Talk:Cambodia under Pol Pot (1975-1979)

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[edit] External Links

I added a link to an article analyzing DK from a communist (Maoist) perspective. It's an interesting read IMO. - anthropophag

[edit] Title of article

Should title be renamed? I realise it is what the country was called under the Khmer Rouge, but with historic hindsight it makes one brain explode! Does anyone object to Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea?

Further work to be done breaking up article. - redcountess 00:36, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how "Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea" is going to make it anything different. Adding Pol Pot is just making the title unnecessarily long and redundant. --Jiang 00:39, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Not knowing much about the History of Cambodia, I saw that heading and thought it meant there was a time when a country called Kampuchea was democratic, as well as a time when it was under the rule of Pol Pot. The longer title would make it clear that it's talking about Pol Pot's regime and that its name was "Democratic Kampuchea". Better ideas? - David Gerard 00:57, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

What matters is accuracy and concision. Since it was called "Democratic Kampuchea", there is nothing misleading about it in the way we have represented it. If it is misleading, people reading the article will find soon enough. The content matters more.

One can argue the the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not democratic either, or that the People's Republic of China is not for the people. --Jiang 01:04, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

True. I hope the new intro paragraph gets the point across suitably. - David Gerard 01:27, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)
The official name was Democratic Kampuchea. If it were to be changed to "Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea", that would be ridiculous. It would imply that Pol Pot was single handedly in control of everything in Cambodia at that time. And if the name was changed, someone would have the bright idea of changing "North Korea" to "Kim Jeong-Il's North Korea". Before you know it there would be calls for "George Bush's United States of America" or "Colonel Khadaffi's Libya". How about "Ariel Sharon's Israel"? This is, to be frank, one of the most absurd ideas I've seen suggested in a long time. --Ce garcon 08:34, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
though i agree that it should not be changed i'd just point out that the problem the user had was that the term "Democratic" in Democratic Kampuchea could be somewhat misleading as it was a one-party psychotic-Maoist state. that is not a problem with the other country's you mentioned 64.7.89.54 30 June 2005 08:33 (UTC)

Well, some people would argue that the case of North Korea or even Lybia (until recently) is not that different. I think it is better to leave the name the way it is; otherwise lots of names will have to be changed, sometimes for other reasons. After all, "United States of America" does not include all of "America"! Tsschmidt 13:58, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Protection

I protected the last stable version of the page. We're seeing edit wars without a two-way attempt to discuss content changes in the talk pages on this and two other Cambodia-related articles (Cambodia and History of Cambodia. 172 06:56, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Very Verirly,

You will not get away with arbitrarily reverting the work of anyone else but me. After all, when I'm not a party in a dispute, **I** can intervene as an admin to stop the edit war. And I am not a participant in the Cambodia-related edit wars (my edits to the Cambodia-related pages have solely entailed adding past protection notices).

If you refuse to discuss your differences with Hanpuk directly, as opposed to griping about superficial behavioral red herrings on other users' pages, **I** will protect the page. BTW, I will not be acting in a capacity in which I can be accused of protecting "the wrong version" I will protect the most recent version of the page once the three revert rule has been violated, irrespective of whose version is protected. I'll will post this notice: This page is protected from editing until disputes have been resolved on the discussion page. 172 08:20, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

You're clearly not neutral in any conflict involving me. Hanpuk has simply reverted back to his version which had already been rejected by several users for reasons explained at considerable length by countless people. -- VV 08:25, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
Really? The page histories say otherwise with respect to the Cambodia-related articles. Ironically, **Hanpuk** would be able to make the argument that I am biased against him in any conflict involving him. In the past Cambodia-related edit wars, I was usually (if not always—if my memory's correct) protecting the most recent stable versions, which tended to be the versions posted before Hanpuk had edited the pages, and thus the versions that you had been restoring over and over again. Lately, I haven't been seeing other admins bothering to go to such lengths to avoid charges of protecting "the wrong version." So, this time I'll protect the page on the version not posted by the first person who has broken the three revert rule. This is an objective formula for determining whose version gets protected, so I fail to see how I could possibly be charged with failing to act impartially. 172 08:38, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
Because you have a well-known vendetta against me. There are 200 other admins who could get involved if that were needed, but you seem determined to do so yourself. -- VV 08:42, 5 May 2004 (UTC)
And because of my vendetta against you, I was protecting pages on your preferred versions. That's not going to make sense to anyone else but you. 172 08:48, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Page

There are many things to discuss about this page. Here are some of them

- Khmer Rouge was a slur used to describe the CPK. They called themselves the CPK and I use this term, not the slur their enemy used against them.

- there is lots of lack of NPOV in this article like "People began to realize that, in the eyes of the victors, the war was not over; it was just beginning, and the people were the new enemy." Or "Having lost parents, siblings, and friends in the war and lacking the Buddhist values of their elders, the Khmer Rouge youth also lacked the inhibitions that would have dampened their zeal for revolutionary terror."

