Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

==== Evacuation of the cities ====
In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would be moved only about "two or three kilometers" away from the city and would return in "two or three days". Some witnesses said they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and they were also told that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned. If people refused to evacuate, they would immediately be killed and their homes would be burned to the ground. The evacuees were sent on long marches to the countryside, which killed thousands of children, elderly people and sick people.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|251–310}} These were not the first evacuations of civilian populations by the Khmer Rouge; similar evacuations of populations without possessions had been occurring on a smaller scale since the early 1970s.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|251–310}}

On arrival at the villages to which they had been assigned, evacuees were required to write brief autobiographical essays. The essay's content, particularly with regard to the subject's activity during the Khmer Republic regime, was used to determine their fate.<ref name="Bergin p31">Bergin, S. ''The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide'', Rosen, p. 31.</ref> Military officers and those occupying elite professional roles were usually sent for reeducation, which in practice meant immediate execution or confinement in a labour camp.<ref name="Bergin p31" /> Those with specialist technical skills often found themselves sent back to cities to restart production in factories which had been interrupted by the takeover.<ref name="Bergin p31" /> The remaining displaced urban population ("[[New People (Cambodia)|new people]]"), as part of the regime's drive to increase food production, were placed into [[agricultural commune]]s alongside the peasant "base people" or "old people". The latter's holdings were collectivised. Cambodians were expected to produce three tons of rice per hectare, whereas before the Khmer Rouge era the average was one ton per hectare.

The lack of agricultural knowledge on the part of the former city dwellers made [[famine]] inevitable. The rural peasantry were often unsympathetic, or they were too frightened to assist them. Such acts as picking wild fruit or berries were seen as "private enterprise" and punished with death. Labourers were forced to work long shifts without adequate rest or food, resulting in many deaths through exhaustion, illness and starvation. Workers were executed for attempting to escape from the communes, for breaching minor rules, or after being denounced by colleagues. If caught, offenders were taken off to a distant forest or field after sunset and killed.<ref>Seng Kok Ung, I survived the killing fields, pp. 22–26</ref> Unwilling to import Western medicines, the regime turned to traditional medicine instead and placed medical care in the hands of cadres who were only given rudimentary training. The famine, forced labour and lack of access to appropriate services led to a high number of deaths.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|251–310}}

===== Economic policies =====
Khmer Rouge economic policies took a similarly extreme course. Officially, trade was restricted to bartering between communes, a policy which the regime developed in order to enforce self-reliance.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|62}} Banks were raided, and all currency and records were destroyed by fire, thus eliminating any claim to funds.<ref>Cambodia Tribunal, "Life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge Regime".</ref> After 1976, the regime reinstated discussion of export in the period after the disastrous effects of its planning began to become apparent.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|58}} [[Commercial fishing]] was banned in 1976.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/let-fish-dammed/|title=Dam the Fish|last=Tolson|first=Michelle|publisher=Inter Press Service|date=17 December 2013|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=1 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190301235803/http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/let-fish-dammed/|url-status=live}}</ref>

===== Family relations =====
[[File:Photos of victims in Tuol Sleng prison.JPG|thumb|Rooms of the [[Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum]] contain thousands of photos taken by the Khmer Rouge of their victims.]]
The regulations made by the Angkar (អង្គការ, The Organisation, which was the ruling body) also had effects on the traditional Cambodian family unit. The regime was primarily interested in increasing the young population and one of the strictest regulations prohibited [[Extramarital sex|sex outside marriage]] which was punishable by execution.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|186–7}} The Khmer Rouge followed a morality based on an idealised conception of the attitudes of prewar rural Cambodia.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|186}} Marriage required permission from the authorities, and the Khmer Rouge were strict, giving permission to marry only to people of the same class and level of education. Such rules were applied even more strictly to party cadres.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|186}} While some refugees spoke of families being deliberately broken up, this appears to have referred mainly to the traditional Cambodian extended family unit, which the regime actively sought to destroy in favour of small [[nuclear family|nuclear]] units of parents and children.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|188}}

The regime promoted [[Arranged marriage|arranged marriages]], particularly between party cadres. While some academics such as Michael Vickery have noted that arranged marriages were also a feature of rural Cambodia prior to 1975, those conducted by the Khmer Rouge regime often involved people unfamiliar to each other.<ref name="Mam 1998 p18">Mam, K. (1998) ''An Oral History of Family Life Under the Khmer Rouge'', Yale, p. 18.</ref> As well as reflecting the Khmer Rouge obsession with production and reproduction, such marriages were designed to increase people's dependency on the regime by undermining existing family and other loyalties.<ref name="Mam 1998 p18" />

===== Education =====
{{further|Anti-intellectualism#Democratic Kampuchea}}
It is often concluded that the Khmer Rouge regime promoted [[functional illiteracy]]. This statement is not completely incorrect, but it is quite inaccurate. The Khmer Rouge wanted to "eliminate all traces of Cambodia's imperialist past", and its previous culture was one of them. The Khmer Rouge did not want the Cambodian people to be completely ignorant, and [[primary education]] was provided to them. Nevertheless, the Khmer Rouge's policies dramatically reduced the Cambodian population's cultural inflow as well as its knowledge and creativity. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to gain full control of all of the information that the Cambodian people received and spread revolutionary culture among the masses.<ref>[https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge "Literacy and Education under the Khmer Rouge"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190217012047/https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge |date=17 February 2019 }}.</ref>

Education came to a "virtual standstill" in Democratic Kampuchea.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} Irrespective of central policies, most local cadres considered higher education useless and as a result, they were suspicious of those who had received it.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} The regime abolished all literary schooling above primary grades, ostensibly focusing on basic literacy instead.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|183}} In practice, primary schools were not set up in many areas because of the extreme disruptions which had been caused by the regime's takeover, and most ordinary people, especially "new people", felt that their children were taught nothing worthwhile in those schools which still existed. The exception was the Eastern Zone, which until 1976 was run by cadres who were closely connected with Vietnam rather than the Party Centre, where a more organised system seems to have existed under which children were given extra rations, taught by teachers who were drawn from the "base people" and given a limited number of official textbooks.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|184}}

Beyond primary education, technical courses were taught in factories to students who were drawn from the favoured "base people".<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|184}} There was a general reluctance to increase people's education in Democratic Kampuchea, and in some districts, cadres were known to kill people who boasted about their educational accomplishments, and it was considered bad form for people to allude to any special technical training.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} Based on a speech which Pol Pot made in 1978, it appears that he may have ultimately envisaged that illiterate students with approved poor peasant backgrounds could become trained engineers within ten years by doing a lot of targeted studying along with a lot of practical work.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}}