The Killing Fields were a number of areas within Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the totalitarian communist Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979.
At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge.
The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep.
The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families. The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Chams (Muslim Cambodians), Cambodian Christians, and the Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution.
