Khmer Rouge

[LA GUERRA OLVIDADA]

Anyone got any articles that go more indepth on how terrible they were to the Cambodian people?

[ReD_ReBeL]

here's on there enitre history...Khmer Rouge History (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge)


.....Genocide by the Khmer Rouge (http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/pol-pot.htm)

[Scars]

Articles? No. Books, yes. Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge, CPK) have interested me for a long time and these are probably the best books about them:

Cambodia 1975-1982 by Michael Vickery

This is the stock Marxist analysis of the CPK and goes into detail about the workings of Democratic Kampuchea and has an entire chapter on the nature of the Kampuchean revolution.

Pol Pot's Little Red Book by Henri Locard

The analysis is not very good, it plays up the whole Maoist thing far too much (as it's flatly incorrect) and there are a lot of basic factual errors. However it is good because it provides you with primary source material, which is somewhat lacking on the CPK.

The Pol Pot Regime by Ben Kiernan

This focuses more on the complete history of Democratic Kampuchea examining what was going on in each zone (there was a lot of factionalism in the CPK, it was not a monolithic Pol Pot-ist organisation. The Pol Potists just came to dominate the Central Committee and purged the pro-Chinese and pro-Vietnamese elements early on) and provides a good basic history of Kampuchea '75-'79. The main problem, in my opinion, is that it places far too much emphasis on the place of race in Democratic Kampuchea and claims that things that are important, are not. For instance he claims that the suppression of Islam is a case of specific descrimination against the Cham's, even though all religions were banned and suppressed.

Pol Pot by Philip Short

A readible biography of Pol Pot, focusing most on the CPK years (mainly because not much is known about Pol Pot when he was known by his birth name, Saloth Sar).

Cambodia 1975-1979: Rendezvous with Death edited by Karl D Jackson

A series of essays of varying quality. The essay on the economics of Democratic Kampuchea is probably the best explination of the plan of development that the CPK were aiming for. The essay about their ideology is quite good too, as is the essay about the intellectual origins of the CPK.

Stay away from David Chandler, he's probably the most anti-communist of scholars writing about Democratic Kampuchea. For instance, he claims that the what happened in Kampuchea was typical of socialist regimes (towards the beginning of Brother Number One: A Political Biography. This is extensively refuted by Kiernan in The Pol Pot Regime).

[LA GUERRA OLVIDADA]

Hopefully leftist essays too.

[Janus]

For an introduction, you could look at the Wikipedia articles. Also, these sites may help you.

http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/chomsky.htm#fn32

It seems that Yale has compiled tons of information including documents, articles, and maps into a Cambodian Genocide Program project.
http://www.yale.edu/cgp/index.html

[Hiero]

Statement of the Communist Party of Kampuchea [CPK] to the Communist Workers' Party of Denmark, July 1978 by Nuon Chea (http://www.khmer.org/us/doc/doc60.htm)

That may be of interest.

[Andy Bowden]

John Pilger has written some excellent stuff about the Khmer Rouge from a Socialist perspective, and has detailed how the US funded Pol Pot after the Vietnamese overthrew his genocidal regime.

[Red Flag Rising]

There are some real problems with Pilger's book. Frankly, I think it's bullshit.

Armand Obrenovic's book Red Cambodia; Reasons and Realities will give you a good Marxist perspective of the situation there.

[Andy Bowden]

The Pilger stuff I've read is part of a compilation, Tell me no lies, was that it? What did you disagree with?