10 tragic tales emerge from the dark chapters of Cambodia’s history, where the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror left an indelible scar on a nation. Below we dive into ten haunting stories that illuminate the cruelty, resilience, and lingering echoes of this devastating genocide.

10 Security Prison 21

A secret to the world and even to Cambodia until it was discovered by two Vietnamese photojournalists in January 1979, the Security Prison 21 (“S-21”) was a former high school that was used to hold more than 15,000 people during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Only a few prisoners are known to have survived the S-21, so much of what we know about the site comes from the meticulous documentation recorded by its leaders and workers during the 3.5 years the prison was used.

A person transported to the prison first had his or her picture taken, thousands of which still exist. Prisoners were relentlessly interrogated and beaten until they confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. Interrogators pulled out the prisoners’ toenails, waterboarded them, and even subjected them to medical experiments.

Once a prisoner admitted to the charge of which he was accused, he was forced to write out his confession, which could be up to several hundred pages long. With prisoners sometimes having to eat insects for survival, conditions in the prison were so bad that some died before they could be executed.

Today, the prison is a museum dedicated to the people who died there. Pictures of prisoners cover the museum’s walls, and prisoner confessions and government documents are also on display. When the museum was opened to the Cambodian public in July 1980, it drew an estimated 300,000 Cambodian visitors by October of that year.

9 Youk Chhang

Youk Chhang is a Cambodian humanitarian who helps to run the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a nonprofit group that has collected hundreds of thousands of documents and photographs from the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. Their extensive research has played a valuable role in providing evidence for the tribunals trying former Khmer leaders for their crimes. The project is a personal mission for Chhang. He and his family were victims of the Cambodian genocide.

When he was only 15 years old, Chhang was publicly tortured and then imprisoned for taking mushrooms from a rice field. It didn’t matter that the mushrooms were picked for Chhang’s starving, pregnant sister. To take anything without the government’s permission was a crime against the revolution. In jail, Chhang pleaded for his life for months until an older prisoner approached the prison chief and claimed that he was the real culprit. Chhang was let go, but the older man was executed.

By the time the Khmer Rouge was driven out of power, Chhang’s family had been nearly wiped out. His pregnant sister’s husband had been beaten to death for stealing food, and his sister had died after having her stomach cut open for allegedly eating the food. Chhang also lost his grandparents, three uncles, an aunt, and numerous other relatives. As horrendous as Chhang’s experience was, he told CNN that it was “a mere footnote to the millions of other Cambodians who suffered and died at the hands of this regime.”

8 Pin Yathay

Along with 18 of his family members, Pin Yathay was one of the two million people evacuated from Phnom Penh and sent to live in the countryside. As a civil servant for the previous government, Yathay had to be careful that nobody learned about his “bourgeois” past.

Before he escaped from Cambodia in summer 1977, Yathay and his relatives were forced to do backbreaking labor. When his father couldn’t work any longer, his already meager rations were cut in half. He died shortly afterward, and Yathay’s mother and sisters didn’t last much longer.

All three of Yathay’s children also died. One of them, a nine‑year‑old boy, was taken by Khmer Rouge leaders after they told Yathay that he still had “strong individualistic tendencies.” The boy died only five days after he left home.

By early 1977, Yathay’s past had been exposed, and Yathay and his wife decided they would try to escape the country. Leaving their only surviving son with a couple whose children had all died, Yathay and his wife joined a group of 10 other people to make a run for Thailand. After a two‑month journey, only Yathay was able to flee across the border.

Yathay was one of the earliest people to bring attention to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. In late 1979, he published an account of his experiences called Murderous Utopia. Another book, Stay Alive, My Son, followed in 1987. The second book’s title came from words he had spoken to his son before leaving Cambodia. Sadly, Yathay has never been able to find the boy, and it is unknown whether he is still alive.

7 The Crew Of The Foxy Lady

New Zealander Kerry Hamill and Canadian Stuart Glass were two expatriate friends who enjoyed sailing on the waters of South Asia on their yacht, the Foxy Lady. In Singapore in summer 1978, they met an English teacher named John Dewhirst. Dewhirst was traveling through Asia on holiday, and Hamill and Glass invited him to come along with them to Bangkok.

