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Cambodia Marks 39 Years Since Fall of Khmer Rouge Rule

  • A girls holds a pigeon during a ceremony to mark the 39th anniversary of the toppling of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

    A girls holds a pigeon during a ceremony to mark the 39th anniversary of the toppling of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. | Photo: Reuters

Published 7 January 2018
Opinion

Most of the victims, reportedly, died in labor camps from torture, starvation, exhaustion, disease or mass executions in “killing fields”.

Some 40,000 Cambodians gathered, on Sunday, to celebrate Victory Over Genocide Day, marking 39 years since the fall of Khmer Rouge rule.

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The event was organized by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party to memorialize an estimated 2 million people who lost their lives during the communist party's rule – which came to an end in 1979 following an invasion by Vietnam.

“The January 7 victory saved the lives of people who survived the killings and brought back to the Cambodian people rights lost under the regime of Pol Pot,” Prime Minister Hun Sen said during the ceremony.

Thousands of Khmer Rouge survivors were among the crowd in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. Most of the victims, reportedly, died in labor camps from torture, starvation, exhaustion or disease and others were beaten to death during mass executions in “killing fields”.

Some Cambodians recognize Jan. 7 as a day of liberation, while others believe it as the beginning of a 10-year occupation by Vietnam.

A monk takes a photograph of a case containing skulls of Khmer Rouge victims. Photo: Reuters FILE

Former opposition leader Sam Rainsy said, in a Facebook post, that the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge were initiated by Vietnam to “divide and weaken” Cambodia to keep it under Vietnamese control.

The United States expressed a contrasting view, saying the invasion prefaced a journey towards a brighter future for the southeast Asian nation.

“We also celebrate the ingenuity, courage, and perseverance with which the Cambodian people have emerged from this period of darkness, rebuilt their country, and carried forward the process of national reconciliation,” the U.S. embassy said in a statement.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s top three surviving henchmen – former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, ‘Brother Number Two’ Nuon Chea and former President Khieu Samphan – are serving life sentences for various crimes, including crimes against humanity.

The Khmer Rouge were followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, which orchestrated a Cambodian genocide. The army, which was allegedly backed by the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong, Laos' Pathet Lao communists and the People’s Republic of China, was formed in the jungles of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s. 

The United Nations had suspended its operations in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge’s rule, from 1975 to 1979. About a decade later, the agency's five permanent Security Council members pushed a peace initiative.

Cambodian parties agreed to implement an unlimited ceasefire the following year, after which they signed a peace treaty in Paris.

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