy) in the image of the medieval Angkor kingdom. 

A systematic campaign of extermination

A major form this “rebuilding” took was the eradication of Buddhism from Cambodia. By Kiernan’s estimation, fewer than 2,000 of Cambodia’s 70,000 Buddhist monks may have survived the massacres. In addition to the extermination of Buddhism and its practitioners from the country, the Party targeted the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Muslim Cham minorities. While these groups made up a total of 15% of Cambodia’s population, Pol Pot’s regime claimed they were less than 1% of the population. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Cambodians were expelled or murdered in what Kiernan calls a “campaign of systematic racial extermination” (Kiernan 347). The Chinese population, 425,000 in 1975, was reduced to 200,000 over the next four years. The largely urban ethnic Chinese were targeted, Kiernan believes, less for their race than for their city-dwelling status. They were forced to work in deplorable conditions, succumbing to disease and hunger, and had their language and culture banned. Finally, the Muslim Chams suffered greatly for their distinct religion, language, and culture. After rebellions against the new government, all 113 Cham villages were emptied and about 100,000 individuals murdered. Islamic schools and religious practices were banned, as well as the Cham language. Many were forced to eat pork, or were murdered if they refused. The result of this four-year campaign to exterminate racial and cultural minorities from Cambodia did not limit itself to those in the aforementioned minority groups, and not even those in the peasant majority fared well under the regime. 

International responses and scholarship

In the second section of the essay, Kiernan addresses the international community’s attitudes toward the Khmer Rouge and its leadership. A key takeaway is that the United States, its allies, and the United Nations failed to condemn the campaign of extermination that took place in Cambodia from 1975-1979. In particular, the United States continued to support the Pol Pot regime because it desired Cambodia’s independence as a counterweight to Chinese influence in Southeast Asia. Kiernan also provides two contrasting examples of scholars’ interpretations of the Khmer Rouge’s actions. The pro-Chinese neo-Marxist Samir Amin initially praised DK as a model for African socialists to follow, though in 1981 he conceded it suffered from “excesses” because it was a “principally peasant revolution” (Kiernan 357). Historical Michael Vickery seized on this idea in 1984 as reason to reject DK, writing that “nationalism, populism and peasantism really won out over communism” (Kiernan 357, quoting Vickery 1984, p. 289). Kiernan effectively points out flaws in both scholars’ arguments about the nature of the Pol Pot regime. In particular, he notes how Vickery failed to collect first-hand testimony from witnesses of diverse backgrounds to support his claims about the conditions of various peasant groups. Kiernan also introduces a major controversy in the historiography of the Cambodian revolution: the “central control” question. Scholars debated whether the Pol Pot regime was a centralised dictatorship or a chaotic project driven by peasant whims; Kiernan claims the regime was only capable of such mass murder because it had concentrated power. Today, consensus supports Kiernan’s contention that the events of 1975-1979 constituted genocide. A collection of primary source documents from the Khmer Rouge regime lives at Yale and will fuel continued investigations into the genocide.

First-hand accounts of the Cambodian genocide

Finally, Kiernan introduces several first-hand accounts of the Cambodian genocide from individuals belonging to targeted minority communities — including a Muslim Cham woman named Nao Gha. He also includes the perspectives of two peasant boys, Sat and Mien, who eventually fled to Thailand after being forced to labor in dire conditions under the Khmer Rouge. These transcriptions add human context to the facts and figures Kiernan gave at the outset. Kiernan does not add commentary to the interviews. Instead, he allows the stories of these witnesses to take center stage and add credibility to the entirety of the essay. 

I have little to add to Kiernan’s essay on the Cambodian genocide. His neutral language and limited communication of his personal opinions allowed the horror of Pol Pot’s state-sponsored genocide to command the reader’s full attention. He provides many lenses through which readers can interpret this period in Cambodia’s history – politics, human rights, biography, international relations, and first-hand narratives. 

It was disappointing but unsurprising to learn that the international community failed to take immediate action against the Khmer Rouge, as geopolitical concerns dwarfed human rights issues in importance to state actors. And it was fascinating to see how different scholars interpreted the same series of events, each impacted by his own political beliefs and biases. Finally, it was disturbing but important to read through the first-hand accounts of the atrocities committed by the Pol Pot regime. I appreciate that Kiernan earlier criticized other scholars for their lack of diverse first-hand accounts, then did the necessary work to collect and transcribe such accounts. This is recommended reading for anyone unfamiliar with the details of the Cambodian genocide or wishing to better understand its events in context.

Quotes

“The late 20th century saw the era of mass communications, but DK tolled a vicious silence. Internally and externally, Cambodia was sealed off. Its borders were closed, all neighboring countries militarily attacked, use of foreign languages banned, embassies and press agencies expelled, local newspapers and television shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, mail and telephones suppressed.” (Kiernan 344)

Fascinating and disturbing to see listed the mechanisms of control the Party used – would be interested to learn how these methods compare with other authoritarian/genocidal regimes.

“The Vietnamese community, for example, was entirely eradicated… In research conducted in Cambodia since 1979 it has not been possible to find a Vietnamese resident who had survived the Pol Pot years there.” (Kiernan 347)

“The Chinese under Pol Pot’s regime suffered the worst disaster ever to befall any ethnic Chinese community in Southeast Asia.” (Kiernan 347)

“About 100,000 Chams were massacred… Islamic schools and religion, as well as the Cham language, were banned. Thousands of Muslims were physically forced to eat pork. Many were murdered for refusing.” (Kiernan 348)

“…While the Cambodian genocide progressed, Washington, Bejing, and Bangkok all supported the continued independent existence of the Khmer Rouge regime.” (Kiernan 354)

“They also executed college students and former government officials, soldiers, and police. I saw the bodies of many such people not far from the village.” (Thoun Cheng, first-hand account recorded by Ben Kiernan and Chanthou Boua)

There is at first less discussion of the non-ethnic/religious targets of the Khmer Rouge’s extermination program, but this speaks to the regime’s hatred of anyone educated or involved in prior governments.

“I was never allowed to eat any of the fruits of my labor, all of which were carted away by truck; I don’t know where.” (Sat, a peasant boy who lived through the genocide in Cambodia, account recorded by Kiernan and Boua)

Particularly ironic, as the revolution was supposedly for the benefit of the peasant class. Sat, a peasant boy, works constantly for the regime yet cannot even eat what he produces. His account also implicitly weakens many of Amin and Vickery’s claims about the ideology of the Pol Pot regime. 

Questions

Based on this essay, how does Kiernan define genocide and what are the key points he makes in support of his claim that a genocide took place in Cambodia 1975-1979?

What was the driving ideology behind the attempts of the Khmer Rouge to eliminate groups like the Buddhists, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Muslim Cham from Cambodia?

As recently as 1991, the UN failed to condemn the events in Cambodia as genocide with reference to the Genocide Convention. And during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, international actors and commentators alike failed to publicly recognize the regime for what it was. International legal organisations also dismissed proposals to investigate the crimes committed by the DK regime in the decades after Pol Pot’s overthrow. What caused this inaction in the international community, and was this avoidable? Is it unreasonable to hope that this would not happen in the future?

How should scholars or politicians interested in communist ideology, like Stalinism or some aspects of Maoism, approach discussion of the Khmer Rouge? Note how Samir Amin and Michael Vickery address the influence (or lack thereof) of international communist models on Pol Pot’s regime, peasant participation, and urban vs. peasant conflict.