Talk:Khmer Rouge/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

Mar 26

This is not going to be settled by the people editting this, this is just a back and forth edit war. What is the next step, arbitration? Let us bring this into arbitration or whatever. Hanpuk 05:49, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I'll start by putting this on the Wikipedia:Requests for comment page. Hanpuk 05:54, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

My problems with the version Maveric put in:

1) The death toll is put in the first paragraph. Why is this not done for every political party? American political parties would go off the charts with this. It's just ridiculous.

2) A ridiculous number like 2 million is put in the first paragraph (aside from disagreeing with the number, the author of the number, Ponchaud, says he is counting people prior to the CPK takeover with that number. So they are going against their own source), yet the American CIA estimated 50,000-100,000 executed in 1980. Of course this can be debated, but why not later on in the article? My attempts to change 900,000 to the American CIA's 50,000 are continually undone, although the ridiculous 2 million, who even the original source of the 2 million number (Ponchaud) would say is ridiculous to say was post-1975, is kept up. I also don't know what "They are generally considered responsible for the deaths of between 900,000 and 2 million people during their rule; see below for fuller discussion." even means.

3) The name Khmer Rouge was invented in the Western press. They always called themselves the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Khmer Rouge just sounds like a crazy, foreign name. Even the name of the group is biased against them. They are stuck with the propaganda name the French state department chose for them, not what they call themselves.

4) The it goes on from the death toll to more propaganda. "Year Zero", another name to make them sound crazy. Then, "When the Khmer Rouge came to power they attempted to create a classless utopian society. They carried out a radical program of emptying the urban areas, closing schools and factories, abolishing banking and currency, outlawing religion, ending private property, and moving the population into collective farms" Which concludes with "This policy, known as "year zero", soon turned into a reign of terror, and resulted in the deaths of a large number of Cambodians through executions and starvation." Great, it is a neutral point of view fact that their government was a "reign of terror". Of course, the American mass bombing of the countryside, the war against the Prince and the Vietnamese invasion four years later were all just pleasantries happening during this time.

5) The CPK was at war with the Cambodian monarchy, the US and then Vietnam. When they took power, all of the foreign humanitarian aid was immediately cut off, which I guess was meant to try to starve people to death or something. So the CPK sends people in the cities which had recently become overcrowded due to the bombings and sends them to the countryside to grow their own food. This is called "radical", "Year zero", a "reign of terror" and so on and so forth. I'm sure if the CPK had let things be and there was a famine there would be much lamentation here about how the CPK starved millions of people to death.

I'll try chiming in again here. I do find the research you're doing as to the figures interesting, but there are a quite a number of sources mentioned in the article other than Ponchaud, such as the Yale project and AI. Although I don't know their methods, I doubt you can just dismiss all this scholarship as based solely on a misunderstanding of a figure in one book. As for the name, you've already had the common names policy explained to you numerous times: This is the English encyclopedia, and uses the names English speakers use and are familiar with, regardless of the source of that name, whether it's the "corporate press" or implantation by aliens. Your claim that it's "crazy" and "foreign" is ridiculous; are Renaissance and Cinco de Mayo "crazy, foreign name"s? If the KR has a bad reputation, it's not because of their ("scary") French name. Finally, claiming the KR evacuated the cities to avert a famine and not as part of their utopian agricultural collectivization is not consistent with present historical consensus, nor is implying it's all the fault of the US (like everything, apparently) convincing either. You do seem to know some things about the subject which could be worthwhile additions to these articles, but your present tactic of using multiple accounts to attack pages and people and insert wild claims about corporate conspiracies and so on is not the way to go about this. A possibly enlightening comparison would be the AIDS articles, where a persistent faction insists that HIV does not cause AIDS and that this has been proven by medical data; just like you, they're sure they are right, but the fact that their beliefs run counter to scientific consensus means they must accept lessened coverage. -- VV 07:52, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Some research

The Yale Cambodian Genocide Project, part of the Yale Genocide Studies Program. They claim extensive documentation. Quote:

In Phnom Penh in 1996, for instance, we obtained access to the 100,000-page archive of that defunct regime's security police, the Santebal. This material has been microfilmed by Yale University's Sterling Library and made available to scholars worldwide. As of December 2003, we have also compiled and published 22,000 biographic and bibliographic records, and over 6,000 photographs, documents, translations, and maps, along with an extensive list of CGP books and research papers on the genocide.

The CGP estimates "approximately 1.7 million" deaths, roughly 21% of the country's population, died during this period. You can read Ben Kiernan's "The Demography of Genocide: Cambodia and East Timor" (Critical Asian Studies, 35:4, 2003) [in .pdf format] for a more detailed account of how these figures were reached. -- The Anome 08:27, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The CGP also states:

From 1979 to 1983, the Cambodian government supported a research committee to survey the country, in every province, and in some provinces right down to the village level, to attempt to determine what had happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. [...] The research committee reported the deaths of 3,314,000 persons under the Khmer Rouge regime. We believe that this is the source of the figure most commonly cited in Cambodia as to the human toll of the genocide.

Note that the CGP has revised this Cambodian government figure downwards to a more cautiously calculated estimate of 1.7 million dead, based on the evidence it has reviewed. -- The Anome 08:36, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Meta-analysis?

Note: for what it's worth, taking the figures given by the two ex-members of the regime together as a single figure of 900,000 (that is to say, treating them as a single source, "the former regime"), we end up with seven data points in the article.

