The Hidden Wars: Cambodia and Laos During the Vietnam Conflict and Khmer Rouge
The expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos represents one of the most devastating yet lesser-known chapters of Southeast Asian history. The Vietnam War was widened to Cambodia and Laos in an attempt to weaken the Vietcong. The Ho Chi Minh Trail that supplied the Vietcong ran through both countries, and US forces also wanted to destroy Vietcong bases positioned just across the border in Cambodia. What became known as the “Secret War” saw the United States drop two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing sorties—equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years from 1964 to 1973. Today, Laos is the most heavily bombed nation in history, with more ordnance dropped than during all of World War II combined.
The consequences of these conflicts extended far beyond the immediate military objectives. In total, an estimated 275,000–310,000 people were killed as a result of the war, including 30,000 to 150,000 killed in U.S. bombing campaigns in Cambodia alone. The bombings destroyed many villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Lao civilians during the nine-year period. The legacy of these wars continues today, as unexploded bombs still maim and kill people throughout the region. The covert nature of these operations, conducted under the guise of maintaining neutrality in officially non-belligerent nations, created what historians now recognize as parallel conflicts that devastated civilian populations while serving broader Cold War strategic objectives in Southeast Asia.
“APRIL 17, 1975, THE KHMER ROUGE EMPTY PHNOM PENH” A film written and directed by Philippe Tourancheau
This documentary chronicles one of the most pivotal and tragic days in Cambodian history. After five years of civil war in Cambodia, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered the capital and overthrew the regime of General Lon Nol, supported by the Americans. The new masters of the country on the same day order the inhabitants of Phnom Penh to evacuate the city. What initially appeared to many residents as a moment of liberation quickly transformed into the beginning of a nightmare, as the conquerors began to reveal their true intent almost immediately. Within hours, they started implementing their radical plan to transform Cambodia into a rural society where all individuals would be harnessed in service of the state.
Thanks to unpublished archives and testimonies, this film seeks to tell the last days of the presence of foreigners gathered in the French Embassy, the fate reserved for the dignitaries who took refuge there, then of those who will believe in the revolution before it crushes them in turn and finally the liberation/occupation of the Vietnamese who, on January 7, 1979, drove the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Penh. The doco captures the brutal efficiency of the forced evacuation, as soldiers began ordering the city’s two million residents into the countryside. Houses and schools were emptied at gunpoint, with shots fired if people did not move fast enough. Not even hospitals were spared. This mass displacement marked the beginning of what would become a four-year reign of terror that would claim the lives of approximately two million Cambodians, making it one of the 20th century’s most devastating genocides.
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