title: Jerry Yang

text: In 2021, he was among the co-founders of The Asian American Foundation, a $250 million initiative to address racism against Asian Americans and provide services to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Yang sits on the board of the foundation, described by its organizers as the largest-ever philanthropic effort to support the AAPI community.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84. Polonium is a chalcogen. A rare and highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes, polonium is chemically similar to selenium and tellurium, though its metallic character resembles that of its horizontal neighbors in the periodic table: thallium, lead, and bismuth. Due to the short half-life of all its isotopes, its natural occurrence is limited to tiny traces of the fleeting polonium-210 (with a half-life of 138 days) in uranium ores, as it is the penultimate daughter of natural uranium-238. Though slightly longer-lived isotopes exist, they are much more difficult to produce. Today, polonium is usually produced in milligram quantities by the neutron irradiation of bismuth. Due to its intense radioactivity, which results in the radiolysis of chemical bonds and radioactive self-heating, its chemistry has mostly been investigated on the trace scale only.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium was discovered in July 1898 by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, when it was extracted from the uranium ore pitchblende and identified solely by its strong radioactivity: it was the first element to be so discovered. Polonium was named after Marie Curie's homeland of Poland. Polonium has few applications, and those are related to its radioactivity: heaters in space probes, antistatic devices, sources of neutrons and alpha particles, and poison. It is extremely dangerous to humans.


title: Polonium

text: Po is an alpha emitter that has a half-life of 138.4 days; it decays directly to its stable daughter isotope, Pb. A milligram (5 curies) of Po emits about as many alpha particles per second as 5 grams of Ra, which means it's 5,000 times more radioactive than radium. A few curies (1 curie equals 37 gigabecquerels, 1 Ci = 37 GBq) of Po emit a blue glow which is caused by ionisation of the surrounding air.


title: Polonium

text: About one in 100,000 alpha emissions causes an excitation in the nucleus which then results in the emission of a gamma ray with a maximum energy of 803 keV.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium is a radioactive element that exists in two metallic allotropes. The alpha form is the only known example of a simple cubic crystal structure in a single atom basis at STP, with an edge length of 335.2 picometers; the beta form is rhombohedral. The structure of polonium has been characterized by X-ray diffraction and electron diffraction.


title: Polonium

text: Po (in common with Pu) has the ability to become airborne with ease: if a sample is heated in air to , 50% of it is vaporized in 45 hours to form diatomic Po molecules, even though the melting point of polonium is and its boiling point is .


title: Polonium

text: More than one hypothesis exists for how polonium does this; one suggestion is that small clusters of polonium atoms are spalled off by the alpha decay.


title: Polonium

text: The chemistry of polonium is similar to that of tellurium, although it also shows some similarities to its neighbor bismuth due to its metallic character. Polonium dissolves readily in dilute acids but is only slightly soluble in alkalis. Polonium solutions are first colored in pink by the Po ions, but then rapidly become yellow because alpha radiation from polonium ionizes the solvent and converts Po into Po. As polonium also emits alpha-particles after disintegration so this process is accompanied by bubbling and emission of heat and light by glassware due to the absorbed alpha particles; as a result, polonium solutions are volatile and will evaporate within days unless sealed. At pH about 1, polonium ions are readily hydrolyzed and complexed by acids such as oxalic acid, citric acid, and tartaric acid.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium has no common compounds, and almost all of its compounds are synthetically created; more than 50 of those are known. The most stable class of polonium compounds are polonides, which are prepared by direct reaction of two elements. NaPo has the antifluorite structure, the polonides of Ca, Ba, Hg, Pb and lanthanides form a NaCl lattice, BePo and CdPo have the wurtzite and MgPo the nickel arsenide structure. Most polonides decompose upon heating to about 600 °C, except for HgPo that decomposes at ~300 °C and the lanthanide polonides, which do not decompose but melt at temperatures above 1000 °C. For example, the polonide of praseodymium (PrPo) melts at 1250 °C, and that of thulium (TmPo) melts at 2200 °C. PbPo is one of the very few naturally occurring polonium compounds, as polonium alpha decays to form lead.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium hydride () is a volatile liquid at room temperature prone to dissociation; it is thermally unstable. Water is the only other known hydrogen chalcogenide which is a liquid at room temperature; however, this is due to hydrogen bonding. The three oxides, PoO, PoO and PoO, are the products of oxidation of polonium.


title: Polonium

text: Halides of the structure PoX, PoX and PoF are known. They are soluble in the corresponding hydrogen halides, i.e., PoCl in HCl, PoBr in HBr and PoI in HI. Polonium dihalides are formed by direct reaction of the elements or by reduction of PoCl with SO and with PoBr with HS at room temperature. Tetrahalides can be obtained by reacting polonium dioxide with HCl, HBr or HI.


title: Polonium

text: Other polonium compounds include potassium polonite as a polonite, polonate, acetate, bromate, carbonate, citrate, chromate, cyanide, formate, (II) and (IV) hydroxides, nitrate, selenate, selenite, monosulfide, sulfate, disulfate and sulfite.


title: Polonium

text: A limited organopolonium chemistry is known, mostly restricted to dialkyl and diaryl polonides (RPo), triarylpolonium halides (ArPoX), and diarylpolonium dihalides (ArPoX). Polonium also forms soluble compounds with some chelating agents, such as 2,3-butanediol and thiourea.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium has 42 known isotopes, all of which are radioactive. They have atomic masses that range from 186 to 227 u. Po (half-life 138.376 days) is the most widely available and is made via neutron capture by natural bismuth. The longer-lived Po (half-life years, longest-lived of all polonium isotopes) and Po (half-life 2.9 years) can be made through the alpha, proton, or deuteron bombardment of lead or bismuth in a cyclotron.


title: Polonium

text: Tentatively called "radium F", polonium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in July 1898, and was named after Marie Curie's native land of Poland (). Poland at the time was under Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian partition, and did not exist as an independent country. It was Curie's hope that naming the element after her native land would publicize its lack of independence. Polonium may be the first element named to highlight a political controversy.


title: Polonium

text: This element was the first one discovered by the Curies while they were investigating the cause of pitchblende radioactivity. Pitchblende, after removal of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium, was more radioactive than the uranium and thorium combined. This spurred the Curies to search for additional radioactive elements. They first separated out polonium from pitchblende in July 1898, and five months later, also isolated radium. German scientist Willy Marckwald successfully isolated 3 milligrams of polonium in 1902, though at the time he believed it was a new element, which he dubbed "radio-tellurium", and it was not until 1905 that it was demonstrated to be the same as polonium.


title: Polonium

text: In the United States, polonium was produced as part of the Manhattan Project's Dayton Project during World War II. Polonium and beryllium were the key ingredients of the 'Urchin' initiator at the center of the bomb's spherical pit. 'Urchin' initiated the nuclear chain reaction at the moment of prompt-criticality to ensure that the weapon did not fizzle. 'Urchin' was used in early U.S. weapons; subsequent U.S. weapons utilized a pulse neutron generator for the same purpose.


title: Polonium

text: Much of the basic physics of polonium was classified until after the war. The fact that it was used as an initiator was classified until the 1960s.


title: Polonium

text: The Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Project funded human experiments using polonium on five people at the University of Rochester between 1943 and 1947. The people were administered between of polonium to study its excretion.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium is a very rare element in nature because of the short half-lives of all its isotopes. Seven isotopes occur in traces as decay products: Po, Po, and Po occur in the decay chain of U; Po and Po occur in the decay chain of U; Po and Po occur in the decay chain of Th. Of these, Po is the only isotope with a half-life longer than 3 minutes.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium can be found in uranium ores at about 0.1 mg per metric ton (1 part in 10), which is approximately 0.2% of the abundance of radium. The amounts in the Earth's crust are not harmful. Polonium has been found in tobacco smoke from tobacco leaves grown with phosphate fertilizers.


title: Polonium

text: Because it is present in small concentrations, isolation of polonium from natural sources is a tedious process. The largest batch of the element ever extracted, performed in the first half of the 20th century, contained only (9 mg) of polonium-210 and was obtained by processing 37 tonnes of residues from radium production. Polonium is now usually obtained by irradiating bismuth with high-energy neutrons or protons.


title: Polonium

text: In 1934, an experiment showed that when natural Bi is bombarded with neutrons, Bi is created, which then decays to Po via beta-minus decay. The final purification is done pyrochemically followed by liquid-liquid extraction techniques. Polonium may now be made in milligram amounts in this procedure which uses high neutron fluxes found in nuclear reactors. Only about 100 grams are produced each year, practically all of it in Russia, making polonium exceedingly rare.


title: Polonium

text: This process can cause problems in lead-bismuth based liquid metal cooled nuclear reactors such as those used in the Soviet Navy's K-27. Measures must be taken in these reactors to deal with the unwanted possibility of Po being released from the coolant.


title: Polonium

text: The longer-lived isotopes of polonium, Po and Po, can be formed by proton or deuteron bombardment of bismuth using a cyclotron. Other more neutron-deficient and more unstable isotopes can be formed by the irradiation of platinum with carbon nuclei.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium-based sources of alpha particles were produced in the former Soviet Union. Such sources were applied for measuring the thickness of industrial coatings via attenuation of alpha radiation.


title: Polonium

text: Because of intense alpha radiation, a one-gram sample of Po will spontaneously heat up to above generating about 140 watts of power. Therefore, Po is used as an atomic heat source to power radioisotope thermoelectric generators via thermoelectric materials. For example, Po heat sources were used in the Lunokhod 1 (1970) and Lunokhod 2 (1973) Moon rovers to keep their internal components warm during the lunar nights, as well as the Kosmos 84 and 90 satellites (1965).


