The Use of Children in the Cambodian Genocide

Genocide is the premeditated and methodical destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group and was an atrocity that marks Cambodian history. The communist regime the Khmer Rouge, that reigned between 1975 and 1979 singled out certain groups for elimination and torture and led a brutal revolution within its borders. The regime led by Pol Pot forced social engineering by attempting to eliminate all but the peasant classes interpreting Marxist and Leninist models to the extreme. The date was determined as year zero, cities were to be emptied of people and those who survived elimination were forced to farm the land. The farms today are known as the “killing fields” as so many died through over work, hunger or slaughter. Amongst the victims were the children who were taken away from their families and made to live in communal groups where the only family they were to consider was that of the Khmer Rouge. This essay sets out to show the lives these children led

and how the regime used, manipulated and brainwashed the children who saw them as an integral part of their revolutionary plan.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to eradicate anyone suspected of “involvement in free-market activities” including professionals, almost everyone with an education and who had connections to government and those who lived in the cities. The regime did not want the risk of anybody having the consciousness to rebel against their movement. The country was predominantly Buddhist and its monks were disrobed, half of them were killed and the rest forced to work in the harsh agricultural labor camps and Christianity was also abolished. They also believed that parents were corrupted by capitalism and felt that children should be separated from their families in order to ensure that they were swathed in socialist ideology. Children were taught methods of torture and were instrumental to the leadership of the communist dictatorship.

The regime saw that children could be molded and indoctrinated to their political ideology; they were able to condition the children to believe that they were not the enemy and in doing so developed a community of children who were not able to identify with any other than the Khmer Rouge. The intention was to destroy the family values that were part of their culture and irradiate the trust that is held within family and community networks. Community and family members were expected and given incentives to spy on each other and this shattered networks and dissolved any trust through imbedding deeply rooted fear [1].