Using the primary sources in the previous post and from your textbook, describe what life was life under the Khmer Rouge. 
Life Under the Khmer Rouge
September 9, 2008 · 1 Comment
Categories: Cambodia · Communism
Using the primary sources in the previous post and from your textbook, describe what life was life under the Khmer Rouge.
Categories: Cambodia · Communism
1 response so far ↓
Life in Democratic Kampuchea was brutal and featured disease, forced labour and relocation, family break-up, purges and widespread starvation. According to a former engineer, “At first, the ideas of the revolution were good.” However, he added that “they didn’t work in practice”. Over the life of the revolution, more than one person in four died as a result of Khmer Rouge policies or actions – approximately two million, including probably only one hundred thousand as direct opponents of the revolution. On a per capita basis and considering the short life of the revolution, this makes the deaths in Cambodia one of the highest in world history.
Under the KR, Cambodia was divided into seven zones (phumipheak) and a further 32 administrative regions. Conditions were better in areas that had been under KR control for longer and where troops were more disciplined, such as the east, northeast and the south. Life was particularly difficult in the northwest around the provinces of Battambang and Pursat, which had been the most productive agricultural areas before the revolution and after had even greater demands for crop surpluses than the rest of the nation. Life also varied considerably within various areas according to leadership, resources and other external factors such as the fighting with the Vietnamese. Similarly, men and women were split into different groups according to age- “People were divided up into five classes: small children, bigger children, single women and men, married women and men, and elderly women and men” (Moly Ly).
Life was difficult everywhere. “New people”, moved from the cities to the countryside, were treated as instruments by the revolution, often told by the KR that “Keeping you is no profit; losing you is no loss”. Under Pol Pot’s Four Year Plan (aimed to “build socialism in all fields”) workers were forced to work in the fields, often for twelve hours a day without any material rewards, in an attempt to triple Cambodia’s rice production. Many of those unaccustomed to physical labour soon died of malnutrition, and by 1977 and 1978 much of the country was stricken with famine. One survivor, now living in Australia described the his condition as “like the Africans you see on television. Our legs were like sticks; we could barely walk”. Similarly, no Western style medicines were available, and thousands soon died form malaria, overwork and malnutrition. Another survivor, Savuth Pen, describes how many of his family died of the disease of “a swollen face, feet and hands” and how “Malaria and dysentery were also epidemics and claimed many lives.”
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