International Law and Cambodian Genocide: The Sounds of Silence

177The atrocities that occurred in Democratic Kampuchea under the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 were, at first, dismissed as only the rumors of refugees. Early reports of widespread killings often were rejected as exaggerated or anticommunist diatribes. ¹ After the defeat of the Khmer Rouge by the invading Vietnamese in 1979, however, it became possible to investigate and confirm the existence of the “killing fields,” which touched almost every Cambodian family. In recent years, many accounts of Democratic Kampuchea under Pol Pot have been published, ² and today there can be little doubt of the scale of the crimes committed.