title: Polonium

text: The alpha particles emitted by polonium can be converted to neutrons using beryllium oxide, at a rate of 93 neutrons per million alpha particles. Po-BeO mixtures are used as passive neutron sources with a gamma-ray-to-neutron production ratio of 1.13 ± 0.05, lower than for nuclear fission-based neutron sources. Examples of Po-BeO mixtures or alloys used as neutron sources are a neutron trigger or initiator for nuclear weapons and for inspections of oil wells. About 1500 sources of this type, with an individual activity of , had been used annually in the Soviet Union.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium was also part of brushes or more complex tools that eliminate static charges in photographic plates, textile mills, paper rolls, sheet plastics, and on substrates (such as automotive) prior to the application of coatings. Alpha particles emitted by polonium ionize air molecules that neutralize charges on the nearby surfaces. Some anti-static brushes contain up to of Po as a source of charged particles for neutralizing static electricity. In the US, devices with no more than of (sealed) Po per unit can be bought in any amount under a "general license", which means that a buyer need not be registered by any authorities. Polonium needs to be replaced in these devices nearly every year because of its short half-life; it is also highly radioactive and therefore has been mostly replaced by less dangerous beta particle sources.


title: Polonium

text: Tiny amounts of Po are sometimes used in the laboratory and for teaching purposes—typically of the order of , in the form of sealed sources, with the polonium deposited on a substrate or in a resin or polymer matrix—are often exempt from licensing by the NRC and similar authorities as they are not considered hazardous. Small amounts of Po are manufactured for sale to the public in the United States as "needle sources" for laboratory experimentation, and they are retailed by scientific supply companies. The polonium is a layer of plating which in turn is plated with a material such as gold, which allows the alpha radiation (used in experiments such as cloud chambers) to pass while preventing the polonium from being released and presenting a toxic hazard.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium spark plugs were marketed by Firestone from 1940 to 1953. While the amount of radiation from the plugs was minuscule and not a threat to the consumer, the benefits of such plugs quickly diminished after approximately a month because of polonium's short half-life and because buildup on the conductors would block the radiation that improved engine performance. (The premise behind the polonium spark plug, as well as Alfred Matthew Hubbard's prototype radium plug that preceded it, was that the radiation would improve ionization of the fuel in the cylinder and thus allow the motor to fire more quickly and efficiently.)


title: Polonium

text: Polonium can be hazardous and has no biological role. By mass, polonium-210 is around 250,000 times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide (the for Po is less than 1 microgram for an average adult (see below) compared with about 250 milligrams for hydrogen cyanide). The main hazard is its intense radioactivity (as an alpha emitter), which makes it difficult to handle safely. Even in microgram amounts, handling Po is extremely dangerous, requiring specialized equipment (a negative pressure alpha glove box equipped with high-performance filters), adequate monitoring, and strict handling procedures to avoid any contamination. Alpha particles emitted by polonium will damage organic tissue easily if polonium is ingested, inhaled, or absorbed, although they do not penetrate the epidermis and hence are not hazardous as long as the alpha particles remain outside the body. Wearing chemically resistant and intact gloves is a mandatory precaution to avoid transcutaneous diffusion of polonium directly through the skin. Polonium delivered in concentrated nitric acid can easily diffuse through inadequate gloves (e.g., latex gloves) or the acid may damage the gloves.


title: Polonium

text: It has been reported that some microbes can methylate polonium by the action of methylcobalamin. This is similar to the way in which mercury, selenium, and tellurium are methylated in living things to create organometallic compounds. Studies investigating the metabolism of polonium-210 in rats have shown that only 0.002 to 0.009% of polonium-210 ingested is excreted as volatile polonium-210.


title: Polonium

text: The median lethal dose (LD) for acute radiation exposure is about 4.5 Sv. The committed effective dose equivalent Po is 0.51 µSv/Bq if ingested, and 2.5 µSv/Bq if inhaled. A fatal 4.5 Sv dose can be caused by ingesting , about 50 nanograms (ng), or inhaling , about 10 ng. One gram of Po could thus in theory poison 20 million people, of whom 10 million would die. The actual toxicity of Po is lower than these estimates because radiation exposure that is spread out over several weeks (the biological half-life of polonium in humans is 30 to 50 days) is somewhat less damaging than an instantaneous dose. It has been estimated that a median lethal dose of Po is , or 0.089 micrograms (μg), still an extremely small amount. For comparison, one grain of table salt is about 0.06 mg = 60 μg.


title: Polonium

text: In addition to the acute effects, radiation exposure (both internal and external) carries a long-term risk of death from cancer of 5–10% per Sv. The general population is exposed to small amounts of polonium as a radon daughter in indoor air; the isotopes Po and Po are thought to cause the majority of the estimated 15,000–22,000 lung cancer deaths in the US every year that have been attributed to indoor radon. Tobacco smoking causes additional exposure to polonium.


title: Polonium

text: The maximum allowable body burden for ingested Po is only , which is equivalent to a particle massing only 6.8 picograms. The maximum permissible workplace concentration of airborne Po is about 10 Bq/m ( µCi/cm). The target organs for polonium in humans are the spleen and liver. As the spleen (150 g) and the liver (1.3 to 3 kg) are much smaller than the rest of the body, if the polonium is concentrated in these vital organs, it is a greater threat to life than the dose which would be suffered (on average) by the whole body if it were spread evenly throughout the body, in the same way as caesium or tritium (as TO).


title: Polonium

text: Po is widely used in industry, and readily available with little regulation or restriction. In the US, a tracking system run by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was implemented in 2007 to register purchases of more than of polonium-210 (enough to make up 5,000 lethal doses). The IAEA "is said to be considering tighter regulations ... There is talk that it might tighten the polonium reporting requirement by a factor of 10, to ." As of 2013, this is still the only alpha emitting byproduct material available, as a NRC Exempt Quantity, which may be held without a radioactive material license.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium and its compounds must be handled in a glove box, which is further enclosed in another box, maintained at a slightly higher pressure than the glove box to prevent the radioactive materials from leaking out. Gloves made of natural rubber do not provide sufficient protection against the radiation from polonium; surgical gloves are necessary. Neoprene gloves shield radiation from polonium better than natural rubber.


title: Polonium

text: Despite the element's highly hazardous properties, circumstances in which polonium poisoning can occur are rare. Its extreme scarcity in nature, the short half-lives of all its isotopes, the specialised facilities and equipment needed to obtain any significant quantity, and safety precautions against laboratory accidents all make harmful exposure events unlikely. As such, only a handful of cases of radiation poisoning specifically attributable to polonium exposure have been confirmed.


title: Polonium

text: In response to concerns about the risks of occupational polonium exposure, quantities of Po were administered to five human volunteers at the University of Rochester from 1944 to 1947, in order to study its biological behaviour. These studies were funded by the Manhattan Project and the AEC. Four men and a woman participated, all suffering from terminal cancers, and ranged in age from their early thirties to early forties; all were chosen because experimenters wanted subjects who had not been exposed to polonium either through work or accident. Po was injected into four hospitalised patients, and orally given to a fifth. None of the administered doses (all ranging from 0.17 to 0.30 μCi kg) approached fatal quantities.


title: Polonium

text: The first documented death directly resulting from polonium poisoning occurred in the Soviet Union, on 10 July 1954. An unidentified 41-year-old man presented for medical treatment on 29 June, with severe vomiting and fever; the previous day, he had been working for five hours in an area in which, unknown to him, a capsule containing Po had depressurised and begun to disperse in aerosol form. Over this period, his total intake of airborne Po was estimated at 0.11 GBq (almost 25 times the estimated LD by inhalation of 4.5 MBq). Despite treatment, his condition continued to worsen and he died 13 days after the exposure event.


title: Polonium

text: It has also been suggested that Irène Joliot-Curie's 1956 death from leukaemia was owed to the radiation effects of polonium. She was accidentally exposed in 1946 when a sealed capsule of the element exploded on her laboratory bench.


title: Polonium

text: As well, several deaths in Israel during 1957–1969 have been alleged to have resulted from Po exposure. A leak was discovered at a Weizmann Institute laboratory in 1957. Traces of Po were found on the hands of Professor Dror Sadeh, a physicist who researched radioactive materials. Medical tests indicated no harm, but the tests did not include bone marrow. Sadeh, one of his students, and two colleagues died from various cancers over the subsequent few years. The issue was investigated secretly, but there was never any formal admission of a connection between the leak and the deaths.


title: Polonium

text: The cause of the 2006 death of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian FSB agent who had defected to the United Kingdom in 2001, was identified to be poisoning with a lethal dose of Po; it was subsequently determined that the Po had probably been deliberately administered to him by two Russian ex-security agents, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun. As such, Litvinenko's death was the first (and, to date, only) confirmed instance in which polonium's extreme toxicity has been used with malicious intent.


title: Polonium

text: In 2011, an allegation surfaced that the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died on 11 November 2004 of uncertain causes, also resulted from deliberate polonium poisoning, and in July 2012, abnormally high concentrations of Po were detected in Arafat's clothes and personal belongings by the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland. However, the Institut's spokesman stressed that despite these tests, Arafat's medical reports were not consistent with Po poisoning, and science journalist Deborah Blum suggested that tobacco smoke might rather have been responsible, as both Arafat and many of his colleagues were heavy smokers; subsequent tests by both French and Russian teams determined that the elevated Po levels were not the result of deliberate poisoning, and did not cause Arafat's death.


