Heng Samrin

1977–1978 · 100,000 total casualties

The Eastern Zone purges reveal the self-devouring logic of revolutionary paranoia. By eliminating his most experienced commanders for suspected disloyalty, Pol Pot destroyed the military capacity that might have resisted the Vietnamese invasion — while simultaneously creating the refugee pool that would supply Vietnam's liberation army.

December 25, 1978 · 30,000 total casualties

The Vietnamese invasion ended the Cambodian genocide in thirteen days — faster than anyone expected. The Khmer Rouge army, which had terrorized an unarmed civilian population for four years, proved unable to resist a professional military force. The speed of collapse revealed how much of the regime's power had rested on the helplessness of its victims.

January 7, 1979 · 1,000 total casualties

The liberation of Phnom Penh ended four years of systematic mass murder. Survivors describe the day not with joy but with a kind of stunned emptiness — too much had been lost to celebrate. The Vietnamese troops who entered the city were themselves unprepared for what they found: a country where a quarter of the population had been killed, where there were no teachers, no doctors, no money, and where children had been trained to inform on their parents.

1979–1998 · 10,000 total casualties

The nineteen-year survival of the Khmer Rouge as a political and military force is one of history's most damning Cold War legacies. The United States, China, and ASEAN all provided diplomatic cover for a genocidal movement because its enemy — Vietnam — was in the Soviet orbit. Cambodia's recovery was delayed by decades as a direct consequence.