HISTORIC EVENT:

KHMER ROUGE TAKE OVER PHNOM PENH

17th April 1975

On 17 April 1975 the Khmer Rouge arrived in Phnom Penh.

Pol Pot was the head of the Khmer Rouge army. The Khmer Rouge were mostly young men and women, boys and girls who were from the rural area (countryside). They were not educated, mostly poor and were brainwashed into believing that educated people were bad. They wore black pants and tops, and a krama, and shoes made from tyres or anything else they found.

The Khmer Rouge forced everyone living in Phnom Penh to leave the city. They lied and said the Americans were going to bomb the city and gave them 3 days to leave. Phnom Penh became a ghost town.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to cut Cambodia off from the rest of the world and make it start from Year Zero.  They abolished (got rid of)schools, money, religion, factories and even families.  They only wanted people to live in the countryside and do what Pol Pot said. They killed anyone with glasses, anyone educated, anyone who had worked in offices or for the Americans or French. They killed doctors, teachers, monks, artists, dancers and the families of these people.  No one could own anything, not land, not houses, not anything. People who had soft hands were executed because it meant that they had not worked in as manual workers (not office workers).

1/3 of the Cambodian people were killed by execution or sickness from malnutrition.

Children over 7 were forced to work in the fields, and not see their parents. They were brainwashed into thinking that their parents were bad and were told they had to tell on them. Like, telling the KR that their mother spoke English. People were forced to marry each other even if they didn’t love each other because the Khmer Rouge wanted to have children to grow up and do what they said.

By APSARA LINDEMAN