Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

===== 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" />