The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Civil War

The Khmer Rouge forced people from the cities into the countryside and into labor camps where they died of starvation and illness. The goal of Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, was to institute the ultimate totalitarian system enforced by violence and mass killing. Historians estimate that they killed between 1.7 and 3 million people or close to a quarter of the country's population.