Year Zero, Visualized
Cambodia's Civil War and the Khmer Rouge Genocide, 1960s–1990s
Approximately 1.7–2 million people died under the Khmer Rouge—
25-33% of Cambodia's population—in just three years, eight months, and twenty days.
The City Walked
April 17, 1975
On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh. Within hours, they ordered the complete evacuation of the capital—approximately 2 million people forced onto roads with no warning, no preparation, and no return date.
Hospitals were emptied; patients on IV drips pushed their own gurneys. This was the first act of Year Zero: the city was a disease to be cured by erasure.
The evacuation killed unknown thousands through heat, exhaustion, and execution. Families were separated. The urban population—educated, connected to the old regime simply by living in cities—was marked as corrupted.
What followed would be three years, eight months, and twenty days of systematic destruction. Approximately 1.7 to 2 million people—between 25% and 33% of Cambodia's population—would die from execution, starvation, disease, and overwork.
Before Year Zero
1863-1969
Cambodia's identity was forged by empire (Angkor), colonialism (French Indochina, 1863-1953), and independence under Sihanouk. The Tonle Sap's unique reversing flow made Cambodia an agricultural heartland.
Sihanouk's "Buddhist socialism" attempted neutrality as the Vietnam War engulfed neighbors. Cambodia was a kingdom of rice paddies, ancient temples, and a people who had survived centuries of regional conflict.
This chapter establishes what was lost: a functioning society, a culture, a people's way of life. The Khmer Rouge would attempt to restart history at Year Zero—but history is not so easily erased.
Cold War Spillover
1965-1973
The United States dropped 2.7 million tons of ordnance on Cambodia between 1965 and 1973—more than the Allies dropped on Germany in World War II. This included secret bombing campaigns (Operation Menu, 1969-1970) and overt campaigns (Operation Freedom Deal, 1970-1973).
The bombs killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Scholars debate the causal relationship between the bombing and Khmer Rouge recruitment, but the destabilization is undeniable.
Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen argue the bombing was a primary factor in Khmer Rouge growth. Craig Etcheson sees it as contributing but not determinative. Henry Kissinger maintained it was defensive necessity against North Vietnamese occupation.
This chapter presents all perspectives without single-cause determinism. The bombing did not "cause" the genocide—but it helped create the conditions from which the Khmer Rouge emerged.
Civil War
1970-1975
In March 1970, while Sihanouk was abroad, General Lon Nol deposed him in a coup backed by the United States. Sihanouk, from Beijing, called on Cambodians to join the Khmer Rouge resistance.
The civil war that followed killed an estimated 500,000 people and displaced millions. By 1975, Phnom Penh was swollen with refugees—2 million people in a city built for 600,000.
The Khmer Rouge controlled most of the countryside. On April 17, they entered the capital.
Year Zero
April 1975 - December 1978
The Khmer Rouge declared "Year Zero"—a complete reset of Cambodian society. Their policies were radical and absolute:
Abolition of money, markets, and private property. Forced collectivization and communal dining. Targeting of intellectuals, religious practitioners, and urban residents. A zone system of administrative control divided the country into regions, each with its own leadership.
The party called itself "Angkar" (អង្គការ—"The Organization"). Its directives were absolute. Possession of glasses, speaking French, or having soft hands could mean death as evidence of intellectual status.
The slogan spread: "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss."
Starvation as Policy
1976-1978
The death toll breakdown tells the story of systematic destruction:
Execution: approximately 500,000 to 1 million. Starvation: approximately 500,000 to 1 million. Disease and overwork: approximately 500,000.
The Khmer Rouge exported rice while its people starved. Agricultural quotas were impossible to meet; failure to meet them was evidence of sabotage, punishable by death.
Medicine was banned as bourgeois; traditional remedies were mandated. Malaria, dysentery, and cholera swept through cooperatives.
This was not famine. This was policy-driven starvation—governance through hunger.
