Thread: "Russophobia" and "Russophilia" :)

i was always fascinated by the Khmer Rouge - as I could not comprehend how people can so cruelly kill their own.
the stories about Tuol Sleng camp are horrendous - basically you had zero chance to survive if you happened to end up there (and all who did end up there, did so for no particular reason at all).
I think one of the leading characters at the time (= 'Duch' he is called went on trial last year or the year before). Pity Pol-pot could never stand trial.

Originally Posted by eisenherz

i was always fascinated by the Khmer Rouge - as I could not comprehend how people can so cruelly kill their own.
the stories about Tuol Sleng camp are horrendous - basically you had zero chance to survive if you happened to end up there (and all who did end up there, did so for no particular reason at all).
I think one of the leading characters at the time (= 'Duch' he is called went on trial last year or the year before). Pity Pol-pot could never stand trial.

I'm totally perplexed by this. It makes zero sense. I don't recall hearing a word about it until the early 2000s when I stumbled across a biography of a woman who survived the ordeal. I wonder if that was because our media went very easy with revolutionary/socialist governments back then, or if it was simply that nobody knew. And it turns out that Pol Pot survived well into the 1990s and was supported by the West and the UN. Why would the United Nations support a known mass murder and radical communist revolutionary. It seems to go against their normal ethics.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

In 1979, after the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed.^[13] From 1979 to 1997, he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near the border of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung to power, with nominal United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot committed suicide^[14] in 1998

A old school friend of mine actually got briefly kidnapped in Cambodia in the late 1990s. I don't know by whom or why, and according to himself he eventually just paid his way out of it although it took some time to get money tranferred so he was with them a few days. Maybe it was the Khmer Rouge.
I've seen pictures from there; what a beautiful country with a proud heritage. I hope they can bounce back and become a successful nation.