After stopping near the Cambodian island of Koh Tang, possibly because of a storm, the Foxy Lady was attacked by a Khmer Rouge patrol boat. Glass was shot and killed. Dewhirst and Hamill were captured and thrown in the S‑21 prison.

Suspecting that the two Western men were CIA agents, the Khmer Rouge tortured Dewhirst and Hamill until they falsely admitted to the accusation. In Dewhirst’s confession, he claimed that he was recruited by the CIA when he was only 12 years old and that Loughborough University, the college where he had studied, was a training ground for CIA agents. He also said that he had come to Cambodia on a spying mission and that his father was also a CIA agent. With the authorities now satisfied, Dewhirst and Hamill were sentenced to execution.

We don’t know exactly what happened to the Foxy Lady’s crew. Western governments were never notified about their capture, and their families were ignorant of the crew’s fate until after the excavation of the S‑21 prison. Many details—like how the men ended up in Cambodian waters as well as the method of Dewhirst’s and Hamill’s executions—will probably never be known.

6 Dith Pran

Dith Pran, the son of a public works official, was a gifted translator who worked as an interpreter for the American military from 1960 until 1965. Continuing to translate in the 1970s, he worked with Sydney Schanberg, a journalist who covered Asia and the situation in Cambodia for The New York Times. After the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, Schanberg was forced to leave the country, and Pran was left behind.

With the Khmer Rouge in charge, Pran worked as a taxi driver and kept his past as an educated journalist and translator a secret. He was eventually exiled to the countryside, where he sometimes worked as long as 18 hours a day. Forced to eat bark and mice to survive, Pran was almost killed after he stole some rice one night. If it wasn’t for the intervention of a Khmer Rouge cadre, he would have been executed.

When Pran returned to his home village after the Khmer Rouge was overthrown in 1979, he discovered that his father and four of his siblings were dead. The Khmer Rouge had treated the villagers without mercy. The remains of more than 5,000 people were buried in the forest and the village’s wells.

Although Pran was put in charge of the village by the occupying Vietnamese, he fled to Thailand after his American connections were made known. Once he was out of Cambodia, Pran was reunited with Schanberg in a refugee camp. Schanberg wrote an article about Pran’s experiences the next year, and the piece later provided the plot for the award‑winning 1984 film The Killing Fields.

5 Haing S. Ngor

Haing S. Ngor was the award‑winning actor who played the role of Dith Pran in The Killing Fields. Interestingly, Ngor had no prior acting experience, but as he told People magazine in a 1985 interview, “I spent four years in the Khmer Rouge school of acting.”

Before he was driven out of Phnom Penh in 1975, Ngor worked as a surgeon and gynecologist. As he was performing an operation, Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into the hospital room and asked if he was a doctor. Ngor replied that the doctor had just run out the back door. Fearing for his life, Ngor fled and regretfully left the patient to bleed to death.

Like Pran, Ngor posed as an uneducated taxi driver. His cover was blown twice, however, and in one close incident, he was forced to remain in a hut with 180 other people as it was set on fire. Anyone who ran out was shot on sight. Only Ngor and 30 others survived the incident.

By the time Ngor and a niece escaped to Thailand in 1979, most of his family, including his wife, had died. After he moved to the US in 1980 and appeared in The Killing Fields in 1984, Ngor used his fame to bring awareness and help to Cambodian genocide victims.

Although he survived the ruthless Khmer Rouge, Ngor suffered a senseless, violent death in front of his home. In 1996, Ngor was ambushed by three Asian‑American gangsters in a robbery. They took his gold Rolex watch but shot him to death after he refused to hand over a gold locket which contained a portrait of his dead wife.

Many in the Cambodian community suspected that Ngor was killed on the orders of Pol Pot or some other Khmer Rouge official. American investigators, however, found no conclusive link between Ngor’s murderers and anyone in the former Cambodian government.

4 Cambodia’s Minorities

Although a left‑wing movement, the Khmer Rouge was fiercely xenophobic. They officially claimed that Cambodia’s 24 minority groups made up not 15 percent of the population but 1 percent. Many of these minority groups were nearly exterminated during the genocide. Over 100,000 Vietnamese were kicked out of the country in 1976. Most of the 100,000 Vietnamese left behind perished in the next few years.