title: Polonium

text: It has been suggested that chelation agents, such as British Anti-Lewisite (dimercaprol), can be used to decontaminate humans. In one experiment, rats were given a fatal dose of 1.45 MBq/kg (8.7 ng/kg) of Po;


title: Polonium

text: Polonium-210 may be quantified in biological specimens by alpha particle spectrometry to confirm a diagnosis of poisoning in hospitalized patients or to provide evidence in a medicolegal death investigation. The baseline urinary excretion of polonium-210 in healthy persons due to routine exposure to environmental sources is normally in a range of 5–15 mBq/day. Levels in excess of 30 mBq/day are suggestive of excessive exposure to the radionuclide.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium-210 is widespread in the biosphere, including in human tissues, because of its position in the uranium-238 decay chain. Natural uranium-238 in the Earth's crust decays through a series of solid radioactive intermediates including radium-226 to the radioactive noble gas radon-222, some of which, during its 3.8-day half-life, diffuses into the atmosphere. There it decays through several more steps to polonium-210, much of which, during its 138-day half-life, is washed back down to the Earth's surface, thus entering the biosphere, before finally decaying to stable lead-206.


title: Polonium

text: As early as the 1920s, French biologist , using polonium provided by his colleague Marie Curie, showed that the element has a specific pattern of uptake in rabbit tissues, with high concentrations, particularly in liver, kidney, and testes. More recent evidence suggests that this behavior results from polonium substituting for its congener sulfur, also in group 16 of the periodic table, in sulfur-containing amino-acids or related molecules and that similar patterns of distribution occur in human tissues. Polonium is indeed an element naturally present in all humans, contributing appreciably to natural background dose, with wide geographical and cultural variations, and particularly high levels in arctic residents, for example.


title: Polonium

text: Polonium-210 in tobacco contributes to many of the cases of lung cancer worldwide. Most of this polonium is derived from lead-210 deposited on tobacco leaves from the atmosphere; the lead-210 is a product of radon-222 gas, much of which appears to originate from the decay of radium-226 from fertilizers applied to the tobacco soils.


title: Polonium

text: The presence of polonium in tobacco smoke has been known since the early 1960s. Some of the world's biggest tobacco firms researched ways to remove the substance—to no avail—over a 40-year period. The results were never published.


title: AirTag

text: AirTag is a tracking device developed by Apple. AirTag is designed to act as a key finder, which helps people find personal objects (e.g. keys, bags, apparel, small electronic devices, vehicles). To locate lost items, AirTags use Apple's crowdsourced Find My network, estimated in early 2021 to consist of approximately one billion devices worldwide that detect and anonymously report emitted Bluetooth signals. AirTags are compatible with any iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch device capable of running iOS/iPadOS 14.5 or later. Using the built-in U1 chip on iPhone 11 or later (excluding iPhone SE 2nd generation and iPhone SE 3rd generation), users can more precisely locate items using UWB (ultra-wideband) technology. AirTag was announced on April 20, 2021, made available for pre-order on April 23, and released on April 30.


title: AirTag

text: The product was rumored to be under development in April 2019. In February 2020, it was reported that Asahi Kasei was prepared to supply Apple with tens of millions of ultra-wideband (UWB) parts for the rumored AirTag in the second and third quarters of 2020, though the shipment was ultimately delayed. On April 2, 2020, a YouTube video on Apple Support page also confirmed AirTag. In Apple's iOS 14.0 release, code was discovered that described the reusable and removable battery that would be used in the AirTag. In March 2021, "MacWorld" stated that iOS 14.5 beta's Find My user interface included "Items" and "Accessories" features meant for AirTag support for a user's "backpack, luggage, headphones" and other objects. AppleInsider noted that the beta included safety warnings for "unauthorized AirTags" persistently in the user's vicinity.


title: AirTag

text: AirTags can be interacted with using the Find My app. Users may trigger the AirTag to play a sound from the app. iPhones equipped with the U1 chip can use "Precision Tracking" to provide direction to and precise distance from an AirTag. Precision Tracking utilizes ultra-wideband.


title: AirTag

text: AirTags are not satellite navigation devices. AirTags are located on a map within the Find My app by utilizing Bluetooth signals from other anonymous iOS and iPadOS devices out in the world. To help prevent unwanted tracking, an iOS/iPadOS device will alert their owner if someone else's AirTag seems to be with them, instead of with the AirTag's owner, for too long. If an AirTag is out of range of any Apple device for more than 8 to 24 hours, it will begin to beep to alert a person that an AirTag may have been placed in their possessions.


title: AirTag

text: Users can mark an AirTag as lost and provide a phone number and a message. Any iPhone user can see this phone number and message with the "identify lost item" feature within the Find My app which utilizes near-field communication (NFC) technology. Additionally, Android and Windows 10 Mobile phones with NFC can identify an AirTag with a tap, which will redirect to a website containing the message and phone number.


title: AirTag

text: AirTag requires an Apple ID and iOS or iPadOS 14.5 or later. It uses the CR2032 button cell replaceable with one year of battery life (though batteries with child-resistant bitterants cannot be used due to the design of the AirTag battery terminal). The maximum range of Bluetooth tracking is estimated to be around 100 meters. The water-resistance of an AirTag is rated IP67 water and dust; an AirTag can withstand 30 minutes of water immersion in standard laboratory conditions. Each Apple ID is limited to 16 AirTags.


title: AirTag

text: Apple provides no way for the user to force AirTag to carry out a firmware update. Firmware updates may happen automatically whenever an AirTag is in range of an iPhone (running iOS 14.5 or later) that it has been paired with, and when both have sufficient battery.


title: AirTag

text: Despite Apple's including technologies to help prevent unwanted tracking or stalking, "The Washington Post" found that it was "frighteningly easy" to bypass the systems put in place. It has been described as 'a gift to stalkers'. Concerns included the built-in audible alarm taking three days to sound, and the fact that most Americans had Android devices that would not receive alerts about nearby AirTags that iPhone devices receive. AirTags cannot have most of their components replaced correctly, but it has been found that AirTags with their speakers forcibly removed from the rest of the components were being used to track people. The AirTag cannot detect this change, making it harder for people to find out that an AirTag had been stalking them. AirTags with their speakers removed have been found for sale on sites like eBay and Etsy. In January 2022, BBC News spoke to six women who stated that they found unregistered AirTags inside things such as cars and bags. The AirTags were being used to stalk them.


title: AirTag

text: In late 2021, Apple released an app called Tracker Detect on the Google Play Store to help users of Android 9 or later to discover unknown AirTags near them in a "lost" state and potentially being used for malicious tracking purposes. However, the app does not run in the background.


title: AirTag

text: In February 2022, Apple added a one-time warning for users setting up their AirTag, notifying them that using the device to track people is illegal and the device is only meant for tracking personal belongings. It will take between 8-24 hours for an AirTag to chirp if it has been separated from its owner, it will not chirp if the speaker has been removed.


title: AirTag

text: "The National Post" in Canada reported that AirTags were placed on vehicles at shopping malls and parking lots without the drivers' knowledge, in order to track them to their homes, where the vehicles would be stolen. In response, Apple announced just before WWDC 2021 that it had begun rolling out updates that would allow anyone with an NFC-capable phone to tap an unwanted AirTag for instructions on how to disable it, and that they had decreased the delay time for the audible alert that sounds after the AirTag is separated from its owner from three days to a random time between 8 and 24 hours.


title: AirTag

text: Users who set their AirTags to lost mode are prompted to provide a contact phone number for finders to call. In September 2021, security researcher Brian Krebs noted that the phone number field will actually accept any type of input, including arbitrary computer code, opening up the potential use of AirTags as Trojan horse devices.


title: AirTag

text: Similar product manufacturer Tile criticized Apple for using similar technologies and designs to Tile's trackers. Spokespeople for Tile made a testimony to the United States Congress saying that Apple was supporting "anti-competitive practices", claiming that Apple had done this in the past, and that they think it is "entirely appropriate for Congress to take a closer look at Apple's business practices".


title: AirTag

text: AirTags do not have holes or other mechanical features that would allow them to be positively attached or affixed to the item being tracked; solutions include adhesives (glue, tape) and purpose-built accessories. The polyurethane AirTag Loop is the least expensive solution sold by Apple; it costs the same as a single AirTag and has been criticized as an "accessory tax".


