Residents flee an urban fire in Phnom Penh on April 15, 1975. The photo was apparently taken on the evening of April 15, 1975.Concurrent with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the greatest tragedy was unfolding in neighboring Cambodia: on April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, was occupied by the far-left pro-North faction led by Pol Pot and Yen Sary, the so-called Khmer Rouge, occupied the city. Over the next three years, they conducted the most brutal social experiment in history in order to build "agrarian communism." Members of the previous regime, including all intellectuals, were to be completely obliterated. The city, as a hotbed of bourgeois life, was wiped out of its resident population within days. By order of the Khmer Rouge, the inhabitants left Phnom Penh in haste.
Once in power, the Khmer Rouge implemented a radical program. They isolated the country from foreign influence; closed schools, hospitals, and factories; abolished banking, finance, and currency; outlawed all religions; confiscated all private property; and forcibly relocated people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labor was widespread. The goal of this policy was to cripple all Cambodians through agricultural labor.
In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would be moved only "a couple of kilometers" to the outskirts and would be back in "a couple of days. According to some witnesses, the evacuation was due to "the threat of American bombing. They were told that there was no need to lock their homes as the Khmer Rouge would take care of everything until their return. Those who refused to evacuate were to have their homes burned to the ground and be killed immediately. This was not the first evacuation of civilians by the Khmer Rouge; similar evacuations of residents without possessions have taken place on a smaller scale since the early 1970s.
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