It has been 30 years since the fall of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, a fall brought about mainly by an invasion by the Vietnamese army. By the time the Vietnamese were able to topple the murderous regime, its leader Pol Pot and his henchmen had managed to kill 1.7 million of their fellow Cambodians. The Khmer Rouge were attempting to impose an extreme form of revolutionary communism that involved essentially turning the clock back to the beginning of time when there was no social structure, no bourgeousie, no machines.... not much of anything that we have all come to accept as the normal accouterments of normal life. The Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodian cities and sent their inhabitants to the countryside to learn basic agriculture. Those who were deemed too bourgeous – lawyers, bankers, doctors – did not have to participate in the reeducation. They were simply killed outright. The result, of course, was the complete collapse of the Cambodian economy and its agricultural system. No one knows until today how many of those 1.7 million Cambodians who died were outright murdered and how many died the slow death of starvation. The architect of this travesty, Pol Pot, died in 1998, so he cannot be prosecuted but a host of others are set to go on trial before the end of this year and into 2010. First up is a run-of-the-mill henchman who is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and murder. As heinous as the crimes of the Khmer Rouge were, the context in which they took place should not be forgotten. Cambodia was a tranquil country under the monarchy of Prince Sihanouk who was doing everything possible to keep his country out of the war that was raging between US troops in Vietnam and the Communist forces that were trying to take control there. Supporting the Communist campaign was the USSR, a bitter enemy at that time of China as was Vietnam which had historic grievances against its neighbor to the north. Sihanouk was allowing the Communist troops to use Cambodian territory strategically, which led to the US overthrowing him and installing a pro-US government. Succession of coup d'etats took place which led to the China- and US-supported Khmer Rouge government. This byzantine situation led to the atrocities commited by the Khmer Rouge. While the henchman whose trial began yesterday could well be termed evil, we must not forget that it was the Cold War grown hot and the imperialism it engendered that was the source of an even greater evil. __
