Landmines in Cambodia: Past, Present, and Future By Wade C. Rober ...

their use against the enemy most often involved swinging the butt of the gun like a club.

Debate regarding the number of Cambodians dying under the Khmer Rouge continues. In spite of ongoing discussion regarding the number of people dying during the Khmer Rouge genocide and the fact that only one in 380 deaths was landmine specific, an approximation of the number of landmines during this time is possible. Estimations of the number of people dying during the Khmer Rouge reign vary from 800,000 to more than 3 million. At the lower end of the spectrum, Khieu Samphan²⁸ and Saloth Sar state that no more than 800,000 Cambodians died while the Khmer Rouge were in power. The US Department of State calculates 1.2 million deaths during this time. Amnesty International claims a total of 1.4 million died during the same period. The Yale Cambodian Genocide Project estimates a total of 1.7 million deaths. François Ponchaud²⁹ estimates the death toll between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia was at 2.3 million. Finally, a figure of 3.1 million was estimated by the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. I estimate deaths occurring during the Khmer Rouge reign to be around 2.2 million.

Death toll estimations vary drastically because estimation methodologies are radically different from one another. For political reasons, Khieu Samphan and Saloth Sar claimed a small number of deaths during this time, avoiding any direct or personal connection to them. The US estimations, also low for political reasons, originate from a skull count in mass grave excavations from the early 1990s. Amnesty International and the Yale Cambodian Genocide Project use population growth rate estimations from other countries that undervalue the magnitude of the genocide. François Ponchaud is closest in his estimation, actually using growth rates that existed in Cambodia before and after the genocide and interpolating this data to estimate death tolls. Ponchaud, however, failed to use the 1980 population counts provided by the Vietnamese in his estimations, undercounting the 1980 population by 100,000 and overstating the death count by 100,000. The People’s Republic of Kampuchea inflated the death toll to more than 3 million in an effort to pull at the heartstrings of international donors and to convince the Cambodians of the chthonic