Life During the Khmer Rouge...

Urban Population
The first objective to reach Pol Pot’s ideal peasant society was to relocate all the city dwellers into the country side. The Khmer Rouge soldiers, consisting mostly of young men, went door to door and asked families to leave their homes immediately. They mainly told the families that they would return in three days, that this was just precautionary because the Americans were threatening to bomb the country. Families by the thousands flowed out of the city and started the walk toward the countryside. No one was allowed to take any other types of transportation. It took nearly a week for people to arrive outside the city limit checkpoint. Many people died during this march because of the heat, lack of food, and just sheer exhaustion.

The Khmer Rouge then went through a stage of "purification" of the Khmer race. They emptied cities, abolished finances, eliminated currency and banking. They also banned religion and eliminated the right to hold your own property. This meant that everyone had to live in camps where everything was communal. This "purification" was also the reason for the killings of many educated Cambodians. In eliminating the caste system in Cambodia they thought it not right to have more educated people over others. They also felt that people with knowledge were more likely to rebel against their new government. The Khmer Rouge executed anyone they knew or thought was more knowledgeable than the average country-dwelling Khmer.

The Camps
For the next four years (1975-1979), Cambodia was unrecognizable. They no longer had the bustling busy city life, or the peaceful and calm country life. Even families, the basic unit of Cambodian society, were broken apart and separated. The Khmer Rouge set up communal camps. This meant that families had to live with other families. At meal times, it was tough for a family to stay together because of seating. The Khmer Rouge also tried to separate families by putting them in different camps. It was near impossible to communicate to your relatives, so if you were separated from your family there was a good chance you would never hear from them again.

When people were through from a long day in the rice fields, they still didn’t have a hardy meal to look forward to. It was also not pleasant to eat in a communal dining area. It was always cramped, so when they’re in there it’s every man for himself (this seating arrangement kept families apart).On top of that, all they had to eat (provided by the Khmer Rouge), was rice gruel. Rice gruel is basically rice soup but in most cases it contained very little rice. Sweating in a field for a whole day, this provided very little nourishment. This resulted in starvation, which resulted in deaths

Source: -Chandler, David P. The Land and People of Cambodia. U.S.A.: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

-Ung, Loung. First They Killed My Father. New York City, NY: Harper Collins Publisher Inc, 2000.

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