The forgotten Khmer Rouge victims

Phnom Penh Post, Tuesday, 29 May 2012

More than 30 years ago, the world mourned the deaths of the nearly two million people who lost their lives in Cambodia under the reign of the Khmer Rouge regime, which renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.

The world acknowledged the State-sponsored torture, forced labour, starvation and executions that laid waste to Cambodia, marking one of the worst human tragedies in recorded history.

The overwhelming presence of mass graves and the loss of an estimated full quarter of the population of the country, told the story of what had transpired in stark numerical terms.

What remained untold, and what the world has not yet acknowledged, is the other calamity – that of widespread rape and other sexual crimes that took place under the Khmer Rouge, and were a central part of the range of atrocities perpetrated from January 1975 through to April 1979. Read Full Story