One of the stories that shook the world in 1975 was Cambodia’s genocide. Communist forces lead by Pol Pot attempted to socially engineer a classless, peasant society. The Khmer Rouge took aim at intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants, and religious leaders.
The leadership chillingly asserted that its new agrarian communist utopia had more people than it needed.
Between 1975 and 1979 about 1.5 million Cambodians out of a total population of 7 to 8 million, died of starvation, execution, disease, or overwork.
Their bodies were buried in mass graves that became known as the Killing Fields.
Survivors, some of whom ended up as refugees in Australia, were left severely traumatised.
And in a bizarre twist in 2014 the Australian government signed a deal to resettle refugees in Cambodia.
Discover more at sbs.com.au/sbs50.
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