Sources:

  • Rummel = 2 million
  • State Dept = 1.2 million
  • CGP = 1.7 million
  • Ponchaud = 2 million
  • Amnesty International = 1.4 million
  • Cambodian government = 3.3 million
  • Pot Pot et al = 0.9 million

Doing some arithmetic:

  • Geometric mean = 1.69 million
  • Arithmetic mean = 1.83 million
  • Median = 1.7 million (the CGP figure)

All of these suggest that the CGP figure is a good "central" estimate, close to the geometric and arithmetic means on either side of it, and with all three clustered within a 10% range. With a population of seven data points, we are just within the range of statistical testing: does anyone want to do the honours? -- The Anome 08:48, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, after searching for it, I just put in a redirect from t-distribution to Student's t-distribution. ;) -- VV 09:06, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Who is R. J. Rummel and what credibility does he or she have on this issue? Adam 09:19, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

R. J. Rummel: A well-known academic writer on the topic of genocide. 10,300 Google hits. See vita here: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/LONGVITA.HTM -- The Anome 09:27, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK now I know who he is. I remain dubious about his credibility if he is the one responsible for these allegations that millions of German POWs were starved to death by the Allies. Adam

No, that was James Bacque. See Rummel's own take on this at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP13.HTM where he rejects Bacque's figures. Rummel estimates between 4,500 and 56,000 dead; the official German investigation gave a figure of 4,532. -- The Anome 09:39, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK then. What are his Cambodian estimates based on? Adam 09:44, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

See here: R. J. Rummel's calculations for Cambodian genocide figures -- The Anome 09:51, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

And a quote from Rummel:

While my history and facts of this democide (link) are rarely challenged, my mid-estimate of 2,000,000 (in a range of 600,000 to 3,000,000) murdered by the Khmer Rouge has received considerable criticism from the left as a gross overestimate. However, recent research by the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale has come close to my figures.

The Anome 10:00, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

OK. Adam 10:05, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Putting the photos of 24 presumably executed people at the top is ridiculous. Bush presided over hundreds of executions as governor of Texas, as well as federal executions as president. What would happen if the first image on the Republican page or George Bush page was 24 people he executed? It would be deleted immediately as POV. Yet some people have an axe to grind with the Communist Party of Kampuchea, so they do this. It's not allowed on the Republican party page so I will not allow it here.

This page has simply gotten worse since I put it on request for comments.

"The Khmer Rouge thus combined Stalinist ruthlessness with the extreme utopianism of Maoism and a powerful xenophobia." Great, it's a fact they used "Stalinist ruthlessness" whatever the hell that means. "When the Khmer Rouge came to power they were determined immediately to create a classless society by force." What government does not do what it is trying to do by force? Do you think people pay their rent in the US because they like supporting their landlord? Every few years (perhaps more often) there are shootouts between police evicting people on behalf of American landlords. Everything every government does is by force, or with the threat of force, it is not acceptable to spell this out anywhere else on Wikipedia (except perhaps generic pages on government), so I will not allow it here. Hanpuk 18:49, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What you are missing, Hanpuk, is the scale factor. Wikipedia contains much that is critical of the U.S. and other governments: indeed no country or goverment is without misdeeds. However, most governments tend not to kill their own populations in vast numbers. When they do, we tend to write about it in articles. -- The Anome 23:16, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
On the RFC page, you ask "Whether people seeking to paint the Communist Party of Kampuchea (which they call the Khmer Rouge) in a bad light are doing so by facts, or just throwing mud." I believe that the criticism is fact-based. NPOV requires that we report the CPK viewpoint, as well as the anti-CPK viewpoint. It does not require us to view these two as equal. Historical opinion is overwhelmingly that the CPK was responsible for vast numbers of deaths. Even its own former leaders admitted this. -- The Anome 23:22, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I do not mind properly sourced anti-CPK viewpoints (as well as criticism of it or criticism of its misuse - such as people here attributing the Ponchaud number of 2 million to 1975-1979 when that number covers the pre-1975, pre-CPK rule period as well. Or counter-criticism of these criticisms.
What I do mind is stuff such as "historical opinion is overwhelmingly that the CPK was responsible for vast numbers of deaths". If this is the case, why not just cite the opinion of these people. Even the anti-CPK people who post here have disagreements on the numbers of deaths in Cambodia, never mind "that the CPK was responsible for", which is a totally different matter. This is a subjective question in itself - the news talks sometimes of battered children that fall through the cracks of government agencies and are killed, and then the question of whether the government has responsibility in their deaths or not.
As far as "[The CPK's] own leaders admit...the CPK was responsible for vast numbers of deaths" this probably refers to the sentence "Former Khmer Rouge leaders Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot, who could be expected to give underestimations, give figures of 1 million and 800,000, respectively. An estimate of 1.5 million (from a total population of about 7 million in 1975) seems a reasonable consensus". I'm presuming that the source of Khieu Samphan allegedly gave a figure of 1 million dying, to quote from the Wikipedia article "as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies". Well for one, Khieu Samphan would not have called the CPK the "Khmer Rouge". Secondly, in the alleged interview in question, Khieu Samphan did not attribute the deaths to the policies of the government. And thirdly, that this interview ever happened is disputed, for one, by the person who gave the 2 million number (Ponchaud) that is bandied about so frequently here. The alleged interview was allegedly given to an obscure Italian Catholic magazine, Famiglia Cristiana (see? I'm doing all the work here). So the only source that exists for this supposed admission is a writer for an obscure Roman Catholic magazine from Italy. It's fine to put it in, as long as it is noted that in the alleged interview Khieu Samphan did not blame the CPK for the deaths, as is said, and that the original source is an obscure Italian Catholic magazine, which some people doubt the authenticity of. Hanpuk 02:08, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This page is now protected - i hope a reasonable discourse can solve this problem. PMA 22:29, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

Just as people in countries all over the world died through one way or another from 1975-1979, so people died in Cambodia - old age, disease, or even execution (just as hundreds are executed every year in just one of the fifty US states, Texas). Some of the people who died were executed, especially members of the former regime, and some of those deaths can be pegged in terms of responsibility to the CPK leadership. There seems to be a desire to use confusing language in this article however, to try to imply every death in Cambodia from 1975-1979 was due to execution by the government. People do not seem satisfied to present facts and let people draw their own conclusions. From the current locked article:

First paragraph - "The Khmer Rouge are generally held responsible for the deaths of at least a million people during their rule."