The Chinese community, which was overwhelmingly urban, was relocated to the countryside with the rest of Cambodia’s city dwellers. Half of the Chinese population died there, many of them from hunger and disease.

Especially targeted for elimination were the Cham people, a Muslim minority with a distinct culture and history from the Khmers. Mosques were destroyed, and prayer was forbidden, even at home. Korans were also banned, and according to survivor Him Soh, they were used as toilet paper.

In September 1975, when the Cham village of Svay Khleang was attacked by the Khmer Rouge, the Chams put up a brave resistance using only swords and machetes. The rebellion was put down after a few days. Like the inhabitants of many other Cham villages, the people of Svay Khleang were removed and then scattered over the country. The exact death toll for the Chams has never been clearly established. Estimates range between 100,000 and 400,000 deaths.

3 Cambodia’s Buddhist Monks

Before 1975, Theravada Buddhism had been the dominant religion among the Khmer people since the late 13th century. Buddhist temples, known as wats, served various functions in their communities, including teaching young people and providing welfare for the poor and sick. They were an important national institution, but the Khmer Rouge considered Buddhism a reactionary religion and was determined to wipe out its influence throughout the country.

Buddhist monks were mocked and humiliated. In a cruel joke that disobeyed their dietary laws, they were forced by the Khmer Rouge to drink alcohol and eat large meals. Books of Buddhist scriptures were burned, and temples were destroyed. Many monks were sent to work in the countryside, where they died from starvation and overwork. The wats they left behind were used as torture chambers and storage centers, with some even used to hold pigs.

In 1975, the government counted 66,000 monks living in 4,000 wats. A 1989 report estimated that 25,000 monks had been executed, and half of the wats had been destroyed.

Today, Buddhism has been reestablished as Cambodia’s official state religion. However, the impact from Khmer Rouge times is still strongly felt. After the loss of so many leaders, some communities have struggled to teach and ordain new monks.

2 The Killing Fields

Two of the biggest tourist sites in Cambodia are Angkor Wat, the famous temple complex built by the medieval Khmer Empire, and Choeung Ek, the country’s most infamous killing field. One of thousands of mass graves from Khmer Rouge times, Choeung Ek contains the remains of more than 8,000 people who were executed there. A Buddhist stupa on the site holds thousands of human skulls.

Most victims, including children, were tortured before they were killed. They were forced to dig their own graves and were often hacked or beaten to death with axes, knives, and bamboo sticks because the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to waste bullets. Sometimes, small children and babies were smashed against trees until they died. After being attacked, victims were pushed into the graves they had dug, and dirt was thrown over them. Some people survived the torture and were buried alive.

In 2015, there are still killing fields that have yet to be excavated. It’s also possible that many more killing fields will be discovered in the future. Due to the shallowness of the graves, old bones and teeth sometimes turn up around the country after a heavy rainfall.

1 Western Support For The Khmer Rouge

When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, a handful of Western intellectuals and antiwar activists hailed them as liberators. These supporters had harshly criticized the previous, American‑backed Lon Nol regime and the deadly bombing campaigns that the US had carried out in Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Now they hoped that the Khmer Rouge would disprove Western fears that a Southeast Asian country ruled by communists would be a disaster. Even as refugee stories started leaking out of Cambodia, these intellectuals downplayed Khmer Rouge atrocities and charged that refugee reports were exaggerated or false.

In May 1977, the US Congress launched an investigation into the Cambodian crisis at the urging of Representative Stephen Solarz, who had talked to refugees in Thailand. “In its own way,” Solarz said at a Congressional hearing, “the indifference of the world to events in Cambodia is almost as appalling as what has happened there itself.”

However, scholars like David Chandler and Gareth Porter countered that it was hypocritical to condemn the Khmer Rouge without criticizing previous American military policy in the region. They argued that the death toll couldn’t have been higher than the thousands, and that while the Khmer Rouge wasn’t perfect, the regime it had overthrown was much worse.

In Porter’s book Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, which was reviewed favorably by Noam Chomsky, Porter and his coauthor George Hildebrand denied the existence of mass starvation in the country and neglected to mention the public executions and abuses committed against Cambodian minorities.

After Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Pol Pot and his followers fled to Thailand, where they waged a guerrilla war against the new, Vietnamese‑backed Cambodian government. Instead of calling for Pol Pot’s capture, big powers like the US and China supported his efforts with millions of dollars in military aid.