S-21: Bureaucracy of Terror
1976-1979
S-21, codenamed for "Security Office 21," was a former high school converted into the regime's primary interrogation and extermination center. Between 14,000 and 17,000 people were detained here. Approximately 12 are known to have survived.
The facility was run by Duch (Kaing Guek Eav), a former mathematics teacher. Prisoners were photographed on intake, tortured into confessions of imaginary crimes, and transported to Choeung Ek—the "Killing Fields"—for execution.
S-21 was part of a network of 189-196 interrogation centers across the country. Its meticulous documentation—photographs, confessions, execution records—would later provide crucial evidence for the ECCC.
The bureaucracy of terror left its own record of atrocity.
What Is Genocide?
Legal Framework
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." This specific intent—dolus specialis—distinguishes genocide from other mass atrocities.
The ECCC convicted Nuon Chea of genocide against ethnic Vietnamese AND Cham Muslims. Khieu Samphan was convicted of genocide against ethnic Vietnamese.
The Khmer Rouge committed both genocide (against specific protected groups: Vietnamese, Cham) and crimes against humanity (against the broader Cambodian population).
The legal category matters because it shapes how we understand, remember, and respond to mass atrocity. The distinction is not about which victims matter more—all victims matter. It is about how law names and addresses different forms of systematic violence.
The World Outside
1975-1979
What did the world know? What did the world do?
Refugees reported atrocities from 1975 onward. Some Western journalists (Elizabeth Becker, 1978) visited and reported. Cambodia's UN seat remained contested; the Khmer Rouge kept it until 1982.
Cold War calculations prioritized anti-Vietnamese alliance over human rights concerns. The international community failed Cambodia.
This chapter addresses the misconception that "the world didn't know"—evidence existed; the world chose not to act.
After 1979
January 1979 - 1990s
On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese forces captured Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge fled to the countryside, where they continued armed resistance for nearly two more decades.
What followed was not peace: Vietnamese occupation (1979-1989), refugee crisis (300,000+ in Thai border camps), landmine contamination (one of the world's most mined countries), and continued international recognition of the Khmer Rouge at the UN.
The Paris Peace Accords (1991) and UNTAC mission (1992-1993) eventually brought elections—but many perpetrators never faced justice.
Justice & Memory
1997-2022
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was a hybrid tribunal—Cambodian and international judges—established to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders.
Only 3 convictions after 16 years and $337 million: Duch (Case 001), Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan (Case 002). Many perpetrators died before trial—Pol Pot (1998), Ieng Sary (2013), Nuon Chea (2019).
The tribunal entered residual functions in 2022. Whether it achieved justice remains debated. What is certain: it created a historical record.
The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) trained over 5,000 teachers and reached 7 million young Cambodians with genocide education. Memory survives through education.
The Education Gap
Global Context
In Western schools, genocide education is Holocaust-centric. Cambodia—where a quarter of the population died—receives minimal coverage. Why?
Geographic and cultural distance from Western centers. Cold War complicity (US bombing, Khmer Rouge UN seat). Lack of translated survivor testimony until recently. Assumption that "Asian" histories are separate.
Cambodia has built its own education: DC-Cam's teacher training, mandatory curriculum since 2009, memorial sites across the country. But global awareness lags.
This chapter does not claim equivalence between genocides; it asks why some are remembered while others are forgotten.
What Survives
Present Day
Year Zero attempted to erase history. It failed.
Today, 81 genocide memorials dot Cambodia. The stupa at Choeung Ek contains the remains of victims—a memorial and a warning. Tuol Sleng receives thousands of visitors annually.
Cambodian artists, writers, and filmmakers continue to process inherited trauma. The generation born after 1979 now outnumbers survivors.
Memory depends on education, documentation, and the courage to remember what power would have erased.
Sources
Primary Sources
Academic Sources
- The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia. Yale University Press, 2008
- Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot. Westview Press, 1999
- Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison. UC Press, 2000
- When the War Was Over. PublicAffairs, 1998
- Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide. UC Press, 2005
- After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide. Praeger, 2005
- Bombs Over Cambodia. The Walrus, 2006