"The Khmer Rouge thus combined Stalinist ruthlessness with the extreme utopianism of Maoism and a powerful xenophobia."

"When the Khmer Rouge came to power they were determined immediately to create a classless society by force." (how come it's not mentioned on the US government page how it is "by force" that class is created in US society - I certainly would not pay rent to a landlord if I didn't know the landlord would send some fellows with nightsticks and guns (the police) to my door to forcibly evict me if I stopped paying him his rent)

"The Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of a higher proportion of its own country's population than any regime in modern history." - the whole paragraph this is in is ridiculous. Was the percentage higher than the (ignored in the US media) percent of the population killed in East Timor around the same time? No one even approaching a neutral point of view would say so.

"An estimate of 1.5 million (from a total population of about 7 million in 1975) seems a reasonable consensus." - why is presenting the facts not enough, it seems people feel that they can not trust people to look at the different reports and make up their own minds, people have to be told what a "reasonable consensus" is.

I want to see

1) A clear distinction between overall deaths from 1975-1979 in Kampuchea from executions directly linkable to the CPK. There seems to be a desire to present a confusing mesh of these two distinct things so that a greater number of deaths is implicated on the CPK.

2) As far as placing blame - some anti-CPK amazingly said "executions represented only a minority of the death toll, which mostly came from starvation." Well now we're getting somewhere. Of course this comes into contradiction with the notion that the CPK getting people into the fields so that they would be self-sufficient instead of starving was some horrible, "radical" event. I'd also ask how much the CPK was to blame if the US had been bombing the countryside to oblivion and Phnom Penh was overcrowded with many starving prior to the CPK takeover. Or what effect the cut off in foreign humanitarian aid had when the CPK took over - did the change of policy cutting off the humanitarian aid that the prior regime had had help result in deaths by starvation?

3) I want to see attributions for what is said. And attributions with #1 in mind Hanpuk 02:31, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks to PMA for protecting this article, which is now in a reasonably encyclopaedic form, though of course far from perfect. It can now stay protected until Hanpuk goes away. Hanpuk's objections above veer between the ridiculous and the grossly dishonest. He is entitled to be a Communist, but he cannot be a Communist and an encyclopaedia editor. Adam 07:14, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I have now been informed that Hanpuk is another name for the user also known as Richard Chilton and Lance Murdoch, a notorious inserter of Communist propaganda and lies into a range of articles. This person ought to be banned in my opinion. Adam 08:02, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Shame on you, Adam. Yes, he can be a Communist and an encyclopedia editor. You may not respect pluralism, but that doesn't matter. The owner of the site does, and he's the one who decides who gets to be an editor on Wikipedia. Note Jimbo Wales' comments on the User:JoeM page:
It's really important to have fire-brand young College Republicans helping out here, just as it's really important to have fire-brand young communists working here, but ONLY so long as they agree to set aside differences in order to lay out the facts, not the moral or political conclusions.
Jimbo goes on to tell JoeM that if he respects private property, he'll respect his wishes. I'm expecting that you'll respect private property, and stop harassing and browbeating Hanpuk for ideological reasons. So calm down. IMHO, you ought to give Hanpuk credit for being open about who he is and what he believes. This does take a lot of courage, after all. If you all agree to work within the framework of NPOV, stay factual, stay specific, cite disputed claims, and avoid value-laden terminology in your edits, a Communist and a diehard anti-Communist ex-Communist can work together constructively on Wikipedia. 172 15:34, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
BTW, the more I think about it, the more troubled I become over Adam's statements. I will support User:Hanpuk if he wants to copy my comments above and paste them into a Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Adam Carr page. IMO, the following statements by Adam ought to be posted in such a page:
He is entitled to be a Communist, but he cannot be a Communist and an encyclopaedia editor. Adam 07:14, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I have now been informed that Hanpuk is another name for the user also known as Richard Chilton and Lance Murdoch, a notorious inserter of Communist propaganda and lies into a range of articles. This person ought to be banned in my opinion. Adam 08:02, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
You "have now been informed"? What are you, an officer at Interpol? I am Hanpuk, not anyone else. I have followed the rules, refrained from edit wars, and escalated to Request for Comments on this page when I thought it could not be handled here. I have also laid out facts on the Khmer Rouge and tried to engage in discussion. Instead I get accused of being some other user (who is not banned so I don't see the point of the accusation), which I'm not, I am told communists are not allowed to edit on Wikipedia by the authority of Adam Carr (I am not a member of any communist party), and my edits are simply reverted, without discussion (despite my desire to have a discussion), with a great deal of antipathy and scorn. And I see little discussion about the CPK on the CPK discussion page, just ad hominem attacks and the like. You've said what you have to say, can you please keep this page for discussion on the topic, and keep ad hominem stuff on wherever page it is supposed to go (I have a feeling it is not supposed to be cluttering up the CPK discussion page, for one thing). Hanpuk 22:34, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
In two just edits, Adam has arguably called for banning users for ideological reasons, blatant abuse of admin privileges, and an overall practice of McCarthyism on Wikipedia. Perhaps opening up a discussion on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Adam Carr will teach him to be less abusive. 172 20:40, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
172 - the RfC process is not supposed to be used as a blunt tool to threaten to beat people over their heads with. --mav 21:41, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It's not? That's been my experience; I've been beaten over my head with it. But I'll take another look at the policy. BTW, do you have any advice regarding Hanpuk? IMO, after a handful of correspondences with him, his charges of abuse and auto-revert do deserve attention and do carry some weight. This user has obvious problems with NPOV, but not on a scale that warrants a ban. Other "POV users" are allowed to play constructive roles in WP; they just don't get to be the sole writers of articles on controversial subjects. However, Hanpuk's been singled-out because he upsets the ideological sensibilities of a select number of harsh opponents. 172 21:57, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)



