By Robert Carmichael /Phnom Penh
A group of Cambodians attending a ceremony to remember the victims who died during the Khmer Rouge regime at Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre, near Phnom Penh
Thirty-five years ago, Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, fell to the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist movement, which over the preceding years had taken control of most of the country. Many in the capital were relieved, believing now, after years of war, they could rebuild their lives. But as history has shown, they were terribly wrong.
The Khmer Rouge immediately began emptying the cities of their inhabitants and putting them to work in rural agricultural collectives, a policy that had deadly consequences.
Up to 2mn people died from execution, starvation, disease and overwork under the four-year Khmer Rouge state known as Democratic Kampuchea.
Youk Chhang, who heads the Documentation Centre of Cambodia genocide archive, remembers well April 17, 1975, the day the capital fell.
“I was 14 and at home alone when the Khmer Rouge came,” he said. “My mother was so worried about one of my sisters who was pregnant at the time (and was visiting her).”
Youk Chhang said his mother had hoped to get home in time to fetch him, but the Khmer Rouge blocked the road. The movement had ordered the evacuation of the city.
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