The Contradictions of Mass Violence

The Khmer Rouge wanted to create a state funded by rice exports, a policy that justified the pursuit of an ever-expanding agricultural surplus for export. To increase overall production, they sought to increase the area under cultivation, increase the overall productivity of agriculture, and limit domes­tic rice consumption.

These economic structures of violence contributed most especially to the direct violence that permeated Democratic Kampuchea. The fragility of CPK rule upon victory contributed on the one hand to the development of a massive security apparatus designed to seek out and ‘smash' perceived external and internal enemies. First, former soldiers and officials of the

Structural Violence during the Cambodian Genocide previous governmental regime were to be identified, arrested and, often, killed. Likewise, Vietnamese soldiers and ‘spies' were to be eliminated. Second, many high-ranking officials of the CPK cautioned against the presence of ‘internal' enemies, such as traitors and saboteurs.

On the other hand, it was the hurried implementation and resulting inefficiency of economic policies that led to widespread paranoia among the highest echelons of the CPK. Surviving CPK documents describe people being arrested for ‘stealing' food or merely complaining about insufficient rations. Such punishment was not confined to the masses: CPK leaders also purged local officials who admitted that starvation was occurring in their areas. As the food crisis increased, the CPK accused traitorous and inept low-level cadres of undermining the food production system.^[923] Thus, beginning in 1976, and intensifying throughout 1977, Pol Pot and his close associates initiated a series of purges against suspected traitors and reactionary elements within the Party. High-ranking cadres were arrested, detained and executed. Prior to their death, they were tortured and forced to confess their knowledge of and involvement in traitorous activities and to divulge names of other men and women. These ‘strings of traitors' would subsequently lead to more and more purges. In time, entire divisions and work groups would be arrested and executed en masse.^[924]

In short, the deaths from exposure, starvation and disease during the Cambodian genocide were not unintended side effects of poor research,

poor planning or poor implementation, but rather the necessary and dialectic consequence of the CPK’s distinct imperative to increase surplus. Without the threat of direct violence, the policies of rationing and surplus could not have been enforced. Without the policies of rationing and surplus, neither the material nor the discursive basis for direct violence could have been realised. Consequently, structures of violence worked dialectically with direct forms of violence to account for the massive death toll associated with the Cambodian genocide.