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Kampuchea ( ), officially known as Democratic Kampuchea (DK; ) from 5 January 1976, was a one-party totalitarian state which encompassed modern-day Cambodia and existed from 1975 to 1979. It was controlled by the Khmer Rouge (KR), the name popularly given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), and was founded when KR forces defeated the Khmer Republic of Lon Nol in 1975.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Between 1975 and 1979, the state and its ruling Khmer Rouge regime were responsible for the deaths of millions of Cambodians through forced labour and genocide. The KR lost control of most Cambodian territory to the Vietnamese occupation. From 1979 to 1982, Democratic Kampuchea survived as a rump state. In June 1982, the Khmer Rouge formed the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) with two non-communist guerrilla factions, which retained international recognition. The state was renamed as Cambodia in 1990 in the run-up to the UN-sponsored 1991 Paris Peace Agreements.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In 1970, Premier Lon Nol and the National Assembly deposed Norodom Sihanouk as the head of state. Sihanouk, opposing the new government, entered into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge against them. Taking advantage of Vietnamese occupation of eastern Cambodia, massive United States carpet bombing ranging across the country, and Sihanouk's reputation, the Khmer Rouge were able to present themselves as a peace-oriented party in a coalition that represented the majority of the people.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Thus, with large popular support in the countryside, the capital Phnom Penh finally fell on 17 April 1975 to the Khmer Rouge. The KR continued to use Sihanouk as a figurehead for the government until 2 April 1976 when Sihanouk resigned as head of state. Sihanouk remained under comfortable, but insecure, house arrest in Phnom Penh, until late in the war with Vietnam he departed for the United States where he made Democratic Kampuchea's case before the Security Council. He eventually relocated to China.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Thus, prior to the KR's takeover of Phnom Penh in 1975 and the start of the Zero Years, Cambodia had already been involved in the Third Indochina War and tensions between Cambodia and Vietnam were growing due to differences in communist ideology and the incursion of Vietnamese military presence within Cambodian borders. The context of war destabilised the country and displaced Cambodians while making available to the KR the weapons of war. The KR leveraged on the devastation caused by the war to recruit members and used this past violence to justify the similarly, if not more, violent and radical policies of the regime.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The birth of DK and its propensity for violence must be understood against this backdrop of war that likely played a contributing factor in hardening the population against such violence and simultaneously increasing their tolerance and hunger for it. Early explanations for the KR brutality suggest that the KR had been radicalised during the war years and later turned this radical understanding of society and violence onto their countrymen. This backdrop of violence and brutality arguably also affected everyday Cambodians, priming them for the violence that they themselves perpetrated under the KR regime.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Phnom Penh fell on 17 April 1975. Sihanouk was given the symbolic position of Head of State for the new government of Democratic Kampuchea and, in September 1975, returned to Phnom Penh from exile in Beijing. After a trip abroad, during which he visited several communist countries and recommended the recognition of Democratic Kampuchea, Sihanouk returned again to Cambodia at the end of 1975. A year after the Khmer Rouge takeover, Sihanouk resigned in mid-April 1976 (made retroactive to 2 April 1976) and was placed under house arrest, where he remained until 1979, and the Khmer Rouge remained in sole control.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The deportations were one of the markers of the beginning of the Khmer Rouge rule. They demanded and then forced the people to leave the cities and live in the countryside. Phnom Penh—populated by 2.5 million people —was soon nearly empty. The roads out of the city were clogged with evacuees. Similar evacuations occurred throughout the nation.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The conditions of the evacuation and the treatment of the people involved depended often on which military units and commanders were conducting the specific operations. Pol Pot's brother – Chhay, who worked as a Republican journalist in the capital – was reported to have died during the evacuation of Phnom Penh.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Even Phnom Penh's hospitals were emptied of their patients. The Khmer Rouge provided transportation for some of the aged and the disabled, and they set up stockpiles of food outside the city for the refugees; however, the supplies were inadequate to sustain the hundreds of thousands of people on the road. Even seriously injured hospital patients, many without any means of conveyance, were summarily forced to leave regardless of their condition.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The foreign community, about 800 people, was quarantined in the French embassy compound, and by the end of the month the foreigners were taken by truck to the Thai border. Khmer women who were married to foreigners were allowed to accompany their husbands, but Khmer men were not permitted to leave with their foreign wives.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Western historians claim that the motives were political, based on deep-rooted resentment of the cities. The Khmer Rouge was determined to turn the country into a nation of peasants in which the corruption and "parasitism" of city life would be completely uprooted. In addition, Pol Pot wanted to break up the "enemy spy organisations" that allegedly were based in the urban areas. Finally, it seems that Pol Pot and his hard-line associates on the CPK Political Bureau used the forced evacuations to gain control of the city's population and to weaken the position of their factional rivals within the communist party.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge abolished the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (established in 1970). Cambodia did not have any sort of government until the proclamation of the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea on 5 January 1976.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge continued to use King Norodom Sihanouk as a figurehead for the government until 2 April 1976, when Sihanouk resigned as head of state. Sihanouk remained under insecure house arrest in Phnom Penh, until late in the war with Vietnam when he departed for the United States where he made Democratic Kampuchea's case before the Security Council. He eventually relocated to China.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The "rights and duties of the individual" were briefly defined in Article 12. They included none of what are commonly regarded as guarantees of political human rights except the statement that "men and women are equal in every respect." The document declared, however, that "all workers" and "all peasants" were "masters" of their factories and fields. An assertion that "there is absolutely no unemployment in Democratic Kampuchea" rings true in light of the regime's massive use of force.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Constitution defined Democratic Kampuchea's foreign policy principles in Article 21, the document's longest, in terms of "independence, peace, neutrality, and nonalignment." It pledged the country's support to anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World. In light of the regime's aggressive attacks against Vietnamese, Thai, and Lao territory during 1977 and 1978, the promise to "maintain close and friendly relations with all countries sharing a common border" bore little resemblance to reality.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Governmental institutions were outlined very briefly in the Constitution. The legislature, the Kampuchean People's Representative Assembly (KPRA), contained 250 members "representing workers, peasants, and other working people and the Kampuchean Revolutionary army." One hundred and fifty KPRA seats were allocated for peasant representatives; fifty, for the armed forces; and fifty, for worker and other representatives. The legislature was to be popularly elected for a five-year term. Its first and only election was held on 20 March 1976. "New People" apparently were not allowed to participate.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The executive branch of government also was chosen by the KPRA. It consisted of a state presidium "responsible for representing the state of Democratic Kampuchea inside and outside the country." It served for a five-year term, and its president was head of state. Khieu Samphan was the only person to serve in this office, which he assumed after Sihanouk's resignation. The judicial system was composed of "people's courts", the judges for which were appointed by the KPRA, as was the executive branch.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Constitution did not mention regional or local government institutions. After assuming power, the Khmer Rouge abolished the old provinces () and replaced them with seven zones; the Northern Zone, Northeastern Zone, Northwestern Zone, Central Zone, Eastern Zone, Western Zone, and Southwestern Zone. There were also two other regional-level units: the Kracheh Special Region Number 505 and, until 1977, the Siemreab Special Region Number 106.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The zones were divided into (regions) that were given numbers. Number One, appropriately, encompassed the Samlot region of the Northwestern Zone (including Battambang Province), where the insurrection against Sihanouk had erupted in early 1967. With this exception, the damban appear to have been numbered arbitrarily.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The damban were divided into (districts), (subdistricts), and (villages), the latter usually containing several hundred people. This pattern was roughly similar to that which existed under Sihanouk and the Khmer Republic, but inhabitants of the villages were organized into (groups) composed of ten to fifteen families. On each level, administration was directed by a three-person committee (, or ).


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: CPK members occupied committee posts at the higher levels. Subdistrict and village committees were often staffed by local poor peasants, and, very rarely, by "new people." Cooperatives (), similar in jurisdictional area to the , assumed local government responsibilities in some areas.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In January 1976, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) promulgated the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea. The Constitution provided for a Kampuchean People's Representative Assembly (KPRA) to be elected by secret ballot in direct general elections and a State Praesidium to be selected and appointed every five years by the KPRA. The KPRA met only once, a three-day session in April 1976. However, members of the KPRA were never elected, as the Central Committee of the CPK appointed the chairman and other high officials both to it and to the State Praesidium. Plans for elections of members were discussed, but the 250 members of the KPRA were in fact appointed by the upper echelon of CPK.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: All power belonged to the Standing Committee of CPK, the membership of which comprised the Secretary and Prime Minister Pol Pot, his Deputy Secretary Nuon Chea and seven others. It was known also as the "Centre", the "Organisation" or "Angkar", and its daily work was conducted from Office 870 in Phnom Penh. For almost two years after the takeover, the Khmer Rouge continued to refer to itself as simply Angkar. It was only in a March 1977 speech that Pol Pot revealed the CPK's existence. It was also around that time that it was confirmed that Pol Pot was the same person as Saloth Sar, who had long been cited as the CPK's general secretary.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge government did away with all former Cambodian traditional administrative divisions. Instead of provinces, Democratic Kampuchea was divided into geographic zones, derived from divisions established by the Khmer Rouge when they fought against the ill-fated Khmer Republic led by General Lon Nol. There were seven zones, namely the Northwest, the North, the Northeast, the East, the Southwest, the West and the center, plus two Special Regions, i.e. the Kratie Special Region no 505 and (before mid-1977) the Siemreap Special Region no 106.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The regions were subdivided into smaller areas or . These were known by numbers, which were assigned without a seemingly coherent pattern. Villages were also subdivided into 'groups' ( ) of 15–20 households who were led by a group leader ( ).


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge destroyed the legal and judicial structures of the Khmer Republic. There were no courts, judges, laws or trials in Democratic Kampuchea. The "people’s courts" stipulated in Article 9 of the Constitution were never established. The old legal structures were replaced by re-education, interrogation and security centres where former Khmer Republic officials and supporters as well as others were detained and executed.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: During the Democratic Kampuchea days, the 68,000-member Khmer Rouge-dominated CPNLAF (Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces) force, which completed its conquest of Phnom Penh, Cambodia in April 1975, was renamed the RAK (Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea). This name dated back to the peasant uprising that broke out in the Samlot district of Battambang Province in 1967. Under its long-time commander and then Minister of Defense Son Sen, the RAK had 230 battalions in 35 to 40 regiments and in 12 to 14 brigades. The command structure in units was based on three-person committees in which the political commissar ranked higher than the military commander and his deputy.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Cambodia was divided into zones and special sectors by the RAK, the boundaries of which changed slightly over the years. Within these areas, the RAK's first task was the peremptory execution of former Khmer National Armed Forces (FANK) officers and of their families, without trial or fanfare to eliminate KR enemies. The RAK's next priority was to consolidate into a national army the separate forces that were operating more or less autonomously in the various zones. The Khmer Rouge units were commanded by zonal secretaries who were simultaneously party and military officers, some of whom were said to have manifested "warlord characteristics".