- entries I have made have been deleted. That people were starving to death prior to the CPK takeover, that the US was bombing the countryside and the like are removed. A book by Michael Vickery is an OK reference to link to, but my link to Noam Chomsky's research into Cambodia coverage is removed. Much of what I say is removed.

- Some things I think should be discussed like "There were no exceptions to the evacuation." What is the source for this? Due to US bombing, peasants had fled to major cities and were starving before the CPK took over (as were city residents, who relied on farmers for food). And of course, humanitarian aid disappeared as soon as the CPK took over, requiring them to come to an immediate solution, the only thing preventing an evacuation beforehand was foreign aid, as soon as that disappeared, the actions of the West were the catalyst for the evacuation. Anyhow, there is this idea everyone was evacuated from all of the cities and they were abandoned henceforth. There are sources that say this is not so.

      Fox & Ung (The Murderous Revolution 1985, p.11), as well as Short (Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare 2004, p273), say that the Khmer Rouge soldiers were ordered to evacuate Phnom Penh and every provincial city and town without exception, and that these orders were carried out to the letter - including the 15-20 thousand people from Phnom Penh's hosptitals. Other sources suggest that up to 50,000 people were living in the abandoned Phnom Penh during the period 1975-79, but these were mainly the Khmer Rouge themselves. The claim that a food shortage in the capital was imminent as a result of the US bombing was actually made by Pol Pot himself. Short (p287) states, quoting the Central Committee's own documents, that the evacuation had been planned in October 1974 to destablise Sihanouk's support base, get the urban population to take part in agricultural production, and eliminate capitalism with one stroke. Moreover, the CPK refused foreign aid as a matter of face as it would weaken the Kampuchean position.

- As I said, there is a lack of sourcing for some of the more outrageous claims. "There were no exceptions to the evacuation." is unsourced, unqualified, and in my opinion wrong. This can not be given as a fact it has to be qualified - "Some say there were no exceptions to the evacuation". After qualifying it, then give a source where this comes from. Other sources say there were exceptions, so that is put it as well. The more outrageous the claim, the more it needs to be sourced. "Even Phnom Penh's hospitals were emptied of their patients." It's probably more like one witness claimed he saw a hospital in Phnom Penh discharging patients. Was it more than one hospital? Were they very sick or just slightly sick? Is the witness, probably an anti-CPK witness in an anti-CPK run Thai camp selected by an anti-CPK bureaucrat for an anti-CPK journalist, reliable?

Some of these issues, like how many who were executed while the CPK were in power, spread across many pages dealing with Cambodia. David Gerard wants this discussion to be on 5 or more different pages apparently, to waste people's time and have the same arguments over and over 5 times. I think it would make more sense to discuss how many people died in one place instead of having the same argument 5 different times. Whatever. Hanpuk 16:13, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

"Khmer Rouge" is the common name in English, like it or not. The source for these articles is the Library of Congress Country Studies; the present text is substantially theirs. - David Gerard 16:27, May 6, 2004 (UTC)
Well, there are a host of points of contention regarding this article. If you feel particularly strong about that one, we can leave it to the last to discuss. In other words, I will leave it as Khmer Rouge on this page while a consensus comes about regarding everything else. Then we can discuss what to call them. Hanpuk 16:44, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
The term "Khmer Rouge" is equivalent to the term "Red Chinese". It's obviously not NPOV to use it, all the same, it is most widely recognised by far. I suggest informing readers at the top of the article that CPK refers to the Red Khmer and then referring to the party by name thereafter. --Ce garcon 08:41, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
While this is true the term "Khmer Rouge" is the commonly used name in the west. If we are not going to call then the Khmer Rouge then I demand that the Viet Cong are refered to by their true (as opposed to common) name- the National Liberation Front in all articles, as Viet Cong, much like Khmer Rouge, was a simplistic and insulting phrase applied to said groups by their enemies.

[edit] Names in Unicode characters

It's a good thing having the local characters, but I can't read them! (Mozilla Firefox on Windows and on FreeBSD with quite a lot of fonts added.) What font or character set would they need? - David Gerard 11:08, May 10, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Needs mention of Thai and US support for Khmer Rouge against Vietnamese government

Some mention has to be made in this article of Thai and US support to the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese established government. Not only does it make a gaping hole in the history of Democratic Kampuchea, but could also be considered not NPOV. Mention also needs to be made of the fact that DK kept the seat at the UN even after they had been driven from power to the safety of Thailand (the only government in exile to be so honoured) --Ce garcon 07:37, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The U.S. never supported the Khmer Rouge. They did, however, support an insurgent coalition of the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF,) a pro-democracy group, ANS, a pro-Sihanouk group, and the Khmer Rouge, no doubt hoping the KPNLF would emerge dominant. The refusal to recognize the PRK was (obviously) just a protest against the Vietnamese, not surprising considering the U.S.'s previous involvement in the region. J. Parker Stone 30 June 2005 08:35 (UTC)
J. Parker Stone, I think you shouldn't say something like "no doubt hoping the KPNLF would emerge dominant", that's just your personal opinion, how do you know that for sure anyway?? The fact is:

- Pol Pot has never been brought to justice.