With Vietnam supported by the Soviet Union, the West chose to recognize the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate Cambodian government. Until pressure to prosecute the leaders of the Khmer Rouge escalated in the 1990s, the Khmer Rouge held the Cambodian seat in the United Nations as part of an anti‑Vietnamese coalition until 1991. Although many Khmer Rouge leaders have since been brought to justice for their crimes, Pol Pot was never prosecuted, having died in 1998.

When we talk about the 10 disturbing facts surrounding the Armenian genocide, we step into a dark chapter of history that still echoes today. 2015 marked the hundredth year since the atrocities began, when roughly 1.5 million of the two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were brutally exterminated. The Ottoman Empire’s meticulous cover‑up and the sheer scale of its systematic barbarism mean the exact death toll will likely never be known, fluctuating wildly across sources. Genocide, by its very nature, strives to erase all traces of its victims. From the surviving records, we present the following ten unsettling revelations.

10 The Three Pashas Led the Ottoman Empire Into War and Enacted the Genocide

The Three Pashas is the collective nickname for Talât Pasha (Grand Vizier, equivalent to Prime Minister), Enver Pasha (Minister of War) and Djemal Pasha (Minister of the Navy) during World War I.

Talât Pasha’s animosity toward Armenians dated back years. In the memoirs of Danish philologist Johannes Østrup, Talât is quoted sharing his intent to annihilate Armenians as early as 1910, saying, “If I ever come to power in this country, I will use all my might to exterminate the Armenians.”

His ambition materialised in 1913 via a coup. The following year the Ottoman Empire entered World I, and in 1915 the systematic murder of Armenians began.

After the empire’s defeat, all three fled. The new Turkish government vilified them as the cause of the war, occasionally acknowledging their massive crimes against humanity.

Abdülmecid II, the last Caliph of Islam from the Ottoman dynasty, condemned their actions, calling them “the greatest stain that has ever disgraced our nation and race.”

9 One of Hitler’s Early Co‑Conspirators Was a Witness to the Armenian Genocide

Max Erwin von Scheubner‑Richter served as the German vice‑consul in Erzurum during the Armenian genocide, condemning Ottoman policies as a deliberate plan of annihilation in his writings.

After returning to Germany, he became deeply involved with the nascent Nazi movement, forging a close relationship with Adolf Hitler. He was killed instantly during the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, marching arm‑in‑arm with Hitler. Hitler later dedicated the first part of Mein Kampf to Scheubner‑Richter.

On 22 August 1939, Hitler delivered a speech at his Obersalzberg residence, a week before invading Poland. According to Louis P. Lochner’s 1942 book, Hitler warned his commanders about annihilating the Poles, remarking, “Who after all is today speaking about the destruction of the Armenians?” indicating his awareness of the earlier genocide.

While the direct influence of the Armenian genocide on the Holocaust remains debated, the parallels and Hitler’s knowledge are unmistakable.

8 Able Men Were Put to Death and the Remaining Armenians Were Marched Into the Desert

The genocide’s kickoff is often dated to 24 April 1915, when up to 270 Armenian community leaders were forcibly removed from Constantinople and taken to Ankara. Even earlier, the Ottoman authorities transferred all Armenian soldiers to unarmed labor battalions, simplifying later extermination.

After executing all able‑bodied Armenian men, women, children, the infirm and the elderly were herded into the desert under the false promise of resettlement. Out of roughly two million Armenians in the empire, an estimated 1.5 million perished—about three‑quarters of the population.

Many died of starvation and dehydration. Women of all ages were routinely raped and abandoned. Mass shootings, drownings, burnings and poisonings were commonplace. Those who survived the death march were later confined to concentration camps where they were massacred.

7 ISIS Is Blamed for Destroying the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Deir ez‑Zor

Construction of the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church concluded in November 1990 and it was consecrated on 4 May 1991. The site became a major pilgrimage destination, especially on 24 April each year, commemorating the genocide’s start.

Deir ez‑Zor, Syria, holds particular significance as the final destination for Armenians forced on death marches. The church was built on the former grounds of a concentration camp, killing centre and burial site for those who survived the march.

