ABSTRACT
In April of 1975, Khmer Rouge forces assumed governmental control of Cambodia, the western neighbor of Vietnam soon to be dubbed ‘Democratic Kampuchea.’ Under Pol Pot's unflinching leadership, the new Communist regime sought brutally and systematically to return Cambodian society to its agrarian roots — and at horrific cost. In less than three years, perhaps as many as one-sixth of Cambodia's six million people perished in the hellish torture chambers of Phnom Penh and in the ‘killing fields’ of the countryside. 1
