Cambodian peasants: economic conditions, uprising, reprisals
After World War II there was a population explosion. The acreage of arable land declined and the number of large landholdings grew.2 While a few had more land, many had less. After independence, many peasants were forced off their land and drifted into the cities, rootless and destitute.3 The number of rich peasants grew from about 6 percent to 14 percent of the population; they rented land to the landless poor. The number of peasants in debt increased, with annual interest rates as high as 100 percent to 200 percent. Much of this indebtedness was to Vietnamese and Chinese who owned commercial institutions.4
The shrinkage of average landholdings combined with the increase in population led to food shortages and a general decline in living standards. Food prices rose about 350 percent from 1950 to 1970. A peasant uprising began in 1967-68 in the Samlaut region, and disturbances later spread to cities and other provinces. The immediate cause of the uprising may have been government land expropriations for a sugar refinery; aggressive tax collecting; or an influx of Khmer refugees from the war in Vietnam settled by the government on land the peasants regarded as communal property.5
Peasants in Samlaut killed two members of a tax-collecting detachment, attacked a garrison, and carried away its arms. Prime Minister Lon Nol, the leader of the government in the absence of the head of state, Sihanouk, responded by sending the national police to pacify the region, mainly by killing peasants. Two communists then in the government, Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn, were accused by the returning Sihanouk of complicity with the uprising and went underground. It was widely believed that the government had murdered them and fifteen thousand people demonstrated in Phnom Penh.
The next day Sihanouk declared a state of emergency. Army troops assisted by local peasants armed with clubs combed areas of the uprising to crush actual and potential unrest. In a 1972 interview Sihanouk said that he had “read somewhere that 10,000 died” at this time, but insisted that his intervention had restored peace and order.6
The uprising indicated, and together with the harsh reprisals enlarged, the growing cleavage between the government and the people. It led Khieu Samphan and Hou Youn to give up their attempt to work within the system. They were associates of Pol Pot and members of the group that later became the architect of genocide.
Political instability and violence
Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia’s king under French colonial rule, demoted himself so that he could participate in party politics after independence, and ruled until 1970. He came to believe in the 1960s that ultimately the communists would rule most of Southeast Asia. He followed policies that may have been pragmatic under the confused conditions in Southeast Asia, but seemed opportunistic and inconsistent. He brutally repressed communist activities within Cambodia, but offered some support to communists outside Cambodia. He first permitted the North Vietnamese and Vietcong to use sanctuaries in the border regions of Cambodia, but later tried to curb their activities and their use of Cambodia as a supply route. He both protested against the U.S. bombing of Cambodia and secretly asked for U.S. bombing of North Vietnamese troops in Cambodia.a7
Sihanouk’s vacillating policies alienated elements of the ruling class, especially his indulgence of the Vietnamese, Cambodia’s ancient enemies, which was even objectionable to many Cambodian communists. Mainly because of his compromises with the Vietnamese communists, he was overthrown in 1970 by the general and then prime minister Lon Nol. After that, the conflict with the communists turned into a full civil war.
Government corruption was rampant during this conflict. Food sent by the United States was sold by corrupt officials on the black market. Arms sent by the United States were sold by corrupt officers to the Khmer Rouge. This was consistent with Cambodian cultural experience; a high political position was seen as an opportunity to sell privileges.8 As the population fled from violence in the countryside and Khmer Rouge occupation, the population of Phnom Penh increased from six hundred thousand to nearly three million. Starvation was widespread; medicine and other essentials were totally inadequate.
The Khmer Rouge started the guerrilla war in 1968, at about the same time U.S. bombing began. Between 1970 and 1973, the United States dropped three times the tonnage of bombs on Cambodia that it had dropped on Japan during all of World War II. The bombing began in the border areas that served as a sanctuary for Vietnamese fighting in Vietnam, but was extended to the increasingly large areas under the control of Cambodian communists.9 In 1973, much of the bombing occurred in the most heavily populated areas of the country. This sustained, intense bombing killed many thousands of people, disrupted communities, and created many refugees. It had profound effects on the people’s feelings about their government, whose ally was the perpetrator. Communist recruitment became easier.
Meanwhile, in 1970, the U.S. and South Vietnamese armies invaded Cambodia, pushing the North Vietnamese and their Khmer Rouge allies further into the interior. Lon Nol, especially after he gained power, expounded a nationalistic, racist view of Khmer superority, intensely hostile to Vietnam.10 His government instigated punitive actions against Vietnamese living in Cambodia. They were murdered, raped, their properties seized. The invading South Vietnamese army countered Lon Nol’s policies by confiscating Khmer property, which they gave to victimized Vietnamese families.11
The fighting between government troops and the growing army of the Khmer Rouge spread all over the country. In the increasingly large area occupied by the Khmer Rouge, the lives of the people were completely disrupted. Some were killed or forced into reeducation camps. Others were driven out of their villages to start new lives elsewhere, as part of the
