Long years of unrest and utter tragedy were experienced by Cambodia. After being a colony of France from the late 1800s to the 1950s, being occupied by Japan during World War II, and then being bombed by American forces during the Vietnam War, Cambodia’s bloodiest years, from 1975 to 1978, were under the Khmer Rouge rule of Pol Pot, which was the worst period in its history.
Since Sihanouk was overthrown by Lon Nol in 1970, there has been civil conflict in Cambodia. During the Vietnam War, from 1970 and 1973, the United States bombed a large portion of the Cambodian countryside, much like Northern Vietnam, and used political influence in Cambodia to help pro-Western Lon Nol become the country’s leader. The bombing by the United States was used by the Khmer Rouge to enlist supporters and as justification for the terrible measures they implemented while in power. After the US left, the Lon Nol regime was overthrown. By April 1975, the Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge had taken over and renamed Cambodia Democratic Kampuchea.
The enormous murders and brutalities committed by the Khmer Rouge during their “rule of terror” were unmatched. The educated were persecuted, including doctors, attorneys, present or former members of the military, and police. Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians were also explicitly attacked. In an effort to create an ideal agrarian communist society, Pol Pot sought to eradicate anything urban or contemporary. He made them abandon their homes, leave the cities and villages, and relocate to the countryside. The Khmer Rouge believed that exposure to outside ideologies, particularly those of the capitalist West, had contaminated Cambodian citizens, and this conviction served as the basis for many of its policies.n 1977, Pol Pot stepped up his efforts to eliminate all communist dissidents and other moderates. Both the persecuted urban evacuees and the majority of the peasantry were subject to the purges. They outlawed religion, stopped schools, and demolished libraries and temples. There was a ban on personal property. All were subjected to compulsory, unpaid agricultural labour as part of the Khmer Rouge’s agenda, and Chinese, Vietnamese, Cham Muslim, and Thai ethnic minorities were all subjected to savage persecution.
The Khmer Rouge put people in communal living arrangements, or communes, and implemented “re-education” programmes to promote the commune way of life in an effort to establish “a society without competition,” in which individuals worked for “the common good.” The Khmer Rouge classified people into groups based on their level of trust; the most trustworthy were referred to as “ancient citizens.” The pro-Western and urban population started out as “new citizens” and could advance to “deportees,” “candidates,” and finally “full rights citizens,” but the majority of people never did.People who rejected “re-education” were executed at the infamous Tuol Sleng Center prison camp, also known as S-21, or in the fields around the commune. Since the regime’s philosophy and methods were so harsh, nearly every facet and segment of Cambodian society was singled out for annihilation. As a result, an estimated two million of the seven million inhabitants of the country perished. With the exception of about 10,000 advisors from China and North Korea, the Pol Pot dictatorship was cut off from the outside world.
The state of the food was really concerning. By the spring of 1978, almost 1.70 million people in Kampuchea had died from starvation-related illnesses, extermination by Pol Pot’s gang, or other causes. Refugees fled to Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand as a result of the Khmer Rouge’s policies, although Vietnam received the majority of them. Thousands of ethnic Vietnamese and Kampuchean refugees were taken in by Vietnam. Vietnam experienced a severe food shortage as a result of the war and refugee inflow that damaged the country’s rice-growing region.
Under Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge also sought to grow by annexing a sizable portion of Vietnam. Beginning in 1977, the Khmer Rouge carried out operations into Vietnam across the border, killing thousands of Vietnamese citizens. The leaders of the Khmer Rouge openly expressed their desire to seize Vietnam. Domestically, widespread purges led to an insurrection against the Pol Pot administration in Cambodia’s eastern region. In 1978, defeated troops and other rebels fighting for the Pot Pol regrouped across the Vietnamese border and requested assistance from Hanoi. Vietnam’s initial response was muted because China supported the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam wanted to prevent a two-front war.Early in 1978, Vietnamese forces made an advance and approached Pol Pot to talk; however, Pol Pot refused.
By the end of 1978, Vietnam had come to the conclusion that the Khmer Rouge must be destroyed in order to safeguard the citizens of Cambodia and its borders. The local rebel organisation also wanted backing from Hanoi and the large-scale refugee exodus was costing a lot of money. To take control of the entire Mekong Delta was Pol Pot’s goal. The intensity and regularity of the border attacks grew. Due to the war, almost 100,000 hectares of agriculture had to be abandoned, uprooting and making about 500,000 people homeless.
The “United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea” (UNFSK), a smaller group of Khmer troops made up primarily of disgruntled Khmer Rouge survivors who fled into Laos or Vietnam, survivors of the Pol Pot purges, and some Khmer Revolutionaries who fled to Vietnam in the 1950s during the fight for independence from France, also joined the Vietnam forces. The combined Vietnamese and UNFSK forces captured Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979, giving the people of Kampuchea optimism that their horror was coming to an end.
Regardless of their differing political views, almost all Cambodians greeted the Vietnamese as liberators from the horrors and crimes of the Pol Pot years. Heng Samrin was elected president of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea when it was established on January 10, 1979. However, the new government had to deal with the issues of survival and reconstruction. The Vietnamese contributed to the rebuilding of the administrative and transportation networks that allowed for the passage of foreign aid. Private property was reinstated, schools were reopened, some Buddhist traditions were reinstituted, cities were repopulated, and internal trade flourished as a result of the freedom of movement. Despite their own issues, Vietnam contributed 180,000 tonnes of food and rice seeds by June 1980.
Vietnam provided assistance to Cambodia in its restoration and administration. It was a difficult task because the remnants of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge still operated out of the woods near the Thai border. They also made it difficult for the new government to get a UN seat. Vietnam’s forces left Cambodia in September 1989, but not before ending the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror and restoring some measure of stability. Between 2010 and 2018, those responsible for S-21 received sentences. Vietnam paid a price for this action as well; in February 1979, China attacked Vietnam.
Why the Vietnamese soldiers entered Cambodia is a moot point. Even though this conflict is now regarded as a lost cause, Vietnam had little choice but to put an end to the Khmer Rouge at the time in order to secure its borders from the group’s growing attacks. If the Khmer Rouge had remained in power, Cambodia may have suffered irreparable harm, and its border raids with Vietnam might have turned into a full-scale conflict. Vietnam’s response was more of a “timely riposte” than a “invasion.”
