ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of Thailand's policy towards the genocidal regime between 1975 and the mid 1990s. It fouses on the perspectives of various Thai political groups on the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. The Thais offered a gesture of friendship to communist Indochina in order to seek a balance of power with Vietnam, whose domination in Laos and Cambodia, Bangkok believed, was growing. However, border clashes with Cambodia continued until the Pol Pot regime was overthrown by Vietnamese forces in early January 1979. Without the support of the outside world led by the US, China, and Thailand, the genocidal regime of Pol Pot would thus have been finished by the Vietnamese-People’s Republic of Kampuchea forces after their overthrow. Regardless of what they have said about human rights for public consumption, the outside world indeed nurtured the genocide perpetrators while the post-genocide Cambodia was left with famine and starvation.
