Cambodia: Siem Reap – Killing Fields Khmer Rouge Museum
There is a small Killing Fields museum near Siem Reap, documenting the brutal atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Khmer Rouge originated as a guerrilla movement from the eastern jungles of Cambodia, espousing warped communist ideology and supported by both Viet Kong communists in Vietnam and the communist China (and indirectly by the USSR). Despite the quite brutal campaign of American bombing of the Khmer Rouge camps, the latter came to power in 1975 and launched an insane campaign of social engineering of a utopian “pure” agrarian classless Marxist-Leninist society. People were forced out of the cities and into labor camps – everybody was just supposed to work in the fields growing rice at collective state farms and sell to China, the rest of the professions and any minorities where to be exterminated – 1.5-3 million people killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide (out of the total population of around 8 million). Tortures, summary executions, medical experiments – all signature of the regime. China stood behind the regime and financed most of it. Eventually Khmer Rouge but too much and invaded the communist Viet Nam at Phu Quoc. Vietnam responded and by 1979, overthrew and destroyed the Khmer Regime. One can’t help and see the similarities between the Khmer Rouge atrocities and Stalin’s brutality in the Soviet Union.