Yes, Lancemurdoch, JohnWoolsey, HectorRodriguez, Richardchilton, Venceremos, and Hanpuk are all one and the same person. I myself proposed banning on Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Richardchilton, but that did not elicit response, despite the huge number of complaints there (see, e.g., the IRC logs). And, as the one who identified them as the same and as someone who has been active in combatting his attacks on articles, I have been subject to relentless abuse by them (him) and their ideological allies. This is ongoing at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/VeryVerily. It's very tiring. This user has declared war on Wikipedia, written a personal attack on Jimbo, and is wasting my and many other people's time that could be spent working on articles. What will it take for action to be taken? -- VV 09:18, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I do not know any of those people you are talking about. I am Hanpuk, not anyone else. And being that whoever you're talking about is, as you say, not banned, but simply someone you proposed be banned, I don't know what you are trying to do anyhow.
Anyhow, I have spent a great deal of time writing down what I think here and trying to discuss it. I think some of what The Anome put in is POV, like "This policy, known as 'year zero', soon turned into a reign of terror..." but at least he is following Wiki etiquette. He is backing up his figures with references, he seems willing to have a NPOV page where all points can be put across. Adam Carr has outright stated above that he doesn't believe people should be able to edit the encyclopedia if he disagrees with them politically. VeryVerily talks about some other user who HE thinks should be banned (but who isn't), and then falsely accuses me of secretly being that user. I, on the other hand, have tried to get people to discuss the page, have mostly refrained from edit wars, and escalated to the next step, putting the page on Rfc when I thought it had to be escalated. Since I have tried to conform to Wiki etiquette, and have nothing but (perhaps minor accidental) divergences from it, I have to be accused of being someone else - who apparently isn't banned by the way so I don't know what the point is except ad hominem mud throwing. Can we please keep this page to the discussion of the CPK, and keep all of this ad hominem talk elsewhere? Hanpuk 22:34, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Good advice: Keep this page to the discussion on top, and keep all of these ad hominems elsewhere. 172 07:51, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

VV says above that he has proved that Hanpuk is the same person as Lance Murdoch etc etc, but even if he hadn't it is obvious from comparing their edits that they are the same person. Adam 07:59, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"The Khmer Rouge thus combined Stalinist ruthlessness with the extreme utopianism of Maoism and a powerful xenophobia." I agree with this sentence, but it does seem very POV. Could this view be accredited to someone (e.g. "many in the west" or something?)
"When they came to power, they attempted to force Cambodian society to move immediately to the most radical form of Communism ever envisaged by a party in power." I think this should be NPOVed by stating it was what they saw as the most radical form of Communism (if it was), as I wouldn't say they practiced any form of Communism, despite calling themselves that - just as China doesn't practice any form of democracy, despite its full name.
"they drove the population at gunpoint" some of them? or is it a metaphor?
Basically, my point is that I suspect Hanpuk's reasons for objecting to the tone of the article are extremely murky, but that some of the points raised about the need to NPOV the article have some value. Warofdreams 16:42, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I agree this sentence has POV problems, and would welcome proposed rewrites. I hope us cooler heads can work on such issues rationally without the trolls and ideologues causing problems and wasting our time. -- VV 00:52, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Here is a sentence from the article Holocaust:

"The Holocaust was methodically carried out in virtually every inch of Nazi-occupied territory, with Jews and other victims being persecuted in what are now 25 present-day nations of Europe, being sent to concentration camps in some nations, and death camps in other nations."

Here is another sentence:

"Many in the west allege that the Holocaust was "methodically" carried out in virtually every inch of Nazi-occupied territory, with Jews and other so-called victims being allegedly persecuted in what are now 25 present-day nations of Europe, being allegedly sent to "concentration camps" in some nations, and so-called death camps in other nations."

Which do we prefer, historiographically, aesthetically and morally?

Adam 00:31, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

That sentence is indeed over the top, and needs more than just an attribution to be fixed. But there's an article I'd really be afraid to touch. -- VV 00:52, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)


S-21

There is no mention of Khmer Rouge's famous Jail S-21, which was where many citizen were Killed.--Plato 10:46, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And nor can there be until this article is unprotected, which can't happen until Hanpuk and his various aliases are banned from Wikipedia. It's a pity, but this is one of Wikipedia's major structural weaknesses. Adam 11:24, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

April 4

The Khmer Rouge is certainly the name used by everyone in Cambodia today for the party that was in power between 1976-1979.

The Khmer Rouge are properly considered among a very select league of political parties and political movements for having killed an extraordinary number of their fellow citizens and other residents. Moreover, they managed to achieve world class status as mass murderers in a small country. The leaderships of the CPSU, CCP, the Nazis, and Suharto's Indonesian Army had the personnel and material of much larger states available when they committed crimes of a comparable scale.

If a party or party leadership in any political regime, including liberal democracies, has committed crimes of a similar nature or comparable scale against its own civilian population or the civilian populations of other countries, then that certainly deserves reference in its respective page. Mass murder is relevant to establishing the identity of a political party or political movement. For that reason, reference to the Nixon administration's bombing campaigns in Cambodia, which killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodian civilians and gave many other Cambodians reason to join the KR, ought to be made in the page for the U.S. Republican Party. The same is true for the Socialist Party of France because of the Mitterand government's very close ties as arms supplier etc. to the nationalist Hutu militias responsible for the Rwanda genocide.

