Beyond torture, the principal function of the network of Khmer Rouge security centers seems to have been to physically eliminate perceived enemies of the regime. A fantastic number of people were killed. It is often asked, “Why did the Khmer Rouge kill so many Cambodians?” The mapping reports provide at least a partial answer to this question, though the answer is hardly a satisfying one. The list of reasons why people were killed is shocking in itself.
Simply having been a policeman, soldier or civil servant during a previous regime was adequate to earn the death sentence. Being related by blood or marriage to one of those “class enemies” was also enough to bring a chop from the executioner's ax. As witness Ok Tuon notes of Khmer Rouge activity in Kampong Chhnang's Prey Damrei Srot prison, “none of the relatives of the accused was spared.” Also in Kampong Chhnang Province at Prey Ta Kuch, according to Uk Yun, the Khmer Rouge took “families” to be executed. This information conforms to a pattern we have seen in all five years of the mass grave mapping reports.
Besides having been any type of government official, ordinary people of many descriptions also qualified as “enemies.” Former students, who were referred to as “intellectuals,” were also very often put at the top of the list of those to be exterminated. Thus the simple act of having attended school and learning to read could get one killed. One witness from Ratanakiri Province in this year's mapping report, Mr. Bun Vantha, believes he was arrested by the Khmer Rouge simply because he had written a letter to them.
Another form of “class enemies” exterminated en mass was “capitalists,” which in the Khmer Rouge's primitive taxonomy could include such lowly toilers as a street noodle vendor and a motorcycle taxi driver. “Feudalistic,” or those who expressed any form of affection for Cambodia's beloved Prince Sihanouk, could also receive capital punishment.
All of these things -- having been a soldier, a student, a civil servant, a petty bourgeois vendor, an admirer of the monarchy, or having been related to someone with such characteristics -- was called “having a tendency” or a “trend.” The Khmer Rouge had a tendency to murder anyone with “tendencies.”
With the spread of internal purges inside the Communist Party of Kampuchea, having been a civil servant of a previous regime was no longer required to earn a death sentence; increasingly, “civil servants” or cadre from within Democratic Kampuchea itself were widely rounded up and terminated. And as leadership purges accelerated, so too did the murder of those who had served under the previous cadres in virtually any capacity. The testimony of Mr. Chann Tauch of Mondulkiri Province eloquently describes this process. In 1977, Mr. Tauch recounts, “all the people related to the top two Khmer Rouge leaders — Ham and Kham Phoun — were arrested wholesale and sent to Phnom Kraol prison.” Eventually, this form of repression became so extreme that merely being an ordinary citizen in a region formerly governed by someone now judged a “traitor” became enough to be added to the list, as was seen in the purges of the Eastern Zone.
In addition to being killed for reasons of classification -- that is, membership in an unfavored group such as former students -- large numbers of people were also executed for reasons of having committed or having been alleged to have committed “offenses.” The categories of offenses punishable by death were often capricious in the extreme. For example, in Banteay Meanchey Province, witnesses described a series of different kinds of “mistakes” which could cause one to be condemned. “Traveling from one village to another without permission” is mentioned as one reason why someone might be labeled an “enemy” and be put to death.
Unauthorized possession of foraged food was another reason to die. People who were caught with a fish, a crab, a snail or a lizard were sometimes summarily executed for misappropriation of the “people's” resources, as witnesses in Benteay Meanchey's Thmar Puok District testified. This practice was equivalent to a charge of attempting to survive starvation without permission.
Also in Banteay Meanchey, a somewhat novel reason for execution was described; cadres ordered farmers to “walk on the right” side of the plough rig behind the oxen, but instead the unwary peasants followed their traditional practice of walking on the left side. As a result, “They were accused of being the enemy and killed immediately in front of all the people who plowed there.”