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Troops from one zone were frequently sent to another zone to enforce discipline. These efforts to discipline zonal secretaries and their dissident or ideologically impure cadres gave rise to the purges that were to decimate RAK ranks, to undermine the morale of the victorious army, and to generate the seeds of rebellion. In this way, the KR used the RAK to sustain and fuel its violent campaign.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: According to Pol Pot, Cambodia was made up of four classes: peasants, proletariat, bourgeoisie, and feudalists. Post-revolutionary society, as defined by the 1976 Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea, consisted of workers, peasants, and "all other Kampuchean working people." No allowance was made for a transitional stage such as China's "New Democracy" in which "patriotic" landlord or bourgeois elements were permitted to play a role in socialist construction.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Sihanouk writes that in 1975 he, Khieu Samphan, and Khieu Thirith went to visit Zhou Enlai, who was gravely ill. Zhou warned them not to attempt to achieve communism in a single step, as China had attempted in the late 1950s with the Great Leap Forward. Khieu Samphan and Khieu Thirith "just smiled an incredulous and superior smile." Khieu Samphan and Son Sen later boasted to Sihanouk that "we will be the first nation to create a completely communist society without wasting time on intermediate steps."


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Although conditions varied from region to region, a situation that was, in part, a reflection of factional divisions that still existed within the CPK during the 1970s, the testimony of refugees reveals that the most salient social division was between the politically suspect "new people", those driven out of the towns after the communist victory, and the more reliable "old people", the peasants who had remained in the countryside.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The working class was a negligible factor because of the evacuation of the urban areas and the idling of most of the country's few factories. The one important working class group in pre-revolutionary Cambodia—labourers on large rubber plantations—traditionally had consisted mostly of Vietnamese immigrants and thus was politically suspect.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The number of people, including refugees, living in the urban areas on the eve of the communist victory probably was somewhat more than 3 million, out of the total population of roughly 8 million. As mentioned, despite their rural origins, the refugees were considered "new people"—that is, people unsympathetic to Democratic Kampuchea. Some doubtless passed as "old people" after returning to their native villages, but the Khmer Rouge seem to have been extremely vigilant in recording and keeping track of the movements of families and of individuals.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The lowest unit of social control, the (group), consisted of ten to fifteen nuclear families whose activities were closely supervised by a three-person committee. The committee chairman was selected by the CPK. This grassroots leadership was required to note the social origin of each family under its jurisdiction and to report it to persons higher up in the Angkar hierarchy. The number of "new people" may initially have been as high as 2.5 million.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The "new people" were treated as forced labourers. They were constantly moved, were forced to do the hardest physical labour, and worked in the most inhospitable, fever-ridden parts of the country, such as forests, upland areas, and swamps. "New people" were segregated from "old people", enjoyed little or no privacy, and received the smallest rice rations. When the country experienced food shortages in 1977, the "new people" suffered the most.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The medical care available to them was primitive or nonexistent. Families often were separated because people were divided into work brigades according to age and sex and sent to different parts of the country. "New people" were subjected to unending political indoctrination and could be executed without trial.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The situation of the "old people" under Khmer Rouge rule was more ambiguous. Refugee interviews reveal cases in which villagers were treated as harshly as the "new people", enduring forced labour, indoctrination, the separation of children from parents, and executions; however, they were generally allowed to remain in their native villages.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Because of their age-old resentment of the urban and rural elites, many of the poorest peasants probably were sympathetic to Khmer Rouge's goals. In the early 1980s, visiting Western journalists found that the issue of peasant support for the Khmer Rouge was an extremely sensitive subject that officials of the People's Republic of Kampuchea were not inclined to discuss.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Although the Southwestern Zone was one original centre of power of the Khmer Rouge, and cadres administered it with strict discipline, random executions were relatively rare, and "new people" were not persecuted if they had a cooperative attitude. In the Western Zone and in the Northwestern Zone, conditions were harsh. Starvation was general in the latter zone because cadres sent rice to Phnom Penh rather than distributing it to the local population. In the Northern Zone and in the Central Zone, there seem to have been more executions than there were victims of starvation. Little reliable information emerged on conditions in the Northeastern Zone, one of the most isolated parts of Cambodia.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: On the surface, society in Democratic Kampuchea was strictly egalitarian. The Khmer language, like many in Southeast Asia, has a complex system of usages to define speakers' rank and social status. These usages were abandoned, neologisms were introduced, and everyday vocabulary was altered to encourage a more collectivist mentality. People were encouraged to call each other "friend", or "comrade" (in Khmer, ), and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as bowing or folding the hands in salutation. They were also encouraged to talk about themselves in the plural "we" rather than the singular "I".


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The language was transformed in other ways. The Khmer Rouge invented new terms. People were told they must "forge" () a new revolutionary character, that they were the "instruments" () of the Angkar, and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary times (, or "memory sickness") could result in their receiving Angkar's "invitation" to be deindustrialised and to live in a concentration camp.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Despite the ideological commitment to radical equality, CPK members, local-level leaders of poor peasant backgrounds who collaborated with Angkar, and the armed forces constituted a clearly recognizable elite. They had a higher standard of living and received special privileges not enjoyed by the rest of the population. Refugees agree that, even during times of severe food shortages, members of the grassroots elite had adequate, if not luxurious, supplies of food. One refugee wrote that "pretty new bamboo houses" were built for Khmer Rouge cadres along the river in Phnom Penh. Members of the Central Committee could go to China for medical treatment, and the highest echelons of the party had access to imported luxury products.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: They also had a tendency to nepotism similar of the Sihanouk-era elite. Pol Pot's wife, Khieu Ponnary, was head of the Association of Democratic Khmer Women and her younger sister, Khieu Thirith, served as minister of social action. These two women were considered among the half-dozen most powerful personalities in Democratic Kampuchea. Son Sen's wife, Yun Yat, served as minister for culture, education and learning.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Several of Pol Pot's nephews and nieces were given jobs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One of Ieng Sary's daughters was appointed head of the Calmette Hospital although she had not graduated from secondary school. A niece of Ieng Sary was given a job as English translator for Radio Phnom Penh although her fluency in the language was relative.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Family ties were important, both because of the culture and because of the leadership's intense secretiveness and distrust of outsiders, especially of pro-Vietnamese communists. Different ministries, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry, were controlled and exploited by powerful Khmer Rouge families. Administering the diplomatic corps was regarded as an especially profitable fiefdom.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: According to Craig Etcheson, an authority on Democratic Kampuchea, members of the revolutionary army lived in self-contained colonies, and they had a "distinctive warrior-caste ethos." Armed forces units personally loyal to Pol Pot, known as the "Unconditional Divisions", were a privileged group within the military.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge regime was also characterized by "totalitarian puritanism" with any sex before marriage being punishable by death in many cooperatives and zones.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge regarded traditional education with undiluted hostility. After the fall of Phnom Penh, they executed thousands of teachers. Those who had been educators prior to 1975 survived by hiding their identities.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Aside from teaching basic mathematical skills and literacy, the major goal of the new educational system was to instill revolutionary values in the young. For a regime at war with most of Cambodia's traditional values, this meant that it was necessary to create a gap between the values of the young and the values of the nonrevolutionary old.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The regime recruited children to spy on adults. The pliancy of the younger generation made them, in Angkar's words, the "dictatorial instrument of the party." In 1962 the communists had created a special secret organisation, the Democratic Youth League, that, in the early 1970s, changed its name to the Communist Youth League of Kampuchea. Pol Pot considered Youth League alumni as his most loyal and reliable supporters and used them to gain control of the central and the regional CPK apparatus. The powerful Khieu Thirith, minister of social action, was responsible for directing the youth movement.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Hardened young cadres, many little more than twelve years of age, were enthusiastic accomplices in some of the regime's worst atrocities. Sihanouk, who was kept under virtual house arrest in Phnom Penh between 1976 and 1978, wrote in "War and Hope" that his youthful guards, having been separated from their families and given a thorough indoctrination, were encouraged to play cruel games involving the torture of animals. Having lost parents, siblings, and friends in the war and lacking the Buddhist values of their elders, the Khmer Rouge youth also lacked the inhibitions that would have dampened their zeal for revolutionary terror.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Health facilities in the years 1975 to 1978 were abysmally poor. Many physicians either were executed or were prohibited from practicing. It appears that the party and the armed forces elite had access to Western medicine and to a system of hospitals that offered reasonable treatment, but ordinary people, especially "new people", were expected to use traditional plant and herbal remedies that were of debatable usefulness. Some bartered their rice rations and personal possessions to obtain aspirin and other simple drugs.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Article 20 of the 1976 Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea guaranteed religious freedom, but it also declared that "all reactionary religions that are detrimental to Democratic Kampuchea and the Kampuchean People are strictly forbidden." About 85 percent of the population followed the Theravada school of Buddhism. The country's 40,000 to 60,000 Buddhist monks, regarded by the regime as social parasites, were defrocked and forced to work in the rural co-operatives and irrigation projects.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Many monks were executed; temples and pagodas were destroyed or turned into storehouses. Images of the Buddha were defaced and dumped into rivers and lakes. People who were discovered praying or expressing religious sentiments were often killed. The Christian and Muslim communities also were even more persecuted, as they were labelled as part of a pro-Western cosmopolitan sphere, hindering Cambodian culture and society.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh was completely razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden "(ḥarām)." Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed. One hundred and thirty Cham mosques were destroyed.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Despite its ideological iconoclasm, many historical monuments were left undamaged by the Khmer Rouge; for Pol Pot's government, like its predecessors, the historic state of Angkor was a key point of reference.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge banned by decree the existence of ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Muslim Cham, and 20 other minorities, which altogether constituted 15% of the population at the beginning of the Khmer Rouge's rule.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Tens of thousands of Vietnamese were raped, mutilated, and murdered in regime-organised massacres. Most of the survivors fled to Vietnam.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Cham, a Muslim minority who are the descendants of migrants from the old state of Champa, were forced to adopt the Khmer language and customs. Their communities, which traditionally had existed apart from Khmer villages, were broken up. Forty thousand Cham were killed in two districts of Kampong Cham Province alone. Thai minorities living near the Thai border also were persecuted.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The state of the Chinese Cambodians was described as "the worst disaster ever to befall any ethnic Chinese community in Southeast Asia". Cambodians of Chinese descent were massacred by the Khmer Rouge under the justification that they "used to exploit the Cambodian people". The Chinese were stereotyped as traders and moneylenders, and therefore were associated with capitalism. Among the Khmer, the Chinese were also resented for their lighter skin color and cultural differences. Hundreds of Chinese families were rounded up in 1978 and told that they were to be resettled, but were actually executed.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: At the beginning of the Khmer Rouge's rule in 1975, there were 425,000 ethnic Chinese in Cambodia. By the end in 1979, there were 200,000. In addition to being a proscribed ethnic group by the government, the Chinese were predominantly city-dwellers, making them vulnerable to the Khmer Rouge's revolutionary ruralism. The government of the People's Republic of China did not protest the killings of ethnic Chinese in Cambodia. The policies of the Khmer Rouge towards Sino-Cambodians seems puzzling in light of the fact that the two most powerful people in the regime and presumably the originators of the racist doctrine, Pol Pot and Nuon Chea, both had mixed Chinese-Cambodian ancestry. Other senior figures in the Khmer Rouge state apparatus such as Son Sen and Ta Mok also had Chinese ethnic heritage.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In the late 1980s, little was known of Khmer Rouge policies toward the tribal peoples of the northeast, the Khmer Loeu. Pol Pot established an insurgent base in the tribal areas of Ratanakiri Province in the early 1960s, and he may have had a substantial Khmer Loeu following. Predominantly animist peoples, with few ties to the Buddhist culture of the lowland Khmers, the Khmer Loeu had resented Sihanouk's attempts to "civilise" them.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: A security apparatus called Santebal was part of the Khmer Rouge organizational structure well before 17 April 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took control over Cambodia. Son Sen, later the Deputy Prime Minister for Defense of Democratic Kampuchea, was in charge of the Santebal, and in that capacity he appointed Kang Kek lew (Comrade Duch) to run its security apparatus. When the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, Duch moved his headquarters to Phnom Penh and reported directly to Son Sen. At that time, a small chapel in the capital was used to incarcerate the regime's prisoners, who totaled fewer than two hundred. In May 1976, Duch moved his headquarters to its final location, a former high school known as Tuol Sleng, which could hold up to 1,500 prisoners.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured, and eventually executed anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed "enemies":


