The Khmer Rouge?

Question

I heard these guys were murderous mofos (to put it lightly) but Why?

Answer 1

The Khmer Rouge regime
"Khmer Rouge" means Red Khmers, and is the name given to the left wing in Cambodian politics by King Norodom Sihanouk in the 1950s. Since then, the name has come to be identified with a particular faction of the Cambodian left, formally known during the 1970s as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and during the 1980s and 90s as the "Party of Democratic Kampuchea."

Considering the astonishing levels of violence which have racked Cambodia and Cambodian politics during modern history, until 1996 the core leadership of the CPK has been remarkably stable. The Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the CPK consisted of the same core group for some 25 years. Often called the "Party Center," this group comprised Saloth Sar (alias Pol Pot), Nuon Chea, Chhit Choeun (alias Mok), Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Yun Yat, Ieng Thirith, and Ke Pauk.

On April 17, 1975, a bitter five-year civil war was concluded with the Party Center leading the Khmer Rouge to victory over the US-backed Khmer Republic of General Lon Nol. Thus arose the "Khmer Rouge regime."
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The Khmer Rouge subsequently established the state of Democratic Kampuchea, and instituted what was arguably the most radical experiment in social engineering of the twentieth century. In an effort to "purify" the "Khmer race" and create an absolutely classless utopian society, the Khmer Rouge began by emptying all Cambodian urban centers of their population, abolishing banking, finance and currency, outlawing all religions, reorganizing traditional kinship systems into a communal order, and eliminating private property so completely that even personal hygiene supples were communal.

Extreme levels of coercion were required in order to effect this total transformation of Cambodia's conservative, agrarian Buddhist peasant society. The cost in human life was high. Of the total Cambodian population of some 7 to 8 million in 1975, various estimates put the death toll over the following three years and eight months at 15% to 40% of the total. The official tally published by the successor regime to the Khmer Rouge sets the number of dead at 3.1 million. Several demographic analyses (by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the U.N. Population Bureau) have estimated the death toll to be between 1 million and 2 million. Empirical analyses by Western scholars of Cambodia place the estimate at between 1.5 and 1.8 million dead from execution, disease, starvation and overwork.
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