Soldier with pickaxe

As with the other examples of atrocities and mass murder on this site, none of what happened in Cambodia could have been perpetrated without the willing cooperation of regular people.

It took tens of thousands of citizens and farmers turned soldiers in order to murder so many people.

"The prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were executed (often with pickaxes, to save bullets) and buried in mass graves."¹

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide