Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

==== Crimes against humanity ====
[[File:Choeungek2.JPG|thumb|Skulls of Khmer Rouge victims]]
[[File:Khmer Rouge Victims.JPG|thumb|Remains of victims of the Khmer Rouge in the Kampong Trach Cave, Kiry Seila Hills, Rung Tik (Water Cave), or Rung Khmao (Dead Cave)]]
Acting through the [[Santebal]], the Khmer Rouge arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone who was suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed enemies:<ref name="Frey" />
* People with connections to former Cambodian governments, either those of the [[Khmer Republic]] or the [[Sangkum]], to the Khmer Republic military, or to foreign governments.
* Professionals and intellectuals, including almost everyone with an education and people who understood a foreign language. Many artists, including musicians, writers, and filmmakers were executed including [[Ros Serey Sothea]], [[Pen Ran|Pan Ron]] and [[Sinn Sisamouth]].
* [[Vietnamese people|Ethnic Vietnamese]], ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic), [[Chams|Muslims]] and senior Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic [[Roman Catholic Cathedral of Phnom Penh|cathedral of Phnom Penh]] was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden ([[ḥarām]]). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
* "Economic saboteurs" as many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage because of their lack of agricultural ability.
* Party cadres who had fallen under political suspicion: the regime tortured and executed thousands of party members during its purges.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|3}}

The Santebal established over 150 prisons for political opponents; [[Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum|Tuol Sleng]] is a former high school that was turned into the Santebal headquarters and interrogation center for the highest value [[political prisoner]]s. Tuol Sleng was operated by the Santebal commander [[Kang Kek Iew|Khang Khek Ieu]], more commonly known as Comrade Duch, together with his subordinates [[Mam Nai]] and Tang Sin Hean.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|3}}<ref>{{cite journal|last=Locard|first=Henri|url=http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf|title=State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) and Retribution (1979–2004)|journal=European Review of History|volume=12|issue=1|date=March 2005|doi=10.1080/13507480500047811|page=134|s2cid=144712717|access-date=30 January 2013|archive-date=30 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131030013853/http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> According to Ben Kiernan, "all but seven of the twenty thousand Tuol Sleng prisoners" were executed.<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|464}} The buildings of Tuol Sleng have been preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. Several of the rooms are now lined with thousands of black-and-white photographs of prisoners that were taken by the Khmer Rouge.<ref name="DDCam History">{{cite book|title=A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979)|year=2007|publisher=Documentation Center of Cambodia|isbn=978-99950-60-04-6}}</ref>{{rp|74}}

On 7 August 2014, when sentencing two former Khmer Rouge leaders to life imprisonment, Cambodian judge Nil Nonn said there was evidence of "a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia". He said the leaders, Nuon Chea, the regime's chief ideologue and former deputy to late leader Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, together in a "[[joint criminal enterprise]]" were involved in murder, extermination, political persecution and other inhumane acts related to the mass eviction of city-dwellers, and executions of enemy soldiers.<ref name="CheaAppeal">{{cite news|title=Cambodian court sentences two former Khmer Rouge leaders to life term|url=http://www.thecambodianews.net/index.php/sid/224538879|access-date=8 August 2014|publisher=The Cambodia News|archive-date=22 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822164336/http://www.thecambodianews.net/index.php/sid/224538879|url-status=live}}</ref> In November 2018, the trial convicted Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Vietnamese, while Nuon Chea was also found guilty of genocide relating to the Chams.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/case/topic/1298|title=Case 002/02 &#124; Drupal|publisher=Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia|accessdate=29 August 2021|archive-date=15 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210915141035/https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/case/topic/1298|url-status=live}}</ref>

===== Number of deaths =====
According to a 2001 academic source, the most widely accepted estimates of excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge range from 1.5&nbsp;million to 2&nbsp;million, although figures as low as 1&nbsp;million and as high as 3&nbsp;million have been cited; conventionally accepted estimates of executions range from 500,000 to 1&nbsp;million, "a third to one half of excess mortality during the period".<ref name="Heuveline 2001">{{cite book|last=Heuveline|first=Patrick|title=Forced Migration and Mortality|chapter=The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979|publisher=[[National Academies Press]]|year=2001|isbn=9780309073349}}</ref>{{rp|105}} A 2013 academic source (citing research from 2009) indicates that execution may have accounted for as much as 60% of the total, with 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3&nbsp;million suspected victims of execution.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Seybolt|first1=Taylor B.|last2=Aronson|first2=Jay D.|last3=Fischoff|first3=Baruch|title=Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2013|isbn=9780199977314|page=238}}</ref>

Historian Ben Kiernan estimates that 1.671&nbsp;million to 1.871&nbsp;million Cambodians died as a result of Khmer Rouge policy, or between 21% and 24% of Cambodia's 1975 population.<ref>{{cite journal|author-link=Ben Kiernan|last=Kiernan|first=Ben|s2cid=143971159|title=The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975–79, and East Timor, 1975–80|journal=Critical Asian Studies|volume=35|issue=4|pages=585–597|year=2003|doi=10.1080/1467271032000147041}}</ref> A study by Polish demographer Marek Sliwinski calculated nearly 2&nbsp;million unnatural deaths under the Khmer Rouge out of a 1975 Cambodian population of 7.8&nbsp;million; 33.5% of Cambodian men died under the Khmer Rouge compared to 15.7% of Cambodian women.<ref name="Locard">{{cite journal|last=Locard|first=Henri|title=State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) and Retribution (1979–2004)|journal=[[European Review of History]]|volume=12|issue=1|pages=121–143|date=March 2005|doi=10.1080/13507480500047811|s2cid=144712717}}</ref> Researcher Craig Etcheson of the [[Documentation Center of Cambodia]] (DC-Cam) suggests that the death toll was between 2&nbsp;million and 2.5&nbsp;million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2&nbsp;million. After five years of researching mass grave sites, he estimated that they contained 1.38&nbsp;million suspected victims of execution.<ref name="Mekong.net_deaths">{{cite web|last=Sharp|first=Bruce|title=Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia|url=http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm|access-date=7 August 2019|archive-date=15 November 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131115041409/http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Although considerably higher than earlier and more widely accepted estimates of Khmer Rouge executions, Etcheson argues that these numbers are plausible, given the nature of the mass grave and DC-Cam's methods, which are more likely to produce an under-count of bodies rather than an over-estimate.<ref name="Tufts.edu" /> Demographer Patrick Heuveline estimated that between 1.17&nbsp;million and 3.42&nbsp;million Cambodians died unnatural deaths between 1970 and 1979, with between 150,000 and 300,000 of those deaths occurring during the civil war. Heuveline's central estimate is 2.52&nbsp;million excess deaths, of which 1.4&nbsp;million were the direct result of violence.<ref name="Tufts.edu">{{cite web|url=https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/cambodia-u-s-bombing-civil-war-khmer-rouge/|title=Cambodia: U.S. bombing, civil war, & Khmer Rouge|publisher=[[World Peace Foundation]]|date=7 August 2015|access-date=5 August 2019|quote=Demographer Patrick Heuveline has produced evidence suggesting a range of 150,000 to 300,000 violent deaths from 1970 to 1975.&nbsp;... One of the more thorough demographic studies, conducted by Patrick Heuveline, also attempts to separate out violent civilian deaths from a general increase in mortality caused by famine, disease, working conditions, or other indirect causes. He does so by grouping deaths within different age and sex brackets and analyzing treatment of these age and sex groups by the Khmer Rouge and violent regimes in general. His conclusion is that an average of 2.52 million people (range of 1.17–3.42 million) died as a result of regime actions between 1970 and 1979, with an average estimate of 1.4 million (range of 1.09–2.16 million) directly violent deaths.|archive-date=14 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190714181839/https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/cambodia-u-s-bombing-civil-war-khmer-rouge/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Heuveline 2001" />{{rp|102–4}}

Despite being based on a house-to-house survey of Cambodians, the estimate of 3.3&nbsp;million deaths promulgated by the Khmer Rouge's successor regime, the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), is generally considered to be an exaggeration; among other methodological errors, the PRK authorities added the estimated number of victims that had been found in the partially-exhumed mass graves to the raw survey results, meaning that some victims would have been double-counted.<ref name="Tufts.edu" /> An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.<ref name="Heuveline 2001" />{{rp|124}}

===== Genocide =====
While the period from 1975 to 1979 is commonly associated with the phrase "the Cambodian genocide", scholars debate whether the legal definition of the crime can be applied generally.<ref name="Chandler 2007" />{{rp|260}} While two former leaders were convicted of genocide, this was for treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, the Vietnamese and Cham. The death toll of these two groups, approximately 100,000 people, is roughly 5% of the generally accepted total of two million. The treatment of these groups can be seen to fall under the legal definition of genocide, as they were targeted on the basis of their religion or ethnicity. The vast majority of deaths were of the Khmer ethnic group, which was not a target of the Khmer Rouge. The deaths occurring as a result of targeting these Khmer, whether it was the "new people" or enemies of the regime, was based on political distinctions rather than ethnic or religious. In an interview conducted in 2018, historian David P. Chandler states that crimes against humanity was the term that best fit the atrocities of the regime and that some attempts to characterise the majority of the killings as genocide was flawed and at times politicised.<ref>In the Shadows of Utopia Podcast, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCNbBIiPTc4 "A History of Democratic Kampuchea with Historian David Chandler"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200304135820/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCNbBIiPTc4&gl=US&hl=en |date=4 March 2020 }}.</ref>