  • Wow! Anybody else notice the parallelism here? Both Nixon's Republican Administration and Mitterand's government's support of arms to the Hutus are examples of direct or indirect foreign aggression, NOT crimes of a ruling party against its own people. Foreign-directed aggression is all too ordinary part of inter-group interactions throughout human history, and characterized the political behavior of the majority of group leaders with enough power to commit it. Only a select few truly nasty governments deliberately kill millions of their own citizens. As detestable as Nixon and Mitterand may have been to many of their own citizens, this equating to Pol Pot is offensively stupid. Finally, the evidence that US bombing of the eastern edges of Cambodia in 1970 killed "hundreds of thousands" of Cambodians (maybe several times the population of the eastern provinces)? alteripse

The Khmer Rouge established the most closed regime on the planet during the roughly 3 years that they were in power. Only the Taliban have achieved a comparable degree of international isolation. While in power, the KR rejected all offers of foreign aid except that from the PRC.

I suspect that what Hanpuk needs to do is actually go to Cambodia and visit the Documentation Center in Phnom Penh and one of the many killing fields to convince himself that these crimes did in fact take place. He would find it very convincing. Substituting ideological commitment and scepticism about the morality of the U.S. government for well established historical fact is politically immature. Do we have a page for Maoist volunteerism?

US and the Khmer Rouge

There should be something in the article about US backing of the Khmer Rouge as a lever against the Vietnamese Communists ie US backing of the Khmer Rouge in the UN, State Dept support etc. AndyL 04:59, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That would be a useful addition. RickK 05:01, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There should be a reference, but this is not an article about US foreign policy. Rants on this topic in this article will be de-ranted. Adam 10:41, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well of course you would want to do this. The US government was not only the real enemy of the CPK (until 1979 at least, then in the eyes of the US government they walked on water) behind the US's proxy Cambodian army, the US government is really who turned the CPK from a small group to eventually the group that would take over Cambodia, mostly due to the 1969 US government decision to begin bombing Cambodia. Hanpuk 16:24, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, I don't know who has noticed, but "Hanpuk" has switched to rampaging other Cambodia articles, such as Cambodia, History of Cambodia, and Democratic Kampuchea. They've all been protected now. Oh, and agree with Adam about not making yet another article a US slam-fest. -- VV 10:48, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Right, everyone must purge any content that says anything negative about the US government. Yes, commissar! Hanpuk 16:24, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You will agree though, that the left wing is as equally capable of spitting out bullshit as the right wing is. 211.28.122.253
Hanpuk is just trolling. He wants every article to be devoted to how everything bad in every country is the US's fault. No one has suggested purging all negative US content, of course. -- VV 22:55, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Cambodia

There are 5 Cambodia pages under contention, I think if someone (VeryVerily?) would feel compelled to edit all 5 pages as well, a centralized discussion of the issues common to all pages (number of people killed in Cambodia, history of CPK) udner contention could be discussed here, in one centralized location, unless someone has a better idea. Unless someone thinks 5 seperate discussions of the same issue on 5 different pages is a better idea (or more likely no discussion and just a revert).

Most of the points I've made above already. It's up to others to decide. I am refuting flat out wrong arguments like "Ponchaud says 2 million died 1975-1979". Ponchaud did not say that his timeline started BEFORE 1975. Anyone can go pick up his book and see this. I correct an error which is undeniable and the mud-slinging starts, I'm whitewashing genocide, I'm a crazed whatever, I'm accused of being a sock puppet of someone, anything and everything ad hominem instead of the issue at hand. I mean, wouldn't sourcing these wild claims bolster your argument? Unless there are no credible sources for the wilder claims made here. Hanpuk 06:23, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

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Treatment of Cham Muslim

I am confused by this sentence "The Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted the Chinese, the Vietnamese, and even their partially Khmer offspring for extinction; although the Cham Muslims were treated unfavorably, they were encouraged to "mix flesh and blood", to intermarry and assimilate."

I take it to mean that the Cham were not targeted for extinction like the Chinese and Vietnamese, but this seems to contradict this sentence later "And according to Kiernan, the "fiercest extermination campaign was directed against the ethnic Cham Muslim minority"" A.rutnam (talk) 00:59, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Historic legacy

The section Khmer Rouge#Historic legacy is strange. It reads more like a quick summary of their history - which is what the lead is for - and as far as I can see contains no information about the legacy of the Khmer Rouge. It might be best to be removed entirely in its current state. Fences&Windows 19:42, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

You're right, it's a summary and an inaccurate one at that (the CPK's goal wasn't to create a 'purely agrarian-based society' for example). Better to delete entirely Svejk74 (talk) 20:18, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Edit warring over political position

The majority of the edits to this article at present consist of tinkering with the infobox and "political position". At present they are described as "far-left and far-right", which is obviously ridiculous.

A good essay on the complexities of this is Karl Jackson's "Intellectual origins of the Khmer Rouge". It explains why it is very hard to try and classify the movement. Their ideology is leftist but bears little resemblance to most mainstream currents within Communism. He describes them as "a post-Leninist amalgam of nostrums of the left, a union derived from sources previously thought to be incompatible": elements of Maoism; (fewer) elements of Stalinism; Franz Fanon; Samir Amin; and, lastly, indigenous ideas including deep seated Khmer xenophobia. They believed, with disastrous results, they were developing something politically new and uniquely Khmer.

With all this in mind is it possible to agree on something that can be put in the infobox?Svejk74 (talk) 20:54, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

"Despite" a massive American bombing?

