The vicious Khmer Rouge fell from power 30 years ago. Vietnamese-led forces toppled the murderous regime in 1979. As more than 40,000 Cambodians celebrate the three-decade anniversary, they are overwhelmed with both collective relief and the pain of bitter memory. Nearly 2 million died in the 4 years that the Khmer Rouge ruled with genocide. To help placate a traumatic past, a UN war crimes tribunal will be indicting the five collaborators of the tyrant Pol Pot in a few months time. 30 years after the genocide, no Khmer leader has paid for his crimes of torture and murder. One of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century remains a dark chapter with no justice yet given to the victims and their families.

The Khmer Rouge, headed by Pol Pot, ruled from 1975 to 1979 as the communist ruling political party of Cambodia. The bloody regime killed one-fifth of the entire population of the country. It carried out mass executions, torture, starvation, and forced labor. It executed what it called agrarian communism where everyone was ordered to work in the country’s collective farms. Children were separated from their parents and brought to socialism brainwashing camps where they were taught how to torture, using animals. They were molded to be leaders in torture and executions.

The Khmer Rouge tried to eradicate anyone suspected of being an intellectual or learned in school, as well as anybody involved with any free-market activity. Some 8,000 skulls of victims of the Khmer Rouge are on display at the Cheoung Ek ‘Killing Fields’ memorial in Phnom Penh. One of the regime’s mottos is “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”

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Via BBC