The rise to power of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia unleashed one of the profoundest revolutions in world history. The upheavals were huge and resulted in misery and suffering for millions of people. One outcome was persecution of ethnic Vietnamese who had been living in Cambodia.
As I have written elsewhere for Suite 101, migration of many peoples throughout Southeast Asia has been a feature of history. This has resulted in a great deal of ethnic diversity. While most people are generally able to rub along together tolerably well, there are some exceptions and the treatment of the ethnic Vietnamese is one of these. The Vietnamese had traditionally been considered with some suspicion because of economic success wherever they had settled and because of the large numbers of the Vietnamese and, hence, the perceived threat they represented to other peoples. This situation was exacerbated in the wake of WWII when attempts to throw off European colonialism were led by the Vietnamese both in terms of success and in terms of a sustainable ideology. Communism appeared to many to be the only realistic alternative to colonial rule, since religious ideology and monarchism appealed only to minorities of people. As a result, the Vietnamese took an older brother position with respect to communism in mainland Southeast Asia. Intentionally or not, advisors and political experts quickly came to dominate thought and practice in both Cambodia and Laos. Vietnamese communism provided a real alternative to Chinese or Soviet forms and there seemed to be a real sense of an indigenous political ideology which would be able to unite the peoples of mainland Southeast Asia in independent autonomy.
The Khmer Rouge victory destroyed whatever fraternal feelings were really involved in this movement. In their unleashed and unrestrained zeal, Khmer Rouge cadres turned against ethnic Vietnamese as bourgeois traitors to the revolution and undesirables. The turmoil to which this led on the border with Vietnam, as well as the instability it led to throughout the region, caused the Vietnamese to launch an invasion of Cambodia to bring some end to the decades of fighting there. This was of course condemned by the USA and looked upon by suspicion by China and, indeed, the rest of the Communist world, who looked askance upon Communist fighting supposedly Communist brother. In February of 1979, the formal alliance between China and Vietnam expired. This alliance had been born in a spirit of comradeship after centuries of Vietnamese resistance to Chinese attempts to dominate the region in one form or another. With the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the tacit support of the USA, which was more concerned with annoying the Soviet Union, the Chinese launched an offensive when their ultimatum was ignored.
The Khmer Rouge victory destroyed whatever fraternal feelings were really involved in this movement. In their unleashed and unrestrained zeal, Khmer Rouge cadres turned against ethnic Vietnamese as bourgeois traitors to the revolution and undesirables. The turmoil to which this led on the border with Vietnam, as well as the instability it led to throughout the region, caused the Vietnamese to launch an invasion of Cambodia to bring some end to the decades of fighting there. This was of course condemned by the USA and looked upon by suspicion by China and, indeed, the rest of the Communist world, who looked askance upon Communist fighting supposedly Communist brother. In February of 1979, the formal alliance between China and Vietnam expired. This alliance had been born in a spirit of comradeship after centuries of Vietnamese resistance to Chinese attempts to dominate the region in one form or another. With the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the tacit support of the USA, which was more concerned with annoying the Soviet Union, the Chinese launched an offensive when their ultimatum was ignored.
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