Number of deaths
Modern research has located 20,000 mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia. Various studies have estimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000, most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest from starvation and disease.[37]
The U.S. State Department-funded Yale Cambodian Genocide Project estimates approximately 1.7 million (21% of the population of the country).[38] R. J. Rummel, an analyst of historical political killings, gives a figure of 2 million.[39] A UN investigation reported 23 million dead, while UNICEF estimated that 3 million had been killed.[40] Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed,[41] while Marek Sliwinski estimates that 1.8 million is a conservative figure.[19] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After 5 years of researching grave sites, he concluded that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution".[37]
Fall
Main article: CambodianVietnamese War
The Ba Chuc Massacre was one of the events that prompted the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea.
By December 1978, due to several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Kampuchea, relations between Cambodia and Vietnam collapsed. Pol Pot, fearing a Vietnamese attack, ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages. Of the 3,157 civilians who had lived in Ba Chúc,[42] only two survived the massacre. These Cambodian forces were repelled by the Vietnamese.
Along with the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, an organization that included many dissatisfied former Khmer Rouge members,[43] the Vietnamese armed forces then invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. Despite a traditional Cambodian fear of Vietnamese domination, defecting Khmer Rouge activists assisted the Vietnamese, and, with Vietnam's approval, became the core of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea, quickly dismissed by the Khmer Rouge and China as a "puppet government."
At the same time, the Khmer Rouge retreated west, and it continued to control certain areas near the Thai border for the next decade. These included Phnom Malai, the mountain areas near Pailin in the Cardamom Mountains and Anlong Veng in the Dângrêk Mountains.[44]
These Khmer Rouge bases were not self-sufficient and were funded by diamond and timber smuggling, by military assistance from China channeled by means of the Thai military, and by food from markets across the border in Thailand.[45]
Its place in the UN
Despite its deposal, the Khmer Rouge retained its UN seat, which was occupied by Thiounn Prasith, an old compatriot of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary from their student days in Paris, and one of the 21 attendees at the 1960 KPRP Second Congress. The seat was retained under the name "Democratic Kampuchea" until 1982, and then "Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea" (see below) until 1993. Western governments repeatedly backed the Khmer Rouge in the U.N. and voted in favour of retaining Cambodia's seat in the organization. Margaret Thatcher stated that "So, you'll find that the more reasonable ones of the Khmer Rouge will have to play some part in the future government, but only a minority part. I share your utter horror that these terrible things went on in Kampuchea."[46] Sweden on the contrary changed its vote in the U.N. and withdrew support for the Khmer Rouge after a large number of Swedish citizens wrote letters to their elected representatives demanding a policy change towards Pol Pot's regime.[47]
