Cambodian genocide — genocide of as many as 3,000,000 Cambodians by communist Khmer Rogue in 1975–79
The Khmer Rouge killed approximately 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979, representing roughly 25% of the country's population.
Key Facts
- Estimated death toll
- approximately 2 million people
- Share of 1975 population killed
- 20–25%
- Duration
- 1975–1979
- Mass graves mapped (as of 2009)
- 23,745 containing ~1.3 million suspected victims
- Chinese aid in 1975 alone
- at least US$1 billion (interest-free)
- Security Prison 21 survivors
- 7 adults out of 20,000 prisoners adults
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
After years of civil conflict and U.S. bombing campaigns, the Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, backed substantially by Chinese Communist Party aid. Led by Pol Pot, they sought to transform Cambodia into an agrarian ultra-Maoist state, viewing urban populations, ethnic minorities, educated citizens, and perceived class enemies as obstacles to their revolutionary ideology.
From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodian cities and forced residents into rural labor camps, where mass executions, starvation, forced labor, torture, and disease were systematic. Prisons such as Security Prison 21 fed victims to Killing Fields, where they were executed and buried in mass graves. Ethnic minorities including Chinese Cambodians, Cham Muslims, and Vietnamese Cambodians suffered targeted killing.
The Vietnamese military invasion in 1978 toppled the Khmer Rouge by January 1979, ending the killings but triggering a major refugee crisis. International legal accountability came slowly; the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia secured convictions of senior Khmer Rouge leaders including Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan for crimes against humanity, genocide, and Geneva Convention breaches.