It should be "because of." Widespread deaths in rural areas filled up Khmer Rouge's ranks with people who were eager to revenge. 2100s (talk) 18:22, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Sure, but it also killed many people, including Khmer Rouge fighters. Both angles are mentioned in the article as is. Just saying. RhinoMind (talk) 04:16, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

US and UK support

I am opening the discussion on US and UK support. Reliable sources support the fact that the US, the UK and other western nations directly or indirectly supported the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Mztourist (talk) 05:59, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

That's fine, Mztourist, but it's not my job to find sources for disputed content that other editors want to add as part of a larger series of unsourced or poorly-sourced edits including obvious errors (e.g., the suggestion that the Khmer Rouge ousted Sihanouk in 1975) and dubious claims (e.g., the estimate of 3 million excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge, which is rejected by most scholars). Can you present your sources please?
On another note, while other articles do not have any direct bearing on editorial consensus here, it may be instructive to at least consider how related pages have dealt with these issues. The infobox at Cambodian–Vietnamese War lists the U.S. and U.K. as providing support to the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK), which is similar to but not quite the same as the Khmer Rouge, and the "supported by" tab is hidden by default. (Conclusion: Clearly, editors did not consider the U.S. or U.K. to be anything more than bit players in the conflict.) Allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge suggests that the U.S. offered half-hearted diplomatic support to the Khmer Rouge and that U.S.-backed (nominally "anti-communist") insurgents engaged in "joint defense of a bridge" with Khmer Rouge guerrillas. Are we in agreement that that summary accurately conveys the scale of U.S. support for the Khmer Rouge? Is such support significant (in terms of establishing WP:WEIGHT for inclusion in the main infobox) in the same sense as Chinese subsidies to the Khmer Rouge (to the tune of at least $1 billion) or the U.S. campaign against the Khmer Rouge from 1970-1975 (which included a massive bombing campaign, ground invasion, and vast quantities of military and financial assistance to Lon Nol's government)?
In any case, I don't actually feel strongly about the infobox in particular, but I am definitely too lazy to manually restore contentious unsourced content (and to find sources that support it) as part of a routine revert of a larger edit that was problematic and inaccurate in multiple other ways. For the same reason, I declined to manually restore Yugoslavia to the infobox (even though that removal was pure collateral damage), because while the listing is accurate as far as I know, it needs to be sourced—and again, I don't consider it to be my job to find sources for content that others want to include, very frankly. (Nor can I find any mention of Yugoslavia in the body of the article itself.) Regards,TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:41, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
To be honest I don't really see a great deal of value in the list of supporting regimes anyway. Suffice to say that one or two countries, for the usual geopolitical reasons, actively propped up the regime with arms, funding, aid etc (with the usual caveat that the determination not to accept, or to be seen to be accepting, outside support was practically the KR regime's defining characteristic) while a number of others tolerated it at other times, notably when in opposition to the Viertnamese-installed government, again for the usual geopolitical reasons. Recall that during the 1980s there were armed groups in the coalition far more prominent in terms of receiving support from the West (the ANS and KNPLF). You cannot say that the US "supported" the KR in the way it spent millions propping up Lon Nol.
If we examine the extent of US and UK involvement we can see that it largely relates to:
  • Supporting Sihanouk, whose stated view was that the KR had to be part of any functioning peace settlement
  • Allegedly running training camps for the KR "allies", i.e. the ANS / Funcinpec and the KNPL(A)F; although it was acknowledged that the KR might have indirectly benefited from this
In particular the whole thing needs to be understood through the prism of Sihanouk and his role in Cambodian internal and regional politics, which was pretty much unique in modern history.
It's telling that the vast majority of edits to this article over the past couple of years have involved stuff in the infobox rather than to the meat of the article, sections of which still need a lot of work.

Svejk74 (talk) 09:59, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

1981

I agree that the assertion the KR "renounced" Communism in 1981 is dubious. Isn't this just the date that a formal coalition was agreed (largely due to pressure exerted on all parties by China) between the KR, Sihanouk and Son Sann's KNPLF? The KR were still Communist, just operating as part of a non-Communist "front"? Svejk74 (talk) 16:25, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with your assessement, however, I'm pretty sure this would fall under WP:No Original Research. Our job is to report what other sources are saying about whether the KR renounced communism, not to determine ourselves whethere this is the case. I would suggest people look for sources that contradict the renunciation, as it sounds dubious to me too. DifferenceTone (talk) 20:09, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
I've gone back to contemporary news sources and I think the key event being referred to here is the Khmer Rouge announcement of 6 December 1981 (coincident with an ASEAN foreign ministers' conference in Thailand) that the Communist Party of Kampuchea had been dissolved and replaced by the "Party of Democratic Kampuchea". As noted above this was to enable them to join a 'front' with the Sihanoukists and KNPLF. Whether this amounts to renouncing Communism, particularly given that there seems to have been a general understanding of the purpose of the announcement, I'm not sure Svejk74 (talk) 20:35, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Interpretations (partial removal of historical context)

As for this, I fail to see how that is undue. ... section that is ... based on just a single source. Except it is a tertiary source, which makes it the opposite of undue. A tertiary source says that scholars place it within the historical context, including the removed part, so we have a tertiary source vs. the beliefs of a single editor. They say that older scholarship suggested that the civil war must have been exceptionally violent in order to explain the violence of the Khmer Rouge, but more recent scholarship from Cambodian specialists has found scant evidence that the civil war was in fact uniquely bloody compared to similar conflicts that did not end in genocide. My issues are two-folds:

  1. If that really is old scholarship, that does not mean it should be removed; if the tertiary source (2008, not 1988) found it due, it is due.
  2. If there is new scholarship and if you have a source to back up what you said, the solution is not to remove content but to mention this new scholarship.

In any case, it is UNDUE to include "exceptional" language backed by just one source; we can revisit if much stronger sourcing is presented. It is not exceptional either because it is a tertiary source (it mainly summarizes what authors and scholars have said), so the "single-source" argument clearly fails. Sometimes it is better a single, good secondary or tertiary source, over three questionable sources, or paraphrasing what A said but then cite it to the work itself of A rather than a secondary source, as is done at Ideology, i.e. we should not cite Kiernan for what he said, we should be citing review or secondary sources that confirms the paraphrasing is accurate and not original research. The latter is exactly what I did.

