Benedict F. "Ben" Kiernan (born 1953) is an Australian-born American academic and historian who is the Whitney Griswold Professor Emeritus of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.
Kiernan visited Cambodia in his early twenties, but left before the Khmer Rouge expelled all foreigners in 1975. Though he initially doubted the reported scale of genocide then being perpetrated in Democratic Kampuchea, he changed his mind in 1978 [1] [2] [3] after beginning a series of interviews with several hundred refugees from Cambodia. He learned the Khmer language, carried out research in Cambodia and among refugees abroad, and has since written many books on the topic.
From 1980 onwards, Kiernan worked with Gregory Stanton to bring the Khmer Rouge to international justice. He obtained his PhD from Monash University in Australia in 1983, under the supervision of David P. Chandler. He joined the History Department at Yale University in 1990, and founded the award-winning Cambodian Genocide Program at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies in 1994, and the comparative Genocide Studies Program in 1998. Kiernan currently teaches history courses on Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War, and genocides through the ages. [4]
In 1995, a Khmer Rouge court indicted, tried and sentenced Kiernan in absentia for "prosecuting and terrorizing the Cambodian resistance patriots". [5]
His 2007 book Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale University Press) received the 2008 gold medal from the US Independent Publishers Association for the best work of history published in 2007, [6] and the German Studies Association's biennial Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Book Prize [7] for the best book published in 2007 or 2008 dealing with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in its broadest context, covering the fields of history, political science, and other social sciences, literature, art, and photography.
In June 2009, the book's German translation, Erde und Blut: Völkermord und Vernichtung von der Antike bis heute, won first place in Germany's Nonfiction Book of the Month Prize (Die Sachbücher des Monats). [8]
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Kiernan's work before 1978, especially his work with the publication News from Kampuchea, was criticised as pro-Khmer Rouge when the Cambodian genocide was ongoing. [9] [10]
While Kiernan has become a critic of Khmer Rouge behaviour, Peter Rodman states that "When Hanoi turned publicly against Phnom Penh, it suddenly became respectable for many on the Left to "discover" the murderous qualities of the Khmer Rouge—qualities that had been obvious to unbiased observers for years. Kiernan fits this pattern nicely. His book even displays an eagerness to absolve of genocidal responsibility those members of the Khmer Rouge who defected to Hanoi and were later reinstalled in power in Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978." [11]
In 1994, Kiernan was awarded a $499,000 grant by the United States Congress to help the Cambodian government document the Khmer Rouge's abuses. Stephen J. Morris, at the time a research associate in the department of government at Harvard University, cited statements Kiernan had made regarding the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal , Morris claimed that Kiernan's earlier opinions made him a poor choice to study Khmer Rouge abuses. Gerard Henderson, executive director of Australia's Sydney Institute, stated that Kiernan had "barracked for the Khmer Rouge when the Cambodian killing fields were choked with corpses". [12] The Morris article was challenged by 29 Cambodia specialists who praised Kiernan as "a first-rate historian and an excellent choice for the State Department grant". [13]
Kiernan's 2017 work Việt Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present was criticized for his inability to read primary sources, his poor choice of secondary sources, and the lack of updating scholarship on both premodern Vietnam and the Vietnam War, among "many factual errors, misinterpretations, and problems" in the book. [14]
The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after his 1970 overthrow.
Son Sen, alias Comrade Khieu (សមមិត្តខៀវ) or "Brother Number 89", was a Cambodian Communist politician and soldier. A member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea/Party of Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge, from 1974 to 1992, Sen oversaw the Party's security apparatus, including the Santebal secret police and the notorious security prison S-21 at Tuol Sleng.
Khieu Samphan is a Cambodian former communist politician and economist who was the chairman of the state presidium of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) from 1976 until 1979. As such, he served as Cambodia's head of state and was one of the most powerful officials in the Khmer Rouge movement, although Pol Pot remained the General Secretary in the party.
The Cambodian–Vietnamese War, known in Vietnam as the Counter-offensive on the Southwestern border, and by Cambodian nationalists as the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, was an armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea, controlled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war began with repeated attacks by the Liberation Army of Kampuchea on the southwestern border of Vietnam, particularly the Ba Chúc massacre which resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians. On 23 December 1978, 10 out of 19 divisions of Khmer Rouge's military divisions opened fire along the shared Southwestern borderline with Vietnam with the goal of invading the Vietnamese provinces of Đồng Tháp, An Giang and Kiên Giang. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea, and subsequently occupied the country and removed the government of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from power.
Kampuchea, officially Democratic Kampuchea (DK) from 1976 onward, was the Cambodian state from 1975 to 1979, under the totalitarian dictatorship of Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge (KR). It was established following the Khmer Rouge's capture of the capital Phnom Penh, effectively ending the United States-backed Khmer Republic of Lon Nol.
