TNAG-1066-FCO40-1316-Human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 203

E/CN.4/1503

Annex II page 20

Kampuchea

a change, Although

55. Few countries have undergone nearly as radical virtually overnight, as did Kampuchea in April 1975. the Khmer Rouge had controlled parts of the country prior to their military triumph of 17 April, when they took the capital, the immediate expulsion of all foreigners and the concomitant herding into the countryside of the entire urban populations, including Phnom Penh's almost

almost three million, are without precedent in our era.

56. Though the harsh realities of life under the government between 1975 and 1979, in a once peaceful and highly cultured land, were hidden from the outside world for the first two years, subsequent revelations of the conditions created during that period have made them well enough known since. The subjection of the country to a programme of radical political and social change in which the upper strata of the former society were eliminated and the denial

the denial of the most basic freedoms caused severe hardship to the great mass of the population, has been widely reported. The Khmer people, expected to work from dawn to dusk with inadequate supplies of food or medicine and with the constant threat of summary execution, fell prey to widespread epidemics or simply suc- cumbed to exhaustion and hunger.

57. Later, the events of December 1978 and early 1979 result- ing in the change of government in Phnom Penh led to a mass exodus to the Thai-Kampuchea border of an estimated 650 000 people, mostly in a state of more or less advanced emaciation. The Thai authorities and many other nations of the world were drawn into a massive programme of emergency relief, while before long measures were put in hand for the distribution of substantial supplies within Kampuchea also.

58. Modern Kampuchea traces its origins to historical legend derived from Indian cultural influences which took root in the region almost two thousand years ago. The founder of the Khmer dynasty in the ninth century oversaw the development of an advanced system of agricultural hydraulics which served the rice fields upon which the prosperity of the kindgom and the large population depended. The Khmer empire, once extend- ing to the Annamite chain in the north to the Malay peninsula in the south, was, over a period of time, territorially dimin- ished until Kampuchea found itself wedged between competing neighbours who exercised a form of dual suzerainty. Entering into agreements with France to obtain protection, the country found itself incorporated into the French Union of Indo-China, one major economic and social consequence of which was the entry of Vietnamese either as labourers on the newly-estab- lished rubber plantations or in the lower echelons of the civil administration.

59.

COU

Kam

he

its

rou

the

ing

str

hać

est

60.

in

inc

Nol

mer Fiv

70

OVE

the

61.

dur

prc

up

the

réc

62. the

of

es'

nat

to

sel

Wi

ор Al

in

abi

re

es

ru.