- Without U.S. help, the Khmer Rouge wouldn't be able to continue its terrorist activities more than 10 years later.

- Without the Khmer Rouge, a coalition of KPNLF & ANS is still more than able to continue the fight with U.S. help.--lt2hieu2004 05:59, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

i hear you saying "the fact is" but making unattributed claims/claims that don't say anything. 134.69.166.209 00:52, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I said it is fact because it is truly fact. Can you deny that Pol Pot has never been brought to justice? Can you deny that the U.S did indeed help the Khmer Rouge by providing them with financial aid & military training and voted to keep their seat in the UN? There were times when the Vietnamese army invaded some of the western provinces of Thailand to wipe out the Khmer Rouge which retreated there everytime the situation turned against them, but couldn't hold on for long fearing restarting the war with U.S & China. Moreover, right after the PAVN took over Phnom Penh and Pol Pot fled on 7-1-1979, U.S has been supporting the Khmer Rouge, denouncing the Vietnamese, 2 months later, China (a U.S ally at that time) invaded VN in support of the Khmer Rouge. The CGDK was only formed 3 years later - in 1982.--81.100.174.75 14:57, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


Just a thought - Carter did condem the Veitnamese invasion of Cambodia, like most states of the world at the time. Does opposing Country A invading Country B, even if country B has a reprehensible despot ruling it mean that you, in a way, are supporting that despot? To say that Carter supported Pol Pot because of this would be like saying Ted Kennedy supported Saddam because he was against invading Iraq--Dudeman5685 03:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


Can anybody actually cite a credible source that the US supported the KR while it was in power? Like a declassified document or something? If not, don't mention it. Then there was the insurgent period during the 1980s - as I have said the Vietnamese occupation was very unpopular with the international community - the UN condemned it, etc - so, again, you have the Saddam paradox I mentioned above. The question comes up - did the US support the KR directly during this period. As far as I know, it did not. It supported an umbrella opposition group which counted the KR as one of its members. If any one can cite a govt document or statement by an official that either Carter or Reagan supported the KR, then put it on the article. If not, drop it. (PS it seems out of charechtar for Human Rights guru Carter or Anti-Communist Reagan to support the KR, directly at least) --Dudeman5685 23:50, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] plagiarization

This article is plagiarized from another source[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/khtoc.html. Furthermore is just one long anti-Khmer Rouge rant - one of the first sentences is "The troops who entered the capital on April 17 were mostly grim-faced youths clad in black with the checkered scarves that had become the uniform of the movement." - beyond trying to evoke POV by saying all the soldiers were grimacing all day as they came in it isn't even correct, the youths who entered the city on April 17th were students who were not in the Khmer Rouge. So it is POV writing around a factual error, plagiarized and put here without permission. Ruy Lopez 02:48, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The above text was posted by Ruy Lopez. --Ce garcon 12:40, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree. Not discounting the horrors of Democratic Kampuchea, at the same time, there is no need to resort to such obvious POV to use such POV phrases as "grim-faced". At the same time: "Information contained in the Country Studies On-Line is not copyrighted and thus is available for free and unrestricted use by researchers. As a courtesy, however, appropriate credit should be given to the series." according to the LOC. Therefore there is no need for the passage to be removed... although it does need to be edited to comply with Wikipedia`s NPOV policy. --Ce garcon 12:36, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Added NPOV tag. --Ce garcon 12:38, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New sections on CGDK

any reorganizing, new sources, or comments on whether this should be moved to its own page would be greatly appreciated. J. Parker Stone 30 June 2005 10:22 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting to previous version

Who keeps messing this up bad? The Frederick 11:10, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New link

I think there should be a link to Cambodian coup of 1970 somewhere. Anyone agree? Cigale 06:53, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In other ways

"People who were discovered praying or expressing religious sentiments in other ways were often killed". This affermation don't have sense! Who is the significance of "other ways"? Vess

[edit] Infoboxes

Should we not have one for pre-1970 Cambodia, one for the Khmer Republic, one for Democratic Kampuchea etc., so that people can see the difference in flags etc. etc. Cripipper 11:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't cite sources

Seems like the article only really cites one source.

[edit] Renaming the article

I moved the article to Communist Cambodia for two reasons:

  1. Very few Westerners are aware that Kampuchea refers to Cambodia.
  2. Not too many people realize that there is a long-running dispute between communists and anti-communists over the meaning of the word "democratic".

