Did The Khmer Rouge Kill Vietnamese Or Cambodians Or Both?

[ThaiGod]

who were they killing?

[Thanyaburi Mac]

who were they killing?

The KR were pretty well non-discriminatory, they killed anyone who didn't fit their mold.  Khmer, Vietnamese, Chams, ethnic Indians, Thai, and a few farangs.  Not nice people.

Mac

[Joseph87]

they're "saddddd"

[ashacat]

Most people perished from starvation or overwork due to the Kmer Rouge's complete imcompetence and perverse ideology.

they're "saddddd"

Thanks Alan.

Edited January 31, 2008 by ashacat

[britmaveric]

Death Merchants - to anyone they saw fit.

[hunsen]

Vietnamese were certainly public enemy number 1 and many KR cadres who had fought alongside the Vietnamese against the French and Americans were often rounded up for being 'spys' (and then executed).

[ThaiGod]

I always thought the khmer were killing the vietnamese because of a land deal that didn't go their way.

[hunsen]

The KR weren't too keen on the Thais either! (killed about 200 of them in a border raid on a Thai village in the 70's).

something to do with the Thais siding with the 'Imperialists'.

Edited February 1, 2008 by hunsen

[seonai]

I believe Pol Pot (Former leader of the Khmer Rouge) wanted to obliterate all those who wore glasses or who were educated ... just like Mao Ste Tung did in China... He, Pol Pot copied China's stuff and saif he was recreating year Zero

[donna]

they also kidnapped, held hostage, and eventually executed a good mate of mine about 13 years ago.

Rest in Peace, Dave. the world misses you mate.

[seonai]

Sorry to hear that Donna dear. The KR killed something like a million or so Cambodians and other nationalities. Reckon the OP has gone walkies...

[Ricohoc]

who were they killing?

The KR were pretty well non-discriminatory, they killed anyone who didn't fit their mold. Khmer, Vietnamese, Chams, ethnic Indians, Thai, and a few farangs. Not nice people.

Mac

Agree. I'm very good friends with a Vietnamese family who came to the US after the Vietnam War. Their father was a general in the South Vietnamese Army. They had to escape on foot through Cambodia, and they considered the KR to be just as much of a threat to their survival as the NV Communists. They believed that they would face torture and certain death if captured.

[brahmburgers]

Odd, that we never hear 'thanks' to the Vietnamese who rolled their tanks in to Kampuchea to quell the mass murders and misery of the Cambodian people. And the Vietnamese didn't do it as a land grab. Neither the Thais, The Yanks, the Europeans, the Soviets, nor any other Asian country was ready to do such dynamic and needed action.

.....similar type of action that's needed to rid Burma of the yoke of its military oppressors.

BTW, China, who always seem to be on the wrong side of international problems, were rooting for the Khmer Rouge.

[khon kaen boy]

I will try to find the book about this, but the Vietnamese also when they invaded created "Kiling Fields" and blamed in the the KR, in no way I am defending the KR as the two were murderers

[Sheryl]

Odd, that we never hear 'thanks' to the Vietnamese who rolled their tanks in to Kampuchea to quell the mass murders and misery of the Cambodian people. And the Vietnamese didn't do it as a land grab. Neither the Thais, The Yanks, the Europeans, the Soviets, nor any other Asian country was ready to do such dynamic and needed action.

.....similar type of action that's needed to rid Burma of the yoke of its military oppressors.

BTW, China, who always seem to be on the wrong side of international problems, were rooting for the Khmer Rouge.

To be fair:

1) They didn't do it to save the Khmer (if that had been the aim, why wait 4 years and let over a million die first?). They did it because the KR's madness did not stay confined within Cambodia's borders and the KR had begun crossing over into VN territory and massacaring villagers there. More than ample justification to invade and drive them out. But...

2) they then overstayed their welcome by a good 12 years, ending their occupation only after sustained international pressure and sanctions.

The Cambodians -- even the most virulently anti-VN among them (which is pretty much everyone) do acknowledge that the VN invasion saved the country from complete annihiliation. But they also deeply resent the prolonged occupation that followed and see it as proof of land-grabbing intent.

Forget who it was that said it, but some VN official once referred to Cambodia as "Viet Nam's Viet Nam", i.e. a mistake. Not necessarily in terms of going in to begin with (they really didn't have a choice on that) but their attempt to stay there and control the place thereafter which in the end gained them nothing.

[IMA_FARANG]

who were they killing?

I had a friend who had a half-Cambodian half Vietnamese wife in Vietnam (there were quite a few mixed Vietnamese-Cambodian families in the Mekong delta). She went to Cambodia to visit her parents and personally witnessed the following:

While she was in her parents village the Khamer Rouge entered the village. A woman there was pregnat with the child of a Vietnamese soldier. The Khamer Rouge took the pregnant woman to the center of the village and tied her to a stake. They then comdemed her, and her unborn child to death. They cut the women open and removed her unborn baby, but did not cut the umbilical cord. The woman was allowed to bleed to death. The baby was not allowed to be touched, it just lay on the ground until it died. The Khamer Rouge then announced that any mixture of Cambodian and other nationalities was a disgrace to all "true" Cambodians and would be killed.

