: 40 The dispossessed urban dwellers were assigned to re-education camps or "New Settlements." Former government employees and soldiers were executed. The evacuation probably resulted in at least 100,000 deaths. Between 2 and 3 million residents of Phnom Penh, Battambang, and other large towns were forced by the Communists to walk into the countryside without organized provision for food, water, shelter, physical security, or medical care. The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on 17 April 1975, and immediately ordered all the residents to evacuate the city. Main articles: Fall of Phnom Penh and Democratic Kampuchea With conclusive evidence, including the discovery of over 20,000 mass graves, of a large number of deaths-estimated at between one and three million-of Cambodians caused by the Khmer Rouge, denials, deniers, and apologists largely disappeared, although disagreements concerning the actual number of Khmer Rouge victims have continued. : 214–5 Cambodian scholar Sophal Ear has titled the pro-Khmer Rouge academics as the "Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia" (STAV). Beachler, writing of the controversy about the range and extent of Khmer Rouge atrocities, concluded that "much of the posturing by academics, publicists, and politicians seems to have been motivated largely by political purposes" rather than concern for the Cambodian people. On the other side of the argument, anti-communists in the United States and elsewhere saw in the rule of the Khmer Rouge vindication of their belief that the victory of Communist governments in Southeast Asia would lead to a "bloodbath." They viewed the assumption of power by the Communist Party of Kampuchea as a positive development for the people of Cambodia who had been severely impacted by the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War. involvement in the Vietnam War denied or minimized reports of human rights abuses of the Khmer Rouge, characterizing contrary reports as "tales told by refugees" and U.S. Many scholars of Cambodia and intellectuals opposed to the U.S. Cambodian genocide denial is the belief expressed by some Western academics that early claims of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge government (1975–1979) in Cambodia were much exaggerated.
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