We should, of course, represent this dispute fairly, not taking sides or making judgments. So I leave open the question of whether the communism of Cambodia was "really democratic". This controversy needs to be fleshed out more, say in an article on Democratic republics or Peoples democracy. I wonder how our Definitions of democracy article is coming along. --Uncle Ed 18:36, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Ed, "Democratic Kampuchea" is the normal English language term for the Pol Pot regime. It is used even by people who strongly disagree with the Pol Pot regime and consider it evil, such as me. Furthermore, using "Communist Cambodia" for the Pol Pot regime is ambigous: the People's Republic of Kampuchea was also Communist, but was not the Pol Pot regime. Do you have evidence of an actual neutrality dispute here or just a conjectural one? Morwen - Talk 09:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I never said there was a Wikipedia:Neutrality dispute here. I was just trying to improve the naming scheme.

I've renamed the article (and one other) and incorporated both name changes in the Template:History of Cambodia infobox. My idea is to give each of these spin-off (or summary style) articles consistent names. The periods are named as follows:

  1. Colonial Cambodia (1887-1953) - as is
  2. Cambodia under Sihanouk (1954-1970) - as is
  3. Cambodian Civil War (1967-1975) - as is
  4. Cambodia under Pol Pot (1975-1979) - renamed from Democratic Kampuchea
  5. Cambodia Under Vietnamese Occupation (1979-1989) - renamed from People's Republic of Kampuchea
  6. Modern Cambodia (1989-present) - as is

Do we need another article concentrating on Politics and government of Cambodia? I think the series (spin-off's or 'summary articles') is fine the way it is. I just thought these titles were clearer and easier for the reader to follow. --Uncle Ed 14:11, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Certainly Cambodia under Pol Pot (1975-1979) is better than Communist Cambodia for this article. Morwen - Talk 14:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I must share the credit with you, because until reading your comment I had not paid attention to the template. (Another example of collaboration amongst courteous colleagues).
I went ahead and fixed a bunch of redirects, too. --Uncle Ed 14:32, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest more changes to make all of the articles consistent:
  • "Colonial Cambodia" should change to "Cambodia under the French".
  • Cambodian Civil War should be split into "Cambodia under Lon Nol (1970-1975)" and probably a seperate article on the cambodian civil war as a "war"
There also may be some value in creating new articles for Democratic Kampuchea, People's Republic of Kampuchea and the Khmer Republic describing the governments/states that went by those names. 168.127.0.51 15:31, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes, both ideas are excellent suggestions. I'm not sure I have the expertise to separate the "government from the country" as you suggest; can you do this yourself, while we all watch and applaud? :-) --Uncle Ed 16:07, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
Sure. I'll put creating the new pages for the governments on my todo list. The articles would be mostly new content so it would not get in the way of anything done for the history articles - 168.127.0.51

"Cambodia under Pol Pot" is not a good title for this article. It should be moved to "Democratic Kampuchea" since this is the official name for the state. I've heard people say that this is inappropriate due to the horrible things Pol Pot did, blah, blah... using the official name doesn't mean endorsing its' activities. Using IDF doesn't mean you think the Israeli military is defensive, using PRC doesn't mean you think the Chinese Communists operate a "people's state", and referring to the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem doesn't mean that you think Jews are a "problem". Let's go with the official and most widely used form.--Ce garcon 21:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

That name is for a period of history, not for a regime. Three weeks ago, anon 168 suggested writing about the regime (aka government). I haven't followed up yet, to see if he did the suggested work.
Most readers are interested in the history of Cambodia: what happened and when. If you know anything about a government of Cambodia which was in power during any of these periods, please write about it!
I don't know the history very well, so I couldn't even say whether the period 1975-1979 coincides exactly with the period during which Democratic Kampuchea was the name of Cambodia. All I know for sure is that the typical American I talk to knows roughly where "Cambodia" is but has a hard time placing "Kampuchea". I'd love to see a template listing the various names the country has had. --Uncle Ed 17:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
moreover it's a terrible name because it's referencing something that doesn't really exist, "cambodia" is not some concrete thing, cambodia was never "under pol pot", this was a different country. and since when did american ignorance have a damn thing to do with the name of an article? that's a slippery slope if there ever was such a thing. does this mean that every other government someone doesn't agree with will now be renamed? perhaps the gdr will become "north easterly germany under stalinism (1949-1990)" ?? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.201.9.209 (talk • contribs) 11:58, 3 December 2006 (UTC).
I've written a stub at Democratic Kampuchea. --Kaasje 02:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do something with Section 1!

Section 1 of the Cambodia under Pol Pot page is really ugly the way it is now. Protection or not, it needs to be cleaned up -- it looks amateurish right now. Misterdoe 16:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

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