When the Khamer Rouge took power in 1975 they began what they called "Year Zero" . Year Zero was to be the first year of the new Markist regime run under (their interpretation) a strict Maoist policy of continuous revolution. Many Cambodians were killed, often for the "crime" of wearing glasses. which showed them to be "defective" and not worthy of living.

The bottom line.....the Khamer Rouge killed just about anyone they wanted to or didn't have an immeadiate use for. They were not nice people. That was one of the reason the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia to oust the Khamer Rouge, as well as their persecution of the mixed Cambodian/Vietnamese population in the delta areas and near the Vietnamese border.

[Pierrot]

Odd, that we never hear 'thanks' to the Vietnamese who rolled their tanks in to Kampuchea to quell the mass murders and misery of the Cambodian people. And the Vietnamese didn't do it as a land grab. Neither the Thais, The Yanks, the Europeans, the Soviets, nor any other Asian country was ready to do such dynamic and needed action.

.....similar type of action that's needed to rid Burma of the yoke of its military oppressors.

BTW, China, who always seem to be on the wrong side of international problems, were rooting for the Khmer Rouge.

To be fair, until the end, almost everybody supported the Khmer rouges. Main reason: the communist Vietnamese were considered a worst evil !!!

In the 90’s, the FUNCIPEC , headed by Norodom Ranariddh, son of Norodom Sihanouk, who were sharing the power with Hun Sen, wanted to integrate the Khmer Rouges to the army to counter balance the influence of the regular army that was widely believed to support Hun Sen and the “Vietnamese”. Ranariddh , supported by the international community, then stopped all efforts to disband the Khmer Rouge, contributing to the general insecurity in the country. It was only in 97, when Ranariddh was forced out of the country, that the Khmer rouges lost their last support and within the next two years all faction surrendered, marking the end of the Khmer rouges and the beginning of a relative peace in Cambodia.

[AnotherATM]

Death Merchants - to anyone they saw fit.

Much like the USA, then and now.

[Big A]

They even butchered Cambodians living near the border with Vietnam, calling them Vietnamese in Khmer bodies.

Madness.

[numpty]

once the vietnamese invaded the americans took to supporting the khmer rouge using the logic that they hated the vietnamese more

[Big A]

once the vietnamese invaded the americans took to supporting the khmer rouge using the logic that they hated the vietnamese more

In fact, most 1st world countries (incl Singapore) did.

[Tilokarat]

Sometime in the 1830s, or a bit later, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and set up a puppet Queen. The Vietnamese tried to obliterate Cambodian culture, language, Buddhism and so on. The Cambodians call the Vietnamese 'yuon'. There is really no nice way of describing this word. It basically means that to Cambodians the Vietnamese are sub-humans of the worst kind. There is no classifier. For example, in Thai, you might say 'jin hok khon'= 'six Chinese'. But there are no classifiers for Vietnamese in Cambodian so it is 6 of the worst subhuman scum that exist in the universe. There is no lower form of life.

The worst Cambodian nightmare was that the Vietnamese would invade Phom Pehn and take over the royal palace. In 1979, the Vietnamese ended the Khmer Rouge horror, but they also put a portrait of Ho Chi Minh in the royal palace in Phom Penh. This was a cultural blunder by the Vietnamese. The Cambodians had always been much closer to the Thais culturally and politically.

[Big A]

Sometime in the 1830s, or a bit later, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and set up a puppet Queen.

Like in Thunderbirds or Joe 90?!

Edited March 21, 2008 by Big A

[Tilokarat]

Possibly, but it more or less worked out like a Punch and Judy show.

[Big A]

^

Hear hear!!

[bendejo]

I was teaching English to SEA refugees in San Francisco in the 1980s.

There was one Cambodian woman who walked round as if in shock. She told me her story.

People were rounded up and put into enclosures. She and her family were put in a crowded hut.

Every day the entire hut would be given one cup of rice, and they would count out the grains of rice to divide it up. She watched her family starve to death.

I've only been to Cambo once, about five years ago. The way I figured it, everyone over the age of 35 would have some memory of those days. The place gives me the creeps.

[jstumbo]

Death Merchants - to anyone they saw fit.

Much like the USA, then and now.

Glad to see that I did not have to read very many posts in this thread before someone would bash the US.

thanks...

[pliny]

The French were quite enamoured of Pol Pot in the beginning as indeed were the Chinese not least because of their antipathy to the Vietnamese.

Post Holocaust, the agony was prolonged because of the Chinese/Vietnamese confrontation which unfortunately coincided with the West's cultivation of the Chinese. Bizarrely, the survival of Pol Pot owed more to the realpolitik of a world that measured its self interest in the blood and guts of a ravaged country whose ideals were allegedly enshrined in a UN Charter they had all sworn to uphold.

The world stinks and always did.

Nothing new here......why pick on Americans just because they think their feeble concept of democracy deodorises the stench away?