Many Cambodians believe, almost as an article of faith, that the Khmer Rouge killed more than three million people during the Democratic Kampuchea regime. When this estimate of the Khmer Rouge death toll was first publicized in the early 1980s, commentators in the West almost universally dismissed it as a product of “Vietnamese propaganda,” an invented figure designed strictly for political purposes. In later years, more sober analysts examining this three million figure also discounted it, basing their much lower estimates of the death toll on interview data, demographic analyses and other statistical methodologies.
Yet, the three million figure was not a complete invention. In the early 1980s, the authorities of the People's Republic of Kampuchea carried out what amounted to a national household survey, aiming to interview every head of household in the entire country about what had happened to their families during the Pol Pot regime.[7] On July 25, 1983, the “Research Committee on Pol Pot's Genocidal Regime” issued its final report, including detailed province by province data. Among other things, their data showed that 3,314,768 people lost their lives in the “Pol Pot time.”[8] But that report was quickly forgotten inside Cambodia, and it never became known outside of Cambodia -- until 1995.
More than a decade after the PRK report was published, researchers at the Documentation Center of Cambodia discovered many of the records from this remarkable research project. Those records allowed DC-Cam researchers to reconstruct the methodology employed by the PRK Research Committee, and some flaws were detected in the research design, flaws, which would tend to lead to an overestimation of the total casualty figure. The Research Committee interviewers of the early 1980's had gone from house to house, and from village to village, collecting information regarding death during the Khmer Rouge regime. It appears, however, that they did not adequately account for the fact that extended families are usually spread out across more than one household or village, and therefore double counting of some victims could occur based on reports from different households belonging to the same extended family.
There were other flaws in the research design, as well. For example, in addition to the household survey, Research Committee investigators also devoted a significant amount of effort to examining mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era. In many cases, the committee sponsored the exhumation of mass graves, which had been discovered in various locations, providing a hard count of bodies interred in those pits and other types of graves. These numbers were added to the count derived from the interviews to yield the 3.3 million numbers. However, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to identify all of those cases where an individual reported as having been killed by family members was the same individual whose body was tallied from the mass grave exhumations.
The Documentation Center subsequently concluded that the 3.3 million figure reported by the PRK Research Committee might have been overestimated by a factor of perhaps fifty- percent, putting the actual death toll somewhere nearer to two million. Despite apparent flaws in their methodology, however, the work carried out by these earlier researchers provided many helpful leads to later investigators. For example, the interviews carried out by the Research Committee during their surveys garnered many details regarding specific events in various parts of the country, as well as identities for some lower-lever officers in the Khmer Rouge command structure.
Yet, the three million figure was not a complete invention. In the early 1980s, the authorities of the People's Republic of Kampuchea carried out what amounted to a national household survey, aiming to interview every head of household in the entire country about what had happened to their families during the Pol Pot regime.[7] On July 25, 1983, the “Research Committee on Pol Pot's Genocidal Regime” issued its final report, including detailed province by province data. Among other things, their data showed that 3,314,768 people lost their lives in the “Pol Pot time.”[8] But that report was quickly forgotten inside Cambodia, and it never became known outside of Cambodia -- until 1995.
More than a decade after the PRK report was published, researchers at the Documentation Center of Cambodia discovered many of the records from this remarkable research project. Those records allowed DC-Cam researchers to reconstruct the methodology employed by the PRK Research Committee, and some flaws were detected in the research design, flaws, which would tend to lead to an overestimation of the total casualty figure. The Research Committee interviewers of the early 1980's had gone from house to house, and from village to village, collecting information regarding death during the Khmer Rouge regime. It appears, however, that they did not adequately account for the fact that extended families are usually spread out across more than one household or village, and therefore double counting of some victims could occur based on reports from different households belonging to the same extended family.
There were other flaws in the research design, as well. For example, in addition to the household survey, Research Committee investigators also devoted a significant amount of effort to examining mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era. In many cases, the committee sponsored the exhumation of mass graves, which had been discovered in various locations, providing a hard count of bodies interred in those pits and other types of graves. These numbers were added to the count derived from the interviews to yield the 3.3 million numbers. However, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to identify all of those cases where an individual reported as having been killed by family members was the same individual whose body was tallied from the mass grave exhumations.
The Documentation Center subsequently concluded that the 3.3 million figure reported by the PRK Research Committee might have been overestimated by a factor of perhaps fifty- percent, putting the actual death toll somewhere nearer to two million. Despite apparent flaws in their methodology, however, the work carried out by these earlier researchers provided many helpful leads to later investigators. For example, the interviews carried out by the Research Committee during their surveys garnered many details regarding specific events in various parts of the country, as well as identities for some lower-lever officers in the Khmer Rouge command structure.
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