The Aftermath
On December 25, 1979, Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia and chased the Khmer Rouge towards the jungle where today the Khmer Rouge are hiding. That marked the end of one Cambodia's bloodiest chapter.
After the Vietnamese had captured the city and drove the Khmer Rouge towards the jungles, the Vietnamese installed an independent government in Cambodia. The government known as the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) is comprised of former Democratic Kampuchea party military officers who left the party before the fall of the Khmer Rouge. The military officers were no longer active in the Khmer Rouge and broke away to Vietnam in 1978. One of the members of the PRK was Hun Sen, he including other members assumed power within the government, but it was Hun Sen who later had the most power and later and presently holding the command in Cambodia. Under the PRK, a friendship and cooperation treaty was signed with the Vietnamese. In 1989, the Vietnamese troops withdrew themselves from Cambodia.
Cambodia began to get back on its feet again with the development of markets, family farming, school reopened, currency was reintroduced, and the Buddhist religion came back into practice among the Cambodian people. The problem that the Cambodians did face after the 1979 was famine. During the chaos when the Vietnamese enter Cambodia, which signaled the end of the Democratic Kampuchea, rice crops were left untended. There was not enough rice produce and many people did not stay put long enough to plant crops between 1979 and 1980. More and more Cambodian fled the country to seek refuge in the refugee camps along the Thai border. One by one resembling skeletons. There were over 300,000 refugees encamped along the Thai-Cambodian border. It was not until 1998 that the Thai government closed the refugee camps. Many families where left in the camps until 1998 but, others had sponsors to sponsor them to America or other parts of the world. The Cambodians are now scattered all over the world.
It will take Cambodia about a hundred years or so to catch up with the
world. This agricultural society is one of the poorest countries in
the world. After many different rulers, the country is very scared,
but people always have hope for the better future.
Many people are left perplexed when they think about the atrocities
of the Khmer Rouge. There are so many questions. How could the world
allow another genocide to happen again after the holocaust? It is like
the irony of life. History seems to always repeat itself after we think
that we have learned from the past atrocities. It seems that society
has not learned from the past atrocities of man against man. The weak
are at the mercy of some despot; For the Jews it was Hitler: for the
Cambodians it was Pol Pot; for the Congolese it was King Leopold of
Belguim.
If we fail to teach and remember about the atrocities of the Holocaust and of the Cambodian then we are succumbing to the ability of the powerful to oppress the weak.
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