Thirty years ago, on 17 April 1975, about a dozen people, leaders of the Khmer Rouge, (KR) took power in Cambodia beginning a radical experiment in social engineering analogous with that undertaken by Mao Zedong in The Great Leap Forward. The Khmer Rouge was intent on transforming Cambodia into a nationalist, communist idyll uncorrupted by urbanisation, learning, science or religion. In reality, blinded by their ideology, a very small elite of extremely ruthless people imposed a genocidal regime on the unsuspecting people of Cambodia that resulted in the death and destruction to its people on a scale unparalleled since the genocide inflicted by Nazi Germany.