Romantic indiscretions were another reason why people were executed; total control over love and sex was demanded by the Khmer Rouge. This, as much as anything else, defines the Khmer Rouge as perhaps the most extreme totalitarian organization in the modern history of repressive regimes. In every sense of the term, they would win the people's hearts and minds, or else the people would die. But not everyone died, even among those who were arrested.
Simply having been a policeman, soldier or civil servant during a previous regime was adequate to earn the death sentence. Being related by blood or marriage to one of those “class enemies” was also enough to bring a chop from the executioner's ax. As witness Ok Tuon notes of Khmer Rouge activity in Kampong Chhnang's Prey Damrei Srot prison, “none of the relatives of the accused was spared.” Also in Kampong Chhnang Province at Prey Ta Kuch, according to Uk Yun, the Khmer Rouge took “families” to be executed. This information conforms to a pattern we have seen in all five years of the mass grave mapping reports.
Besides having been any type of government official, ordinary people of many descriptions also qualified as “enemies.” Former students, who were referred to as “intellectuals,” were also very often put at the top of the list of those to be exterminated. Thus the simple act of having attended school and learning to read could get one killed. One witness from Ratanakiri Province in this year's mapping report, Mr. Bun Vantha, believes he was arrested by the Khmer Rouge simply because he had written a letter to them.
Another form of “class enemies” exterminated en mass was “capitalists,” which in the Khmer Rouge's primitive taxonomy could include such lowly toilers as a street noodle vendor and a motorcycle taxi driver. “Feudalistic,” or those who expressed any form of affection for Cambodia's beloved Prince Sihanouk, could also receive capital punishment.
All of these things -- having been a soldier, a student, a civil servant, a petty bourgeois vendor, an admirer of the monarchy, or having been related to someone with such characteristics -- was called “having a tendency” or a “trend.” The Khmer Rouge had a tendency to murder anyone with “tendencies.”
With the spread of internal purges inside the Communist Party of Kampuchea, having been a civil servant of a previous regime was no longer required to earn a death sentence; increasingly, “civil servants” or cadre from within Democratic Kampuchea itself were widely rounded up and terminated. And as leadership purges accelerated, so too did the murder of those who had served under the previous cadres in virtually any capacity. The testimony of Mr. Chann Tauch of Mondulkiri Province eloquently describes this process. In 1977, Mr. Tauch recounts, “all the people related to the top two Khmer Rouge leaders — Ham and Kham Phoun — were arrested wholesale and sent to Phnom Kraol prison.” Eventually, this form of repression became so extreme that merely being an ordinary citizen in a region formerly governed by someone now judged a “traitor” became enough to be added to the list, as was seen in the purges of the Eastern Zone.
In addition to being killed for reasons of classification -- that is, membership in an unfavored group such as former students -- large numbers of people were also executed for reasons of having committed or having been alleged to have committed “offenses.” The categories of offenses punishable by death were often capricious in the extreme. For example, in Banteay Meanchey Province, witnesses described a series of different kinds of “mistakes” which could cause one to be condemned. “Traveling from one village to another without permission” is mentioned as one reason why someone might be labeled an “enemy” and be put to death.
Unauthorized possession of foraged food was another reason to die. People who were caught with a fish, a crab, a snail or a lizard were sometimes summarily executed for misappropriation of the “people's” resources, as witnesses in Benteay Meanchey's Thmar Puok District testified. This practice was equivalent to a charge of attempting to survive starvation without permission.
Also in Banteay Meanchey, a somewhat novel reason for execution was described; cadres ordered farmers to “walk on the right” side of the plough rig behind the oxen, but instead the unwary peasants followed their traditional practice of walking on the left side. As a result, “They were accused of being the enemy and killed immediately in front of all the people who plowed there.”
Romantic indiscretions were another reason why people were executed; total control over love and sex was demanded by the Khmer Rouge. This, as much as anything else, defines the Khmer Rouge as perhaps the most extreme totalitarian organization in the modern history of repressive regimes. In every sense of the term, they would win the people's hearts and minds, or else the people would die. But not everyone died, even among those who were arrested.
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