On Friday, Cambodia’s government announced that its Cabinet had approved a draft bill that will toughen penalties for anyone denying atrocities carried out by the communist Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.
The bill stipulates “the prosecution of any individual” who denies or condones the atrocities committed by Democratic Kampuchea, as the Khmer Rouge regime referred to itself, according to a government statement quoted by the AFP news agency. The bill’s definition of atrocities includes genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, for which a U.N.-backed court prosecuted five top Khmer Rouge leaders between 2006 and 2022, eventually convicting three of them.
Led by “Brother Number One” Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from April 1975 until their overthrow by a Vietnamese invasion in January 1979, during which time they attempted a radical reengineering of Cambodian society along agrarian lines. The attempt cost the lives of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, illness, overwork, and outright execution.
