Top 10 Facts About The Cambodian Genocide

Top 10 Things You Should Know about the Cambodian Genocide

Top 10 Facts About The Cambodian Genocide

Cambodia, once part of French Indochina, is an ancient Hindu and Buddhist kingdom world famous for the beautiful temples at Angkor Wat.  For many years it was ravaged by the effects of the Vietnam War and the oppressive regime of the evil Khymer Rouge.  The country is now rehabilitated and, though poor, is again seeking to establish itself as a tourist destination and one of the friendliest countries in South East Asia.  Even today the evidence of the war and the genocide is obvious on the streets as victims of landmines walk the

streets and tourists are encouraged to visit the museums dedicated to the atrocities to ensure that the world does no forget the evil perpetrated in this beautiful place.

Often overshadowed, in the west, by the contemporaneous events in neighboring Vietnam it is every bit as important that the world bears witness to the horrors of the Cambodian genocide as the Nazi holocaust or the death camps of Stalinist Russia.  With that in mind here are 10 things everyone should know about the Cambodian genocide.

10The Khmer Rouge Came to Power As a Result of Regional Instability, They Were Later Supported by Many Western Governments

The United Nations failed to timely condemn the Khmer Rouge

9Pol Pot, Leader of the Khmer Rouge Government, Was Never Brought to Trial For His Crimes

Pol Pot never faced judgment for his crimes.

8The Year Zero

April 17, 1975 was the beginning of Year Zero

7Almost everyone was a target ‘What is rotten must be removed’

Pol Pot and his vile Khmer Rouge targeted and murdered business owners and educated people

6Almost everything was banned ‘we wish to do away with all vestiges of the past’

The Khmer Rouge even outlawed music

5S-21

A high school was converted into S-21. One of the most notorious torture chambers of the Cambodian Genocide

4The Khmer Rouge perfected cheap and effective methods of torture

A simple plastic bag became a torture tool in the hands of the Khmer Rouge

3Cambodia’s Killing Fields – a modern hell of biblical proportions

Stacked Skulls at the Killing Fields, Cambodia

2Only five people have been brought to justice for the Cambodian Genocide

Only 5 people were tried for the atrocities of the Cambodian Genocide.

1It is likely that ¼ of the Cambodian population was killed by the Khmer rouge

A killing tree during the Cambodian Genocide