Operation Freedom Deal was a United States Seventh Air Force interdiction and close air support campaign waged in Cambodia between 19 May 1970 and 15 August 1973, as an expansion of the Vietnam War, as well as the Cambodian Civil War. Launched by Richard Nixon as a follow-up to the earlier ground invasion during the Cambodian Campaign, the initial targets of the operation were the base areas and border sanctuaries of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC).
Pen Sovan was a Cambodian politician and revolutionary who served as the Prime Minister of the Hanoi-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea from 27 June to 5 December 1981. He also served as General Secretary of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) from 1979 to 1981. He was arrested and removed from office in December 1981 by the Vietnamese for irritating Lê Đức Thọ, the chief adviser to the PRK government. He was imprisoned in Vietnam until January 1992.
The People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was a partially recognised client state in Southeast Asia supported by Vietnam which existed from 1979 to 1989. It was founded in Cambodia by the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, a group of Cambodian communists who were dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge due to its oppressive rule of Cambodia and defected from it after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government. Brought about by an invasion from Vietnam, which routed the Khmer Rouge armies, it had Vietnam and the Soviet Union as its main allies.
Bilateral relations between the United States and Cambodia, while strained throughout the Cold War, have strengthened considerably in modern times. The U.S. supports efforts in Cambodia to combat terrorism, build democratic institutions, promote human rights, foster economic development, eliminate corruption.
The Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation often simply referred to as Salvation Front, was the nucleus of a new Cambodian regime that would topple the Khmer Rouge and later establish the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK).
Cambodia–Vietnam relations take place in the form of bilateral relations between the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The countries have shared a land border for the last 1,000 years and share more recent historical links through being part of the French colonial empire. Both countries are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
General elections were held in Cambodia on 1 May 1981 and marked the establishment of the new, Vietnamese-backed, state of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). The Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party was the only party to contest the election, and won all 117 seats. Voter turnout was reported to be 97.8%.
The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as the Khmer Communist Party, was a communist party in Cambodia. Its leader was Pol Pot and its members were generally known as the Khmer Rouge. Originally founded in 1951, the party was split into pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet factions as a result of the Sino–Soviet split with the former being the Pol Pot faction, and the latter adopting a more revisionist approach to Marxism. As such, it claimed that 30 September 1960 was its founding date, then it was named the Workers' Party of Kampuchea before it was renamed the Communist Party in 1966.
Cambodian genocide denial is the belief expressed by some Western academics that early claims of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge government (1975–1979) in Cambodia were much exaggerated. Many scholars of Cambodia and intellectuals opposed to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War denied or minimized reports of human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge, characterizing contrary reports as "tales told by refugees" and U.S. propaganda. They viewed the assumption of power by the Communist Party of Kampuchea as a positive development for the people of Cambodia who had been severely impacted by the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. On the other side of the argument, anti-communists in the United States and elsewhere saw in the rule of the Khmer Rouge vindication of their belief that the victory of Communist governments in Southeast Asia would lead to a "bloodbath."
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of intellectuals along with some religious and ethnic minorities in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Communist Party of Kampuchea general secretary Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in 1975. It is an example of democide.
The Cambodian humanitarian crisis from 1969 to 1993 consisted of a series of related events which resulted in the death, displacement, or resettlement abroad of millions of Cambodians.
The Cambodian–Dutch War from 1643–1644 was a conflict sparked by a coup which brought a new Cambodian King to the throne who converted to Islam with the help of Malay traders resident in the country. The new King initiated a massacre of Dutch East India Company employees and subsequently defeated the Dutch forces sent to extract retribution from the Cambodians.
The United States (U.S.) voted for the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) to retain Cambodia's United Nations (UN) seat until as late as 1993, long after the Khmer Rouge had been mostly deposed by Vietnam during the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and ruled just a small part of the country. It has also been reported that the U.S. encouraged the government of China to provide military support for the Khmer Rouge. There have also been related allegations by several sources, notably Michael Haas, which claim that the U.S. directly armed the Khmer Rouge in order to weaken the influence of Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Southeast Asia. These allegations have been disputed by the U.S. government and by journalist Nate Thayer, who argued that little, if any, American aid actually reached the Khmer Rouge.
Eastern Zone massacres refers to killings perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in the Eastern Region of Democratic Kampuchea in 1978 during the Cambodian genocide. They differ from the persecutions and killings of professionals, intellectuals and ethnic minorities which the Khmer Rouge perpetrated in the rest of the country because the killings were result of a purge that occurred within the Khmer Rouge's ranks.
So Phim was a Khmer Issarak, No. 3 of the Permanent Bureau and of the Military Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, deputy head of the People's National Liberation Armed Forces of Kampuchea, secretary of East Zone of the Democratic Kampuchea of the Khmer Rouge, until he refused to apply the Cambodian genocide designed by Pol Pot and his comrades causing his death in June 1978.
His undergraduate courses include Southeast Asia from Earliest Times to 1900, Southeast Asia since 1900, Vietnamese History from Earliest Times, The Vietnam War, Environmental History of Southeast Asia, and graduate seminars on the Vietnam War and on various aspects of the history of genocide.