A Bit About Cambodia

Previously called Kampuchea, it is the inheritor of former Hindu and Buddhist Khmer empires which reigned from the 1st to 14th century (Angkor was the centre of power), after which the Country was very weak and became a puppet state to its more powerful neighbours in Vietnam and Siam.

The French attempted their colonization of SE Asia in 1858 with their arrival in Saigon Vietnam. They soon expanded their ambitions to Cambodia which soon became a French colony. In 1953 the French withdrew under the international gaze of underhanded dealings with the Cambodian government and its enemies.

During the US-Vietnamese war, the US bombed many parts of Cambodia in an attempt to flush out the Viet Cong they believed were hiding in Cambodia. This killed tens of thousands of Cambodians and caused a flood of Cambodian peasantry to join a peasant-based Cambodian army called the Khmer Rouge, lead by the infamous Pol Pot.

Backed by the Chinese, Pol Pot had a mad man’s dream of reverting the country into an agrarian utopia of the 11th century, during the height of the Khmer empire. He executed all people deemed educated and cultured, and abolished all arts, literature, music, Western medicine and religion. Only the peasants were upheld as being the ideal people, and they were easily converted into a genocidal army. It is estimated that between 1 and 3 million people were killed during his regime’s reign of terror. Tuol Sleng prison became notorious for its mass killings and was the Cambodian equivalent of Auschwitz in Nazi Germany.

During this era, Cambodia became known as the “The Killing Fields” and these atrocities spawned numerous books and even a good movie in 1984 of the same name.

The Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 as the Vietnamese invaded. Pol Pot escaped.

In 1992-1993, UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia) held a ‘peace keeping’ mission in Cambodia. This ineffective campaign not only failed to promote peace, it caused the beginnings of the rise in HIV/AIDS in Cambodia. The soldiers created an exponential demand for prostitution and this legacy has left Cambodia with the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infections of all the SE Asian countries.

These days sex tourism and just overall exploitation of this poor country is rampant.

CURRENTLY

Capital: Phnom Penh
Population: 14 million
Foreign visitors in 2007 to Angkor: 4 million
Economy: 59% agricultural, with tourism and textiles also being big sectors.
Peoples: Cambodian, Ethnic Khmers.
Religion: Most are Theravada Buddhists like in Thailand, but many are also Muslim Cham, along with some ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese as well as some animist hill tribe people.
Currency: The Kip; 4000 Kip = 1USD

References: Wikipedia and Lonely Planet Guide

(All images in this post taken from the web.)