The Khmer Rouge revolution in Cambodia was one of the modern era's worst examples of state-sponsored violence and organized murder and repression. At least 1.7 million people lost their lives from unnatural causes in a four year period, 1975-79. Unlike other twentieth century genocides, the mass killings of Pol Pot's regime have been largely undocumented and unprosecuted for many years. The Cambodia Genocide Program (CGP) at Yale University was created in an effort to collect and study information on these crimes to assist any possible future prosecutions and provide a critical understanding of genocide "which can be marshaled in the prevention of political violence against populations elsewhere in the world." The core of this site and the major product of CGP's mission is the Cambodian Genocide Data Base (CGDB), which contains four different types of records: bibliographic, biographic, photographic and geographic. The first offers information on over 3,000 primary and secondary documents "pertaining to gross violations of human rights during the Khmer Rouge regime," some of which are available in full text. The second database is an index of over 7,000 Khmer Rouge members who held authority from the district level up as well as many of their victims. The third database contains over 5,000 scanned photos of prisoners in the infamous Tuol Sleng Prison. The final database is a collection of maps with information on 140 different mass grave and prison sites, mostly in southern and eastern Cambodia. The CGDB will continue to be updated, and thousands of records are in preparation. Additional resources at this indispensable site for students of genocide or modern Cambodia include information on the CGP-sponsored Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), a collection of miscellaneous findings on related subjects, CGP publications, and a selection of translated documents.
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