Ieng Sary

April 17, 1975 · 2,000 total casualties

The fall of Phnom Penh ends the Cambodian Civil War and marks the beginning of one of the 20th century's worst genocides. Within hours of entering the city, the Khmer Rouge orders the total evacuation of the capital.

1975–1977 · 500,000 total casualties

The collectivization campaign was the engine of mass death. Unlike Nazi concentration camps with their industrial killing apparatus, the Khmer Rouge killed through the mundane machinery of bureaucratic agriculture — ration books, work quotas, forced relocations. Death came from engineered starvation, disease, and exhaustion, administered by teenagers who had never known another world.

1975–1979 · 17,000 total casualties

S-21 is the most documented site of Khmer Rouge atrocity because the regime's own bureaucratic obsession with record-keeping left behind thousands of photographs, confession documents, and prisoner lists. These records became the primary evidence for the ECCC tribunal. The systematic photography of prisoners — ordered so Angkar could verify deaths — created an archive of faces that still haunts Cambodia.

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.