Ethnic Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Cham along side Cambodian Christians, and Buddhist monks were the demographic targets of persecution.
People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity; having had contact with a foreign source, such as a U.S. missionary, international relief or government agency; or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean."
In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison or improvised weapons such as sharpened bamboo sticks, hammers, machetes and axes.
In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees, and then were thrown into the pits alongside their parents.
He faced Cambodian and foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal and was convicted on 7 August 2014 and received a life sentence.
[11] On 26 July 2010 Kang Kek Iew (aka Comrade Duch), director of the S-21 prison camp, was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment.
The memorial park at Choeung Ek has been built around the mass graves of many thousands of victims, most of whom were executed after interrogation at the S-21 Prison in Phnom Penh.
Commonly, bones and clothing surface after heavy rainfalls due to the large number of bodies still buried in shallow mass graves.