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Through the 1970s, and especially after mid-1975, the party was also shaken by factional struggles. There were even armed attempts to topple Pol Pot. The resultant purges reached a crest in 1977 and 1978 when thousands, including some important KCP leaders, were executed.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Today, examples of the torture methods used by the Khmer Rouge can be seen at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The museum occupies the former grounds of a high school turned prison camp that was operated by Comrade Duch.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The torture system at Tuol Sleng was designed to make prisoners confess to whatever crimes they were charged with by their captors. In their confessions, the prisoners were asked to describe their personal backgrounds. If they were party members, they had to say when they joined the revolution and describe their work assignments in DK. Then the prisoners would relate their supposed treasonous activities in chronological order. The third section of the confession text described prisoners' thwarted conspiracies and supposed treasonous conversations. In the end, the confessions would list a string of traitors who were the prisoners' friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Some lists contained over a hundred names. People whose names were on the confession list were often called in for interrogation. Typical confessions ran into thousands of words in which the prisoner would interweave true events in their lives with imaginary accounts of their espionage activities for the CIA, the KGB, or Vietnam.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: 17,000 people passed through Security Prison 21 (now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum), before they were taken to sites (also known as the Killing Fields), outside Phnom Penh such as Choeung Ek where most were executed (often with pickaxes, to save bullets) and buried in mass graves. Of the thousands who entered Tuol Sleng only twelve are known to have survived.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: While the historical context and ideological underpinnings of the KR regime provide reasons for why the Cambodian genocide occurred, more explanations must be had for the widespread violence that was carried out by Cambodians against Cambodians. Anthropologist Alexander Hinton's research project to interview perpetrators of violence during the KR regime sheds some light on the question of collective violence. Hinton's analysis of top-down initiatives shows that perpetrators in the KR were motivated to kill because KR leaders were effectively able to "localize their ideologies" to appeal to their followers.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Specifically, Hinton spoke to two ideological palimpsests that the KR used. First, the KR tapped on the Khmer notion of disproportionate revenge to motivate a resonant equivalent—class rage against previous oppressors. Hinton uses the example of revenge in the Cambodian context to illustrate how closely violence can be tied to and explained by the Buddhist notion of karma, which dictates that there is a cycle of cause and effect in which one's past actions will affect one's future life.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Next, the KR leadership built on local notions of power and patronage vis-à-vis Wolters’ mandala polity to establish their authority as a potent centre. In so doing, the KR escalated the suspicion and instability inherent within such patronage networks, setting the stage for distrust and competition on which political purges were based.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: After establishing the historical and ideological context as the backdrop, Hinton delves deeper into the complexities of perpetrator motivation through using both macro- and micro-level analyses to uncover how ideology is linked to psychocultural processes. Under the KR, the encroachment of the public sphere into that which was once private space made constant group-level interactions. Within these spaces, cultural models such as face, shame, and honour were adapted to KR notions of social status and bound up with revolutionary consciousness.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Thus, individuals were judged and their social status was based on these adapted KR conceptions of hierarchy which were predominantly political in nature. Within this framework, the KR constructed essentialised categories of identity which crystallised difference and inscribed these differences on victim's bodies, providing the logic and impetus for violence. To save face and preserve one's social status within the KR hierarchy, Hinton argues that first, violence was practised by cadres to avoid shame or loss of face; and second, that shamed cadres could restore their face through perpetrating violence. At the level of individuals, the need for social approval and belonging to a community, even one as twisted as the KR, contributed to obedience, motivating violence within Cambodia.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Democratic Kampuchea's economic policy was similar to, and possibly inspired by, China's radical Great Leap Forward that carried out immediate collectivisation of the Chinese countryside in 1958. During the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge established "mutual assistance groups" in the areas they occupied.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: After 1973, these were organised into "low-level cooperatives" in which land and agricultural implements were lent by peasants to the community but remained their private property. "High-level cooperatives", in which private property was abolished and the harvest became the collective property of the peasants, appeared in 1974. "Communities", introduced in early 1976, were a more advanced form of high-level cooperative in which communal dining was instituted. State-owned farms also were established.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Far more than the Chinese communists, the Khmer Rouge pursued the ideal of economic self-sufficiency, specifically the version that Khieu Samphan had outlined in his 1959 doctoral dissertation. Currency was abolished, and domestic trade or commerce could be conducted only through barter. Rice, measured in tins, became the most important medium of exchange, although people also bartered gold, jewelry, and other personal possessions.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Foreign trade was almost completely halted, though there was a limited revival in late 1976 and early 1977. China was the most important trading partner, but commerce amounting to a few million dollars was also conducted with France, the United Kingdom, and with the United States through a Hong Kong intermediary.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: From the Khmer Rouge perspective, the country was free of foreign economic domination for the first time in its 2,000-year history. By mobilising the people into work brigades organised in a military fashion, the Khmer Rouge hoped to unleash the masses' productive forces.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: There was an "Angkorian" component to economic policy. That ancient kingdom had grown rich and powerful because it controlled extensive irrigation systems that produced surpluses of rice. Agriculture in modern Cambodia depended, for the most part, on seasonal rains.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: By building a nationwide system of irrigation canals, dams, and reservoirs, the leadership believed it would be possible to produce rice on a year-round basis. It was the "new people" who suffered and sacrificed the most to complete these ambitious projects.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Although the Khmer Rouge implemented an "agriculture first" policy in order to achieve self-sufficiency, they were not, as some observers have argued, "back-to-nature" primitivists. Although the 1970–75 war and the evacuation of the cities had destroyed or idled most industry, small contingents of workers were allowed to return to the urban areas to reopen some plants.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Like their Chinese counterparts, the Cambodian communists had great faith in the inventive power and the technical aptitude of the masses, and they constantly published reports of peasants' adapting old mechanical parts to new uses. Similar to Mao's regime, which had attempted unsuccessfully to build a new steel industry based on backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward, the Khmer Rouge sought to move industry to the countryside. Significantly, the seal of Democratic Kampuchea displayed not only sheaves of rice and irrigation sluices, but also a factory with smokestacks.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Democratic Kampuchea regime maintained close ties with China, its main backer, and to a lesser extent with North Korea. In 1977, in a message congratulating the Cambodian comrades on the 17th anniversary of the CKP, Kim Jong-il congratulated the Cambodian people for having "wiped out counterrevolutionary group of spies who had committed subversive activities and sabotage".


