"Just days after the Khmer Rouge took power, they ordered 2 million people living in Phnom Penh and other urban areas to head to the countryside. This was to be "Year Zero" in Cambodia's new rural, classless society, and the country would now be known as the Democratic Kampuchea.
Citizens were to be turned into traditional rural peasants, referred to as the "old people" by the Khmer Rouge. Urban workers and intelligentsia elites were viewed as "new people" and easily expendable."
"Survivors remember being told that the revolution would be successful without them: "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.""
".."money, free markets, normal schooling, private property, foreign clothing styles, religious practices, and traditional Khmer culture" were all abolished."
"Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, intellectuals, and minorities were imprisoned or killed. Of the 14,000 who entered one prison, a former high school renamed S-21, only seven were believed to have survived."
"As anti-Vietnamese paranoia set in, even Khmer Rouge loyalists found themselves executed."
"The sites where people were killed and buried became known as the Cambodia's "killing fields." Those being killed were often hit over the head with clubs in a bid to save bullets."
"The sites where people were killed and buried became known as the Cambodia's "killing fields." Those being killed were often hit over the head with clubs in a bid to save bullets."
The Khmer Rouge's attempts to create a completely self-sufficient agrarian society led to thousands of deaths from starvation and overwork, and a lack of imported medicine led many others to die unnecessarily from diseases like malaria.
"Radicalized during a time of anti-imperialism and Communist ideology, Pol Pot (born Saloth Sar) and many other founders of the Khmer Rouge (officially the Communist Party of Kampuchea)"
"Between 1975 and 1979, 1.7 million Cambodians are believed to have lost their lives. "
"Between 1975 and 1979, 1.7 million Cambodians are believed to have lost their lives. "
