The Geneva Convention of 1954 that ended French control of Indochina subdivided the region into three countries, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The United States was not a party to that agreement and refused to allow the subsequent unification of Vietnam. By insisting on an independent non-communist South Vietnam, the U.S. position precipitated the Vietnam War that lasted until 1975.

Under the Prince Sihanouk, Cambodia adopted a neutral position during the Vietnam conflict. But Cambodia's military weakness could not prevent Vietnamese Communists from establishing bases inside the Cambodian border. Similarly, the United States and South Vietnam repeatedly violated Cambodia's neutrality by attacking those bases.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon authorized bombings of those sanctuaries in Cambodia with the tacit consent of Sihanouk (but with deliberate secrecy from the U.S. Congress and the public). Intending to prevent North Vietnam from using that country as a base, U.S. military policy had the effect of destabilizing the neutral Cambodia government. Sihanouk named the pro-U.S. Lon Nol as prime minister.

In 1970, Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk and ordered the Vietnamese to leave. But instead of driving the Vietnamese from Cambodia, the U.S. bombings pushed them deeper into that country. The U.S. responded by increasing secret military aid to Lon Nol. This was followed by Nixon's announcement of an "incursion" (not an invasion) into Cambodia in May 1970.

An anti-war Congress promptly ordered the president to withdraw all troops from Cambodia within 60 days. Nixon complied, but the secret U.S. air campaign continued. The effect was to disrupt Cambodian society and win additional converts to the Communist Khmer Rouge. Within months of the 1970 invasion, the Khmer Rouge controlled about 20 percent of the population and half of the country.

After the Paris Treaty of 1973 ended direct U.S. military operations in Vietnam, Nixon allowed the air war to escalate in Cambodia. Although Washington provided economic aid to the Lon Nol regime, the bombings devastated the agricultural economy. The Khmer Rouge also waged brutal warfare, destroying pro-government villages and bombing Phnom Penh indiscriminately. During 1974, wherever the Khmer Rouge established secure control of the population, they implemented radical social reforms, including mass relocations, collectivization of agriculture, abolition of religion and traditional customs, and psychological indoctrination.

The Khmer Rouge invasion of Phnom Penh in 1975, depicted vividly in The Killing Fields, coincided with the push of North Vietnam forces towards Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, and the withdrawal of all U.S. personnel from its embassy there. In Cambodia, the invasion doomed the old regime. The young Khmer Rouge cadres ordered the evacuation of the city, brutally indifferent to civilian suffering. (The scenes are reminiscent of the removal of Polish Jews during World War II shown in Schindler's List.) For the two million refugees, available food, water, medicine, and sanitary care was inadequate. Thousands of civilians, especially the old and the young, died on the road.

For many, like Dith Pran, the brutality had just begun. Under the leadership of dictator Pol Pot, a revolutionary regime, known as Angkar, controlled Cambodia (renamed Democratic Kampuchea). By 1976, Pol Pot instituted a 4-year plan designed to modernize the country into a productive communist society by intensifying agricultural production. Agricultural workers like Pran were inexperienced and lacked adequate tools, nutrition, or medicine, but were forced to labor constantly. The death rate soared. And failure to achieve production objectives led to political purges and executions.

In four years, between 1975-1979, about one million people--one in seven of Cambodia's population--died of starvation, malnutrition, exhaustion, or lack of medical care. More brutally, another 200,000 were tortured and killed in political prisons, but not before the Khmer Rouge created a photographic record of the prisoners, often with elaborate handwritten testimony of their investigations.

The outbreak of war between Cambodia and Vietnam in 1977 set the stage for a political accounting. After a year of military skirmishing, Vietnam created a United Front composed of disaffected Khmer Rouge and civilian refugees who fought their way into Phnom Penh in 1979. As Pol Pot fled the country and Vietnam installed a puppet government of ex-Khmer Rouge officials, U.S. policymakers ironically viewed Vietnam as the aggressor. Civil war continued in Cambodia in the 1980s and 1990s. Pol Pot died in 1998. Five years later, the government of Cambodia and the United Nations agreed to establish an International Tribunal to bring the rulers of the killing fields to justice.

Back to top   At the Movies   The Killing Fields