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: On taking power, the Khmer Rouge spurned both the Western states and the Soviet Union as sources of support. Instead, China became Cambodia's main international partner. With Vietnam increasingly siding with the Soviet Union over China, the Chinese saw Pol Pot's government as a bulwark against Vietnamese influence in Indochina. It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, and in 1975 alone, at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid came from China. The relationship between the Chinese and Cambodian governments was nevertheless marred by mutual suspicion and China had little influence on Pol Pot's domestic policies. It had a greater influence on Cambodia's foreign policy, successfully pushing the country to pursue rapprochement with Thailand and open communication with the U.S. to combat Vietnamese influence in the region. After Mao died in September 1976, Pol Pot praised him and Cambodia declared an official period of mourning. In November 1976, Pol Pot travelled secretly to Beijing, seeking to retain his country's alliance with China after the Gang of Four were arrested. From Beijing, he was then taken on a tour of China, visiting sites associated with Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: While Democratic Kampuchea held Cambodia's UN seat and was internationally recognized, only the following countries had an embassy in Cambodia: Burma, Albania, People's Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Laos, Romania, Vietnam and Yugoslavia. Democratic Kampuchea itself, on the other hand, established embassies in various countries: Albania, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, People's Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Romania, Laos, Sweden, Tanzania, USSR, Vietnam and Yugoslavia. The Chinese were the only country allowed to retain their old Phnom Penh embassy. All other diplomats were made to live in assigned quarters on the Boulevard Monivong. This street was barricaded off and the diplomats were not permitted to leave without escorts. Their food was brought to them and provided through the only shop that remained open in the country.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge was heavily influenced by Mao Zedong, the French Communist Party and the writings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin as well as ideas of Khmer racial superiority. Turning to look at the roots of the ideology which guided the KR intellectuals behind the revolution, it becomes evident that the roots of such radical thought can be traced to an education in France that started many of the top KR officials on the road to thinking that communism demanded violence.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Influences from the French Revolution led many who studied in Paris to believe that Marxist political theory that was based on class struggle could be applied to the national cause in Cambodia. The premise of class struggle sowed the ideological seeds for violence and made violence appear all the more necessary for the revolution to succeed. In addition, because many of the top KR officials such as Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan and Kang Kek Iew (also known as Duch) were educators and intellectuals, they were unable to connect with the masses and were alienated upon their return to Cambodia, further fuelling their radical thought.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Michael Vickery downplays the importance of personalities in explaining the DK phenomenon, noting that DK leaders were never considered evil by prewar contemporaries. This view is challenged by some including Rithy Phan, who after interviewing Duch, the head of Tuol Sleng, seems to suggest that Duch was a fearsome individual who preyed on and seized upon the weaknesses of others. All in all, the historical context of civil war, coupled with the ideological ferment in Cambodian intellectuals returning from France, set the stage for the KR revolution and the violence that it would propagate.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge was determined to turn the country into a nation of peasants in which the corruption and "parasitism" of city life would be completely uprooted. Communalisation was implemented by putting men, women and children to work in the fields, which disrupted family life. The regime claimed to have "liberated" women through this process and according to Zal Karkaria "appeared to have implemented Engels's doctrine in its purest form: women produced, therefore they had been freed".


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Under the leadership of Pol Pot, cities were emptied, organised religion was abolished, and private property, money and markets were eliminated. An unprecedented genocide campaign ensued that led to annihilation of about 25% of the country's population, with much of the killing being motivated by Khmer Rouge ideology which urged "disproportionate revenge" against rich and powerful oppressors. Victims included such class enemies as rich capitalists, professionals, intellectuals, police and government employees (including most of Lon Nol's leadership), along with ethnic minorities such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao and Cham.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The Khmer Rouge regime was one of the most brutal in recorded history, especially considering how briefly it ruled the country. Based on an analysis of mass grave sites, the DC-Cam Mapping Program and Yale University estimated that the Khmer Rouge executed over 1.38 million people. If deaths from disease and starvation are counted, as many as 2.5 million people died as a result of Khmer Rouge rule. This included most of the country's minority populations. For instance, the country's ethnic Vietnamese population was almost completely wiped out; nearly all ethnic Vietnamese who did not flee immediately after the takeover were exterminated.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Not content with ruling Cambodia, the KR leaders also dreamed of reviving the Angkorian empire of a thousand years earlier, which ruled over large parts of what today are Thailand and Vietnam. This involved launching military attacks into southern Vietnam in which thousands of unarmed villagers were massacred.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Immediately following the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975, there were skirmishes between their troops and Vietnamese forces. Many incidents occurred in May 1975. The Cambodians launched attacks on the Vietnamese islands of Phú Quốc and Thổ Chu causing the death of over 500 civilians and intruded into Vietnamese border provinces. In late May, at about the same time that the United States launched an airstrike against the oil refinery at Kompong Som, following the "Mayagüez" incident, Vietnamese forces seized the Cambodian island of Poulo Wai. According to Republic of Vietnam, Poulo Wai was a part of Vietnam since the 18th century and the island was under Cambodian administrative management in 1939 in accordance with the decisions of French colonists. Vietnam has recognized Poulo Wai as part of Cambodia since 1976, and the recognition is seen as a sign of goodwill by Vietnam to preserve its relationship with Cambodia.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The following month, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Sary travelled secretly to Hanoi in May, where they proposed a Friendship Treaty between the two countries. In the short term, this successfully eased tensions. Although the Vietnamese evacuated Poulo Wai in August, incidents continued along Cambodia's northeastern border. At the instigation of the Phnom Penh regime, thousands of Vietnamese also were driven out of Cambodia.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In May Cambodian and Vietnamese representatives met in Phnom Penh in order to establish a commission to resolve border disagreements. The Vietnamese refused to recognize the "Brévié Line"—the colonial-era demarcation of maritime borders between the two countries—and the negotiations broke down. In late September, however, a few days before Pol Pot was forced to resign as prime minister, air links were established between Phnom Penh and Hanoi.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: With Pol Pot back at the forefront of the regime in 1977, the situation rapidly deteriorated. Incidents escalated along all of Cambodia's borders. Khmer Rouge forces attacked villages in the border areas of Thailand near Aranyaprathet. Brutal murders of Thai villagers, including women and children, were the first widely reported concrete evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities. There were also incidents along the Laos border.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: At approximately the same time, villages in Vietnam's border areas underwent renewed attacks. In turn, Vietnam launched air strikes against Cambodia. From 18 to 30 April 1978, Cambodian troops, after invading the Vietnamese province of An Giang, carried out the Ba Chúc massacre causing 3,157 civilian deaths in the province of Tây Ninh, Vietnam. In September, border fighting resulted in as many as 1,000 Vietnamese civilian casualties. The following month, the Vietnamese counter-attacked in a campaign involving a force of 20,000 personnel.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Vietnamese defense minister General Võ Nguyên Giáp underestimated the tenacity of the Khmer Rouge, however, and was obliged to commit an additional 58,000 reinforcements in December. On 6 January 1978, Giap's forces began an orderly withdrawal from Cambodian territory. The Vietnamese apparently believed they had "taught a lesson" to the Cambodians, but Pol Pot proclaimed this a "victory" even greater than that of 17 April 1975. For several years, the Vietnamese government sought in vain to establish peaceful relations with the KR regime. But the KR leaders were intent on war. Behind this seeming insanity clearly lay the assumption that China would support the KR militarily in such a conflict.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Faced with growing Khmer Rouge belligerence, the Vietnamese leadership decided in early 1978 to support internal resistance to the Pol Pot regime, with the result that the Eastern Zone became a focus of insurrection. War hysteria reached bizarre levels within Democratic Kampuchea. In May 1978, on the eve of So Phim's Eastern Zone uprising, Radio Phnom Penh declared that if each Cambodian soldier killed thirty Vietnamese, only 2 million troops would be needed to eliminate the entire Vietnamese population of 50 million. It appears that the leadership in Phnom Penh was seized with immense territorial ambitions, i.e., to recover Kampuchea Krom, the Mekong Delta region, which they regarded as Khmer territory.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Massacres of ethnic Vietnamese and of their sympathizers by the Khmer Rouge intensified in the Eastern Zone after the May revolt. In November, Vorn Vet led an unsuccessful coup d'état. There were now tens of thousands of Cambodian and Vietnamese exiles on Vietnamese territory.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: On 3 December 1978, Radio Hanoi announced the formation of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (KNUFNS). This was a heterogeneous group of communist and noncommunist exiles who shared an antipathy to the Pol Pot regime and a virtually total dependence on Vietnamese backing and protection. The KNUFNS provided the semblance, if not the reality, of legitimacy for Vietnam's invasion of Democratic Kampuchea and for its subsequent establishment of a satellite regime in Phnom Penh.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In the meantime, as 1978 wore on, Cambodian bellicosity in the border areas surpassed Hanoi's threshold of tolerance. Vietnamese policy makers opted for a military solution and, on 22 December, Vietnam launched its offensive with the intent of overthrowing Democratic Kampuchea. A force of 120,000, consisting of combined armor and infantry units with strong artillery support, drove west into the level countryside of Cambodia's southeastern provinces. Together, the Vietnamese army and the National Salvation Front struck at the KR on 25 December.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: After a seventeen-day campaign, Phnom Penh fell to the advancing Vietnamese on 7 January 1979. Pol Pot and the main leaders initially took refuge near the border with Thailand. After making deals with several governments, they were able to use Thailand as a safe staging area for the construction and operation of new redoubts in the mountain and jungle fastness of Cambodia's periphery, Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders regrouped their units, issued a new call to arms, and reignited a stubborn insurgency against the regime in power as they had done in the late 1960s.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: For the moment, however, the Vietnamese invasion had accomplished its purpose of deposing an unlamented and particularly violent dictatorship. A new administration of ex-Khmer Rouge fighters under the control of Hanoi was quickly established (who are ruling till present), and it set about competing, both domestically and internationally, with the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Peace still eluded the war-ravaged nation, however, and although the insurgency set in motion by the Khmer Rouge proved unable to topple the new Vietnamese-controlled regime in Phnom Penh, it did nonetheless keep the country in a permanent state of insecurity. The new administration was propped up by a substantial Vietnamese military force and civilian advisory effort.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: As events in the 1980s progressed, the main preoccupations of the new regime were survival, restoring the economy, and combating the Khmer Rouge insurgency by military and by political means.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The UN General Assembly voted by a margin of 71 to 35 for the KR to retain their seat at the UN, with 34 abstentions and 12 absentees. The seat was occupied by Thiounn Prasith, an old cadre of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary from their student days in Paris and one of the 21 attendees at the 1960 KPRP Second Congress. The seat was retained under the name 'Democratic Kampuchea' until 1982 and then 'Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea' until 1993.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: According to journalist Elizabeth Becker, former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said that in 1979, "I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could." Brzezinski has denied this, writing that the Chinese were aiding Pol Pot "without any help or encouragement from the United States."


