That article is one of the better articulated versions of pro-socialist, denial of Khmer Rouge atrocities that I've read, but it is an exercise in political bias rather than history. It is also rather offensive.

I could go through that article paragraph by paragraph and disprove it, and perhaps with some more time that would be a worthwhile activity, but lets deal with your question rather than the denial of comrade Israel Shamir that you shared.

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Numbers first.

Many different experts, historians and demographers have worked on estimating the numbers killed during the Khmer Rouge period. The best current estimates put that number of excess deaths during the roughly four years from 1975-1979 at somewhere between 1.75-2.5 million, with the middle ground of roughly 2 million being generally agreed upon. Of that total, roughly half are considered to be the result of direct execution.

This is in part based on the injuries that can be viewed on the remains, and on mass grave mapping. A process that I've seen in its modern form first hand working with the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.

Two million deaths does constitute roughly a quarter of the Cambodian population. There is little to argue there. But they were not all murdered, and the person that comrade Shamir quotes is not representative of mainstream historians.

The question of whether or not these mass graves are the result of US bombing raids raises a rather different, and very 'political' version of events.

The estimates of total deaths of the Cambodian Civil War, bombing included, are in the roughly 250,000 mark. There is still debate among historians about the tally that can be associated with the bombing itself, and the article isn't wrong in suggesting that the bombing was a callous and destructive bit of US foreign policy, but concluding that the mass graves found littered across the country today are primarily the result of this are misguided. Even if we place a high estimate of those killed in the bombing - lets say half of that total, it is still a fraction of the total number who died during the Pol Pot period itself, and therefore not representative of the remains found today.

If you 'don't want to always believe what you are told', then feel free to read the 'expert demographer's report', from the Khmer Rouge tribunal itself which can be found here

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Even if given the benefit of saying that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had good intentions, the fact that they were completely unable to protect the Cambodian population from starvation, illness as a result of overwork, as well as disease, is testament to their fundamental failure as a regime. The fact that this failure to protect must be coupled with policies that produced targeting many members of the population for execution, makes them not only inept but also callous and culpable of severe crimes against humanity.

The frankly ridiculous way that comrade Shamir states that he spoke with people who said there were no bad memories of the Pol Pot regime's time in power is one of the most ridiculous sentences I have ever read. I guess everyone that I've talked to in the country was lying through their teeth because of some US agenda.

Many socialist writers, then and now, attempted to make the Pol Pot regime look better by blaming anything they did wrong as somehow the result of US policies. This is old school east vs west political point scoring and it should be regarded with very little seriousness in a modern context. S-21 was not a result of US Foreign Policy. That was a Cambodian initiative.

Being sceptical is fine, and is a good attribute to hold, but it should be directed at all sources one reads - not just 'mainstream' ones. Just because someone has a smaller platform does not mean that they are somehow tapping into a less known truth.

Many historians who write about the regime now will be measured in their treatment of CPK policies. They will acknowledge what their aims were, even the good intentions within these aims, as well as showcasing the horror associated with the US bombing campaign and the foreign policy that certainly had ill effects in the region. But both sides of the Cold War were severely culpable in what happened in Cambodia - as were the Cambodians themselves. The Khmer Rouge were Cambodian, and they had control of their country, the policies that they decided to initiate - and the deadly results - are in large part their own doing. They are culpable for their actions if not for the circumstances that led to them taking power.

There are scattered points in comrade Shamir's article that are examples of modern historical assessments, the fact that he outlines the 'legend of genocide' as a Vietnamese justification of their intervention is more or less true. As is their goals of creating an Indochinese federation that the Khmer Rouge were suspicious of. He makes little mention of the 'regional variations' between different zones and villages but that could have also been included as an example of the subtle flaws in the 'overall standard western view' of the 'Cambodian Genocide'.

The misreading of plaques at Cheoung Ek was another strange point to make... No one suggests that one million people died there. The numbers are closer to 15,000. Another example of purposeful misleading. But what should have alerted someone who claims to be 'sceptical' is the ending of comrade Shamir's article, where he clearly outlines the intentions for this ridiculous version of history:

"Now we may cautiously reassess the brave attempts to reach for socialism in various countries. They were done under harsh, adverse conditions, under threat of intervention, facing hostile propaganda. But let us remember: if socialism failed, so did capitalism. If communism was accompanied by loss of life, so was and is capitalism. But with capitalism, we have no future worth living, while socialism still offers hope to us and our children."

This is not someone who is looking to write history. This is someone looking to prove socialism and any attempt at it, is noble.

In short, the claims that the Khmer Rouge killed a quarter of the Cambodian population, are in fact, true.