The Use of Children in the Cambodian Genocide

It is estimated that during their reign the Khmer Rouge were responsible for some 1.5 million deaths through execution, starvation and torture and has been labeled as

[5]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_period_(1975-1979) [6]http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/pran-cambodia.html

one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century through its committal of crimes against humanity. It was on January 7th 1979 when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and liberated its people. Many fled to Thai refugee camps and never returned back to their home country choosing to emigrate to America, France and Australia [7]. The healing process for many of the children was absent and at the least slow as the engineering of distrust, the coercion they had experienced and the lack of core family, traditional values and support networks had been deliberately broken down and no longer existed.

The children of Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot witnessed unimaginable atrocities and had their innocence taken away from them. They were a major part in the social engineering that the regime wished to achieve. Through the disembodiment of the family and the breakdown of traditional values the children were shown another way of life and many were convinced that this was the only way. The regime used and abused the innocence of children as a means to adapt and control their newly found distorted society through the dismantling of family units

[7] http://www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/genocide/genocide.html

and community networks. Through means of manipulation trust became eradicated and was something to be valued if it could be found. In their attempts to create a utopian world where everyone was equal what they did was ensure everyone was equally poor except for themselves and in doing so used children as a means to an end. Whole families were destroyed, whole villages wiped off the face of the earth as part of what could be termed a social experiment. The elation of liberation can be summed up in the words of one of the children of the killing fields “In 1979, the Buddhist New Year, exactly four years after the Khmer Rouge came to power, I joined a group of corpselike bodies dancing freely to the sound of clapping and songs of folk music that defined who we were. We danced under the moonlight around the bonfire. We were celebrating the miracles that saved our lives. At that moment, I felt that my spirit and my soul had returned to my weak body. Once again, I was human [8].

[8] Pran Dith (1997) (Eds DePaul Kim0 Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors Yale University Press, 1997

Bibliography

Colletta, N. J., & Cullen, M. L. (2000). The nexus between violent conflict, social capital and social cohesion: Case studies from Cambodia and Rwanda [electronic version]. Social Capital Initiative Working Paper 23. (Retrieved November 10th, 2008) www.worldbank.org

Pran, Dith (1997) (Eds DePaul Kim0 Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors Yale University Press, 1997

Kiernan Ben Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia: Documentation,
Denial and Justice in Cambodia and East Timor, (Retrieved November 11th 2008) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QLQ/is_/ai_n24377875

Martin, M. A. (1994). Cambodia: A shattered society. Berkeley, California: University of California Press

The Khmer Rouge Period (1975- 1979) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_period_(1975-1979) (accessed November 11th 2008)

The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/pran-cambodia.html (accessed November 11th 2008)

The killing fields Cambodia’s Darkest Days http://www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/genocide/genocide.html (accessed November 11th 2008)