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: China, the U.S., and other Western countries opposed an expansion of Vietnamese and Soviet influence in Indochina, and refused to recognize the People's Republic of Kampuchea as the legitimate government of Cambodia, claiming that it was a puppet state propped up by Vietnamese forces. China funneled military aid to the Khmer Rouge, which in the 1980s proved to be the most capable insurgent force, while the U.S. publicly supported a non-Communist alternative to the PRK; in 1985, the Reagan administration approved $5 million in aid to the republican KPNLF, led by former prime minister Son Sann, and the ANS, the armed wing of the pro-Sihanouk FUNCINPEC party.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The KPNLF, while lacking in military strength compared to the Khmer Rouge, commanded a sizable civilian following (up to 250,000) amongst refugees near the Thai-Cambodian border that had fled the KR regime. Funcinpec had the benefit of traditional peasant Khmer loyalty to the crown and Sihanouk's widespread popularity in the countryside.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In practice, the military strength of the non-KR groups within Cambodia was minimal, though their funding and civilian support was often greater than the KR. The Thatcher and Reagan administrations both supported the non-KR insurgents covertly, with weapons, and military advisors in the form of Green Berets and Special Air Service units, who taught sabotage techniques in camps just inside Thailand.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: A UN-led peacekeeping mission that took place from 1991 to 1995 sought to end violence in the country and establish a democratic system of government through new elections. The 1990s saw a marked decline in insurgent activity, though the Khmer Rouge later renewed their attacks against the government. As Vietnam disengaged from direct involvement in Cambodia, the government was able to begin to split the KR movement by making peace offers to lower level officials. The Khmer Rouge was the only member of the CGDK to continue fighting following the reconciliation process. The other two political organizations that made up the CGDK alliance ended armed resistance and became a part of the political process that began with elections in 1993.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In 1997, Pol Pot ordered the execution of his right-hand man Son Sen for attempting peace negotiations with the Cambodian government. In 1998, Pol Pot himself died, and other key KR leaders Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary surrendered to the government of Hun Sen in exchange for immunity from prosecution, leaving Ta Mok as the sole commander of the Khmer Rouge forces; he was detained in 1999 for "crimes against humanity." The organization essentially ceased to exist.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Since 1990 Cambodia has gradually recovered, demographically and economically, from the Khmer Rouge regime, although the psychological scars affect many Cambodian families and émigré communities. The current government teaches little about Khmer Rouge atrocities in schools. Cambodia has a very young population and by 2005 three-quarters of Cambodians were too young to remember the Khmer Rouge years. The younger generations would only know the Khmer Rouge through word-of-mouth from parents and elders.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In 1997, Cambodia established a Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force to create a legal and judicial structure to try the remaining leaders for war crimes and other crimes against humanity, but progress was slow, mainly because the Cambodian government of ex-Khmer Rouge Cadre Hun Sen, despite its origins in the Vietnamese-backed regime of the 1980s, was reluctant to bring the Khmer Rouge leaders to trial.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Funding shortfalls plagued the operation, and the government said that due to the poor economy and other financial commitments, it could only afford limited funding for the tribunal. Several countries, including India and Japan, came forward with extra funds, but by January 2006, the full balance of funding was not yet in place.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Nonetheless, the task force began its work and took possession of two buildings on the grounds of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) High Command headquarters in Kandal province just on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. In March 2006 the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, nominated seven judges for a trial of the Khmer Rouge leaders.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: In May 2006, Justice Minister Ang Vong Vathana announced that Cambodia's highest judicial body approved 30 Cambodian and U.N. judges to preside over the genocide tribunal for some surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. The chief Khmer Rouge torturer Kang Kek Iew – known as Duch and ex-commandant of the notorious S-21 prison – went on trial for crimes against humanity on 17 February 2009. It was the first case involving a senior Pol Pot cadre, three decades after the end of a regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths in Cambodia.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: While the events in Cambodia are widely considered to be a genocide or democide and referred to as such, Steven Rosefielde argues that the deaths in Cambodia fail to meet the definition of genocide in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Rosefielde states that there is "no evidence Pol Pot sought to exterminate the Khmer people, or even the Cham and religious minorities." Instead, he defines Khmer Rouge killings as ""dystopicide"": "The no-prisoners-taken pursuit of badly implemented, poorly conceived communist utopia-building."


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The violent legacy of the KR regime and its aftermath continue to haunt Cambodia today. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid by the world to the atrocities of the KR, especially in light of the Cambodia Tribunal. In Cambodia, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields are two major sites open to the public which are preserved from the KR years and serve as sites of memory of the Cambodian genocide. The Tuol Sleng was a high school building that was transformed into an interrogation and torture centre called S-21 during the KR regime; today the site still contains many of the torture and prison cells which were created during the KR years. Choeng Ek was a mass grave site outside Phnom Penh where prisoners were taken to be killed; today the site is a memorial for those who died there.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: However, beyond these two public sites, there has not been much activity promoted by the Cambodian government to remember the genocide that occurred. This, in part, is due to numerous KR cadres remaining in political power in the wake of the collapse of the KR regime. The continued influence of KR cadres in Cambodia's politics has led to a neglect of the teaching of KR history to Cambodian children. The lack of a strong mandate to teach KR history despite international pressure has led to a proliferation of literary and visual production to memorialise the genocide and create sites through which the past can be remembered by future generations.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Like the Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide has spawned a host of literary publications in the wake of the KR regime's fall. Most significant to the history of the KR are the numerous survivor memoirs published in English as a way to remember the past. The first wave of KR memoirs began appearing in the late 1970s and 1980s. Soon after the first wave of survivors escaped or were rescued from Cambodia, survivor accounts in English and French began to be published. These memoirs tended to be authored either by foreigners or adult Cambodian males.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Written to generate more awareness about the KR regime, these adult memoirs take into account the political climate in Cambodia before the regime and tend to call for justice to be served to the perpetrators of the regime. Being the first survivor accounts to reach global audiences, memoirs such as Haing Ngor's "A Cambodian Odyssey" (published 1987), Pin Yathay's ("Murderous Utopia") (1979), Laurence Picq's ("Beyond the Horizon") (1984) and Francois Ponchaud's ("Cambodia Year Zero") (1977) were instrumental in bringing to the world the story of life under the KR regime.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: The second wave of memoirs, published in the 21st century, is distinctly different from the first wave. Memoirs from the second wave include Chanrithy Him's "When Broken Glass Floats" (published 2000), Loung Ung's "First They Killed My Father" (2000), Oni Vitandham's "On the Wings of a White Horse" (2005) and Kilong Ung's "Golden Leaf" (2009). Published in large part by Cambodian survivors who were children during the period, these memoirs trace their journey from a war-torn Cambodia to their new lives in other parts of the world.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: To a larger extent than memoirs from the first wave, these memoirs reconstruct the significance of their authors' experiences before they left Cambodia. Having grown up away from Cambodia, these individuals use their memoirs predominantly as a platform to come to terms with their lost childhood years, reconnect with their cultural roots which they cannot forget despite residing outside of Cambodia and tell this story for their children.


title: Democratic Kampuchea

text: Noticeably, many of the authors of second wave memoirs draw out extended family trees in the beginning of their accounts in an attempt to document their family history. Additionally, some authors also note that despite them remembering events vividly, their memories were augmented by their relatives recounting those events to them as they grew up. Most significantly, the publication of the second wave of memoirs coincides with the Cambodia Tribunal and could be a response to the increased international attention paid to the atrocities of the KR.