On 21 September 2014, amid Armenia’s 23rd independence anniversary and months before the centennial of the genocide, the church was blown up. ISIS has been identified as the likely perpetrator.

6 The Greek and Assyrian Genocides Happened at the Same Time

While the Armenian genocide dominates historical discussion, it occurred alongside the systematic extermination of Assyrian and Greek Christian minorities.

Assyrian deaths are estimated at around 300 000, largely occurring near the Ottoman‑Persian border. In Midyat, roughly 25 000 Assyrians were killed, and a brief uprising was swiftly crushed. Some Turkish historians label the killings as a response to rebellion, categorising them as massacres rather than genocide.

Greek deaths are estimated at about 750 000. In 1923 a population exchange between Turkey and Greece forced roughly two million people from their homes: about 1.2 million Christian Greeks were relocated from regions such as Trabzon, the Pontic Alps, the Caucasus, Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace, while around 400 000 Muslims were moved from Greece to Turkey.

5 The Armenian Revolutionary Federation Took Retaliatory Action

Known as Operation Nemesis, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) assassinated seven prominent Ottoman and Azerbaijani officials responsible for the genocide between 1920 and 1922. Among those killed were Djemal Pasha and Talât Pasha, two of the Three Pashas.

Both had fled after the war and were sentenced in absentia to death by Ottoman courts, though they never faced execution. The ARF tracked Djemal Pasha to Tiflis, Soviet Georgia, where he was shot along with two aides. Talât Pasha was assassinated by Soghomon Tehlirian in Berlin on 15 March 1921.

The ARF instructed Tehlirian not to flee after the killing, ensuring the trial would spotlight Armenian suffering. The subsequent trial attracted extensive international press, and Tehlirian was acquitted, with his defence arguing that the trauma of the genocide had impaired his mental state. He famously declared, “I do not consider myself guilty because my conscience is clear… I have killed a man but I am not a murderer.”

4 The Three Pashas Used World War I as a Smokescreen for Genocide

The Three Pashas deliberately timed the genocide to coincide with World I, exploiting the chaos of war to conceal their crimes. They believed that foreign powers would be preoccupied with the broader conflict, leaving little room for humanitarian intervention.

Talât Pasha even boasted to a German embassy official, stating, “Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.”

While most atrocities occurred during the war years, scholars debate the official end date, with some arguing it extended to 1923—five years after the Pashas fled following the Ottoman defeat.

3 Turkey Has Streets and Public Buildings Named After the Perpetrators of the Genocide

Denial of the genocide has become so entrenched that many Ottoman officials responsible for the extermination are commemorated in modern Turkey. The Three Pashas lend their names to boulevards, avenues, highways and municipal districts, and even schools bear their names.

In 2003, a school was named after Cemal Azmi, notorious as the “Butcher of Trabzon.” Azmi was infamous for drowning thousands of Armenian children by capsizing boats in the Black Sea and for turning a hospital into a personal “pleasure dome” where he abused Armenian girls before killing them.

Azmi was one of the seven officials assassinated during Operation Nemesis.

2 Armenians Have Not Received Reparations

The Ottoman Empire seized the money and possessions of Armenians, and to this day none of that property has been returned. The widespread destruction and enduring trauma have never been compensated in any form.

One major argument against reparations points to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, leaving no accountable state. Turkey, as the successor, is therefore viewed as responsible for repaying the debts incurred by its predecessor. All land and property stolen by the Ottomans now belong to Turkey.

There is precedent: Holocaust survivors have occasionally received compensation. Some argue that if the Armenian genocide were not recognised, survivors would not be entitled to similar legal treatment.

1 Turkey Still Deny That a Genocide Ever Happened

Turkey, the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, has consistently denied that the events of 1915 constitute a systematic genocide of Armenians. Azerbaijan is the only other nation that openly rejects the genocide label; many other countries remain ambivalent.

Turkish governments have been accused of actively suppressing the term “genocide,” urging politicians, journalists and scholars worldwide to minimise or silence its use.

Ironically, the word “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin in his 1943 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe to describe exactly these atrocities, defining it as “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” By this definition, the Armenian massacres fit squarely within the textbook definition of genocide.

David is a freelance writer and Creative Writing MA student. You can read more of his articles at CultureRoast // Follow him // Like him.