In conclusion, the content should be restored (I am willing to compromise by putting it into a note) and "the more recent scholarship from Cambodian specialists has found scant evidence that the civil war was in fact uniquely bloody compared to similar conflicts that did not end in genocide" should also be added there, if is indeed the case and backed by secondary or tertiary sources. Davide King (talk) 01:46, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Although historical context is useful,there are a couple of problems with the whole section - 1) it's too long, in an article that is already too long; 2) it's based on one source, with no indication that this source is particularly authoritative (see also point 4); 3) "interpretation" should surely come at the end of the article, rather than the start; and 4) there are a number of dubious assertions in it (e.g. it misrepresents Vickery's position, which leads me to think the authors haven't read him properly; similarly it repeats the old nonsense about KR "agrarianism"). Quite a few writers talk the historiography and interpretation of the period, eg Kiernan and Vickery, so there's no need to rely on one source.
Again while the 'Civil War violence', as context for the KR, is an important point, it doesn't need particular emphasis over other aspects of that historical context (e.g. decolonisation, the history of Khmer nationalism, similarly violent conflicts elsewhere in SE Asia, or the fact that Cambodia before the 1960s was not the uniquely benign and peaceful society that some Western commentators stereotyped it as - this is a point Vickery makes vividly by repeating an anecdote from the 1950s Issarak conflict).
Perhaps TheTimesAreAChanging would interested in commenting too.

Svejk74 (talk) 10:16, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

There are no shortage of sources that would attest to the fact that while the civil war was brutal, the estimated death toll has been revised downwards considerably over time (cf. Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979". Forced Migration and Mortality. National Academies Press. pp. 103–104. ISBN 9780309073349. Subsequent reevaluations of the demographic data situated the death toll for the [civil war] in the order of 300,000 or less.) and was roughly an order of magnitude less than the mass killings and excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge. There are also no shortage of sources that would attest to the fact that Laos was bombed far more heavily than Cambodia, by a factor of four on a much smaller population size, and yet the Pathet Lao did not commit atrocities of a similar scale to the Khmer Rouge. I don't know if I have a single source readily available that explicitly cites these facts to discount the assertion that the civil war and U.S. bombing played a large role in motivating Khmer Rouge violence. However, as Svejk74 states, your tertiary source is not authored by a Cambodian specialist and using it for a lengthy three-paragraph "introduction" to the Khmer Rouge that boldly asserts "In analysing the Khmer Rouge regime, scholars place it within the historical context" (emphasis added), dismissing the Khmer Rouge's stated ideological motivations as irrelevant, is very much WP:UNDUE. Frankly, I probably should have trimmed it more or moved it to the end of the article, as suggested by Svejk74.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:58, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
"There are no shortage of sources that would attest to the fact that while the civil war was brutal, the estimated death toll has been revised downwards considerably over time." This is good, and it would have been better if you just added them. In addition, the deleted part you removed was "(where unparalleled atrocities were executed on both sides)", which makes no mention of the death toll, so where is the contradiction? Did they not happen on both sides? Are they no longer seen as unparalleled? This same tertiary source seems to be perfectly fine for Crimes against humanity under communist regimes and Mass killings under communist regimes, which should be merged and rewritten into a single article because both violates synthesis, misrepresent sources, and are in contradiction with country-specialists, who do not describe most of the events as mass killings, and indeed their main articles do not do so; so, at least on those two articles, you should agree with me. That said, it is a tertiary source who is mainly summarizing what scholars have actually said, so I do not think the authors need to be specialists, only the scholars they discuss should be. Either way, whatever my used source's problem, it is a tertiary source vs. your personal opinion. By the way, the source and my wording nowhere did dismiss the group's ideological motivations as irrelevant, so I do not see what is the issue; it merely places them in the historical context by summarizing and paraphrasing for us what scholars have actually said. All this is the opposite of undue and original research, the latter of which may be something you are actually engaging in; if the problem is the tertiary source, another tertiary source can be found. Certainly, the solution is not to paraphrase what scholars have said, and cite this to their own main works (primary sources for their interpretations), but use better secondary and tertiary sources that do it for us. Davide King (talk) 17:01, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
Svejk74, first of all, thank you both for your kind responses; I will start from you. I do not necessarily agree with most of what you wrote but I would like to hear some clarifications.

(1) As of now, the article occupies 129,398 bytes but is only 74,729 characters and 11,739 words long; I have seen much worse, including articles with good article or featured article status. This does not mean that the article cannot be better summarized or structured but is not a good reason to remove my additions.

(2) This is interesting because this is the main source used to support Crimes against humanity under communist regimes, even though, despite the title, it is not really about that, is the same topic as Mass killings under communist regimes (another controversial article that is synthesis and other violations but that can be actually rewritten neutrally but it requires a major restructuring and rescope) and only discusses Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, and Pol Pot's Cambodia, not even three Communist states out of dozens others but three specific periods of three Communist states out of dozen others. I would be interested in your thoughts on such an article and another similar controversial one (I would like to write to both of you about them) because if you are consistent, I believe you would actually agree with mine and other users' analysis and possible solutions to fix them, and we really need more voices outside that eco-chamber.

(3) No problem with that.

