Persecution of Cambodia's Ethnic Vietnamese Communities During and Since the UNTAC Period

Cambodia’s recent political history has been repeatedly marred by incidents of politically and ethnically motivated violence perpetrated against Vietnamese living peacefully in the country. The promotion of “Khmer-Mon” ethnic nationalism during Lon Nol’s 1970–75 Khmer Republic regime, amidst the encroaching violence of the Vietnam war, was initiated with state-sponsored pogroms against Cambodia’s ethnic Vietnamese minority. During 1970–71, thousands of Vietnamese were butchered by special Lon Nol military units, and many thousands more were deported or fled across the border into Vietnam. Even before taking power in 1975, Pol Pot’s Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) began expelling Vietnamese residents from its liberated zones. With Lon Nol’s fall, Pol Pot and his clique of radical leftists hesitated only briefly before moving against Cambodia’s remaining ethnic Vietnamese. ¹ Their 1975–79 Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime, which persecuted ethnic Cham, Chinese, and other minorities as well, expelled or killed virtually all the ethnic Vietnamese who were still in Cambodia.