Pol Pot

==== Number of deaths ====
[[File:Choeungek2.JPG|thumb|Skulls of Khmer Rouge victims]]
[[File:ChoeungEk-Darter-8.jpg|thumb|Mass grave in [[Choeung Ek]]]]

[[Ben Kiernan]] estimates that 1.671&nbsp;million to 1.871&nbsp;million Cambodians died as a result of Khmer Rouge policy, or between 21% and 24% of Cambodia's 1975 population.<ref name="CAS">{{cite journal|author-link=Ben Kiernan|last=Kiernan|first=Ben|s2cid=143971159|title=The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975–79, and East Timor, 1975–80|journal=Critical Asian Studies|volume=35|issue=4|pages=585–597|year=2003|doi=10.1080/1467271032000147041}}</ref> A study by French demographer Marek Sliwinski calculated slightly fewer than 2&nbsp;million unnatural deaths under the Khmer Rouge out of a 1975 Cambodian population of 7.8&nbsp;million; 33.5% of Cambodian men died under the Khmer Rouge compared to 15.7% of Cambodian women.<ref name="Locard">{{cite journal|last=Locard|first=Henri|title=State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) and Retribution (1979–2004)|journal=[[European Review of History]]|volume=12|issue=1|pages=121–143|date=March 2005|doi=10.1080/13507480500047811|s2cid=144712717}}</ref> According to a 2001 academic source, the most widely accepted estimates of excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge range from 1.5&nbsp;million to 2&nbsp;million, although figures as low as 1&nbsp;million and as high as 3&nbsp;million have been cited; conventionally accepted estimates of deaths due to Khmer Rouge executions range from 500,000 to 1&nbsp;million, "a third to one half of excess mortality during the period".<ref name="Heuveline, Patrick 2001"/> However, a 2013 academic source (citing research from 2009) indicates that execution may have accounted for as much as 60% of the total, with 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3&nbsp;million suspected victims of execution.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Seybolt|first1=Taylor B.|last2=Aronson|first2=Jay D.|last3=Fischoff|first3=Baruch|title=Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2013|isbn=978-0199977314|page=238}}</ref>

While considerably higher than earlier and more widely accepted estimates of Khmer Rouge executions, the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam)'s Craig Etcheson defended such estimates of over one million executions as "plausible, given the nature of the mass grave and DC-Cam's methods, which are more likely to produce an under-count of bodies rather than an over-estimate."<ref name="Tufts.edu"/> Demographer Patrick Heuveline estimated that between 1.17&nbsp;million and 3.42&nbsp;million Cambodians died unnatural deaths between 1970 and 1979, with between 150,000 and 300,000 of those deaths occurring during the civil war. Heuveline's central estimate is 2.52&nbsp;million excess deaths, of which 1.4&nbsp;million were the direct result of violence.<ref name="Heuveline, Patrick 2001">{{cite book|last=Heuveline|first=Patrick|chapter=The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979|title=Forced Migration and Mortality|publisher=[[National Academies Press]]|year=2001|pages=102–105|isbn=978-0309073349}}</ref><ref name="Tufts.edu">{{cite web|url=https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/cambodia-u-s-bombing-civil-war-khmer-rouge/|title=Cambodia: U.S. bombing, civil war, & Khmer Rouge|publisher=[[World Peace Foundation]]|date=7 August 2015|access-date=5 August 2019|archive-date=14 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190714181839/https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/cambodia-u-s-bombing-civil-war-khmer-rouge/|url-status=live}}</ref> Despite being based on a house-to-house survey of Cambodians, the estimate of 3.3&nbsp;million deaths promulgated by the Khmer Rouge's successor regime, the [[People's Republic of Kampuchea]] (PRK), is generally considered to be an exaggeration; among other methodological errors, the PRK authorities added the estimated number of victims that had been found in the partially-exhumed mass graves to the raw survey results, meaning that some victims would have been double-counted.<ref name="Tufts.edu"/>

An estimated 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policies.<ref>{{cite book|last=Heuveline|first=Patrick|title=Forced Migration and Mortality|chapter=The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979|publisher=[[National Academies Press]]|year=2001|isbn=978-0-309-07334-9|page=124}} cf. {{cite news|author-link=Seymour Hersh|last=Hersh|first=Seymour M.|title=2.25&nbsp;million Cambodians Facing Starvation|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=8 August 1979}}</ref>