(4) That would be actually good; the problem is that, e.g. at Ideology, we cite it to Kiernan for what he said, and not to a secondary source that paraphrases that for us. Same thing for Vickery, it would be helpful if you could provide a secondary source that supports the view this source misrepresents him, rather than cite Vickery himself as we do at Ideology for him and Kiernan. In short, my source may have problems but it is the kind of source we need when discussing this, i.e. a secondary source that analyzes and paraphrase for us what those historians have said, rather than do that yourself citing their own primary source works, possibile engaging in original research. About the old nonsense "agrarianism", I actually agree, and I was just discussing this with The Four Deuces. Why would a Marxist deindustrialize? Simple, he would not; he would actually increase agricultural production in order to obtain money for rapid industrialization (Mann 2005, p. 343), whose unbalanced and rapid process led to many, many deaths, as it had already happened in Russia and China. The problem is not this source in itself but that many editors, who do not have knowledge on the subject, think this. So Cambodian genocide says that "Pol Pot ... radically pushed Cambodia towards an entirely self-sufficient agrarian socialist society. ... the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic." Even on this article, we say: "The focus of the Khmer Rouge leadership on the peasantry as the base of the revolution was according to Michael Vickery a product of their status as 'petty-bourgeois radicals who had been overcome by peasantist romanticism.'" We cite this to Vickery's work rather than a secondary source as I actually did, and which is not exactly in contradiction with my addition. So unless I misunderstood what you meant by that, this is a problem with most Khmer Rouge-related articles.

As for the historical context, if as you say that is a point Vickery repeatedly makes, I do not see how it is undue; however, I can compromise to move it at Origins and the section that specifically discusses this. About Civil War violence, the same thing can be done elsewhere in the body, using sources provided by TheTimesAreAChanging. Davide King (talk) 16:48, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
Davide King, I don't have any particular problem with your most recent article edits, but as a general point, I think that you should be careful about using this article, this talk page, and similar articles as a proxy battle to argue against your opponents at Mass killings under communist regimes.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:27, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
I appreciate your comment and I understand that. If I may explain and clarify myself, I discussed it because you mentioned country specialists, so I was curious about your thoughts on that article. I did not think it was so off-topic, as that same source you dismissed here is used there and the topics are related, and both articles are in contradiction with the same country specialists you dropped here, hence I thought it was due mentioning it.
WP:OTHERCONTENT says "it may be necessary to consider whether the inclusion and organization of such material is compliant with core policies such as neutral point of view and no original research. ... Dismissing such concerns simply by pointing to this essay is inappropriate." In short, I do not think I was using "this article, this talk page, and similar articles as a proxy battle", and if I gave that impression I apologize and strive to refrain from doing that again; I was simply trying to understand whether there was a double standard, and make sure that our policies and guidelines are equally applied to all articles. I got it though, and if you want to discuss that article, you can reply to me on my talk page or on yours, but I agree it should not be discussed here. I hope that you do understand why I pointed it out and that I did not mean it as a proxy battle, I just want to make sure that all articles respect our policies and guidelines, and I am genuinely curious about what other users have to say about those two controversial articles. Davide King (talk) 21:46, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
Just responding to your comments on the 4 points above -
1. I think my issue with the article length comes from having added a fair bit of content to this a few years back and having had it on my watch list since. When I originally found it much of the article was a mishmash of various atrocity stories without much attempt to give context. I made an effort to try and structure, but it still needs a lot of work, and does suffer from drive-by edits from users looking to emphasise perspectives of particular interest to them (eg the KR links with China, or edit warring over the infobox by people trying to incorrectly characterise the KR as 'far right'). I think it would still benefit from an effort to condense and focus the content and eliminate repetition (eg. as you note, the "interpretation" section does actually repeat points made in the "ideology" section to some degree).
2. It's uncontroversial that there were very large excess deaths under Democratic Kampuchea that cannot simply be attributed to the post Civil War conditions or regime incompetence, but there are still a fairly wide variety of academic positions on the nature of the genocide itself amongst specialists, if not necessarily in the popular media. I'm not personally convinced of the utility of the other articles you mention but I'd rather focus on getting the one right. One of the key points Vickery makes is that the experience of ordinary Cambodians varied greatly depending on where they were in the country, the attitude and competence of the local leadership, food supplies, etc etc
4. The 'agrarianism' thing appears in all kinds of sources, but seems mainly to be a misinterpretation of the regime's naive plan for self-sufficiency, and desire to increase rice production, conflated with two other things: its theoretical focus on the rural peasantry, rather than urban workers, as the 'base' of the revolution (one point at least it shares with orthodox Maoism) and its emphasis on Khmer ethnicity - its anti-Vietnamese tendency fed strongly into its cadres' bias against the urban population. Early on the KR was keen to restart factories to produce goods for export, for example; its propaganda films feature factories and railways; industrialisation was a stated goal. I suppose there should be an effort to context to this kind of stuff, or other more sensationalist things like the persistent 'Muslims forced to eat pork' story (in reality the regime's mismanagement of the farming system meant there was so little meat, or indeed food in general, available for anyone they were unlikely to have done this).Svejk74 (talk) 18:29, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Why isn't the US listed as an ally of the Khmer Rouge?

Didn't they send aid to the Khmer Rouge? And recognized the Khmer Rouge as the head of the govetnment and to allow them for a seat in the UN? Norewritingofhistory (talk) 20:03, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

There is no evidence that either the US or UK directly sent aid to the Khmer Rouge. The controversy came about as they provided aid and military training to the KR's partners in the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea - Son Sann's KNPL(A)F and Funcinpec / the Sihanouk National Army). There have been accusations that KR troops ended up being trained directly as well, but a more likely scenario is that the KR could be seen to have benefited indirectly from the strengthening of its two coalition partners (a minimal benefit given that both the SNA and KNPLAF were effectively crippled after a 1984 offensive).
Similarly it was the CGDK, fronted primarily by the Sihanoukists, that had a UN seat, not the Khmer Rouge itself. Son Sann and the KNPLF were always regarded as the main US-backed faction.Svejk74 (talk) 21:29, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
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