Pol Pot: Genocide In Cambodia

After they seized power in Cambodia in April 1975, Saloth "Pol Pot" Sar and the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the death of 1.5-3 million Cambodian's and were perhaps one of the most ruthless regimes of the 20th century. The aim of this investigation is to evaluate Pol Pot's means of maintaining power from 1975 to 1979. An account of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's drastic internal reforms including the slaughter of millions, economic reorganization, political restructuring, and the cultivation of social/ethnic groups will appear in section B. External forces including funding from China and the United States and repressive measures such as censorship, torture, and execution will be assessed. This

The Cambodian Genocide happened between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge, a guerrilla group, over threw the government and started a regime to bring Cambodia back to year zero . The Khmer Rouge called this the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea . Their aim was to purify society from the influence of the west, and to create a communist country . The Khmer Rouge started this by destroying what was left of the old society and executing the wealthy, educated and military people. They banned all outside languages and religion. An estimated figure of 1.7 million Cambodians where killed during this period by the Khmer Rouge .

After Year Zero and the purge of his own people, he lost a large amount of public support. Many believed that he was a traitor “whose hands are stained with blood” because “Cambodians don’t kill Cambodians” (Thayer). He claimed to have committed those crimes to ensure better lives for his people, but he only made them hate him by killing their fellow Cambodians. To make matters even worse, Pol Pot refused to repent or even talk about the thousands of executions or the million deaths that he caused, he only continued to blame the Vietnamese for his actions (Becker). He believed that there were countless Vietnamese agents in Cambodia who “didn’t give rice to the population”, causing widespread starvation (Thayer). He took no personal responsibility for the over one million deaths that he caused and believed that his “conscious is clear”. Somehow Pol Pot thought that he could deny that the mass genocide, that occurred during his own rule, was his fault. Even his old allies turned against him and were the ones to capture him in the end (“Khmer Rouge”). Pol Pot turned on every possible person that could have helped him, and when he was captured he had no one left. But, even with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge’s known terror, the Vietnamese government that was installed after the Khmer Rouge was led by Khmer Rouge leaders and Khmer Rouge trained communists (Rainsy) . As

In 1975, The Khmer Rouge became the ruling political party of Cambodia after overthrowing the Lon Nol government. Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society. They wanted to form an anti-modern, anti-Western ideal of a restructured “classless agrarian society'', a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. The Khmer Rouge revolutionary army enforced this mostly with extreme violence. The book “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers”, written by Luong Ung, is the author’s story of growing up during this time period. She was five years old when the Khmer Rouge came

The Cambodian genocide was one of the worst atrocities in the twentieth century. Innocent civilians living in Cambodia were targeted by a communist group called the Khmer Rouge. Victims such as Cham Muslims, Buddhist Monks, Christians, and anyone who was considered a threat to the ultimate goal of the perpetrators were extensively tortured or brutally murdered. Year Zero was a society that the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, wanted Cambodia to adapt. In order to do carry out his plan, he made everyone become farmers and started the genocide by evacuating the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. On April 17th, 1975, the Khmer Rouge Army stormed into Phnom Penh and forced two million people to the countryside. They ruled Cambodia until 1979

into the military, and forced to conform. New strict rules were put into place regarding sexual relations, vocabulary, even down to the very clothing upon their back. They spoke Cham and French. Approximately 156,000 Cambodians died in the civil war, and half of them were civilians. Pol Pot had the power to take over while Khmer Rouge was the nations leader, Pol Pot did become the prime minister in 1976.

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge started the genocide. The Genocide (a major killing of a large group of people mainly of those of a particular ethnic group) took place in 1975 to 1979. By that time Pol Pot 's force had grown to over 700,000 men. During the Genocide, the population was just over 7 million but approximately 1.7 million lost their lives. The Genocide group leader from Khmer Rouge is Pol Pot. When Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia their goal was to turn the country into communist. There was a Communist Party called CPK(Communist Party Of Kampuchea). The party’s existence was kept secret until 1977. No one in the group (CPK) knew who it’s leaders were (the leaders called themselves “ Angkar Padevat”)

Numerous genocides have occurred throughout the twentieth century, beginning with the Turkish genocide against the Armenians. One genocide in particular, the Cambodian genocide, is considered by many to be one of the most ruthless genocides of the twentieth century. The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), better known as the Khmer Rouge, was led by a communist dictator known to the world as Pol Pot. His regime abused the Cambodian people at an unimaginable scale. His attempts to transform Cambodia into a classless society, where there would be no distinction between rich and poor along with no exploitation, resulted in the devastation of about one-fifth of the population due to starvation, malnutrition, torture, exhaustion, and even illness. To make matters worse, families were separated, young children were forced into labor camps, and people were left in the field to rot. Although relatively underexamined, the Cambodian genocide goes down as one of the most atrocious genocides of the twentieth century.

Khmer Rouge’s interpretation of Leninist/Marxist/Maoist communist model made them believe that they could mold a classless society by eliminating all the social classes apart from peasants who are poor. The elimination led to annihilation of all careers marked by the intellectuals and religion. The many groups included teachers, lawyers,doctors and any religious figures. About more than 500,000 people died in the “killing fields” and more than a million died from starvation due to only eating 200 calories of rice each day. Those that complained about their labor or tasks were tortured in a detention center like the infamous S-21, and the would be killed. The bones of the people who died are filled up in mass graves all over the country. Pol Pot seized control of Cambodia and renaming the country Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot governed a huge part of the country behind the scenes. Pol Pot became prime minister in 1976 when Sihanouk resigned. At that time the borders between Vietnam and Cambodia were fighting and got very intense from 1977-1979, the Vietnamese had their 60,000 troops capture Phnom Penh and forced Pol Pot to flee back to the jungle where he would resume guerilla

How did Pol pot's regime affect life in cambodia in the past and the present? Pol Pot's goal was to make Cambodia start at year zero. As soon as he came to power, He tried to eliminate anything that would ruin his idea for the utopia he wanted. The Khmer Rouge believed that to make the country perfect country, they must remove everything from the old way, including the old education way. In the past, Students were taught in Buddhist monasteries called Wats.(Bookbridge) After he took over, his first step was to remove education from Cambodia.

Pol Pot with his plan in mind, renamed Cambodia to the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. Pol Pot declared the year ‘zero’ and he then began to “purify” the Cambodian society (Amendola). Pol Pot supported the idea of the extreme form of peasant communism, so he banned all western civilization influences, such as city life and capitalism. Foreigners were expelled along with religion (Lavinia). National embassies were shut down and the use of foreign language was outlawed. There was no use of media, news, and communication allowed, including limited mail and phone. All businesses, education, and education disappeared, and parental authority was void. Cambodia became a sealed of location in the world

Pol Pot killed 25% of Cambodia, equivalent to the entire city of Philadelphia. In a four year period, over 1.7 million Cambodians died of overwork, starvation, torture and execution. Pol Pot’s Communist ideals, extremely similar to the Stalinist USSR, called for a total collectivization of agriculture and for a complete nationalization of all sectors of the economy. Pol Pot’s ideology, Socialist Agrarianism, valued farmers, and wanted to rid the country of all other professions. Pol Pot was "creating a complete Communist society without wasting time on the intermediate steps," as the Khmer Rouge said to China in 1975 (Kiernan, Ben). Believing the city people to be contaminated by their past lives, Pol Pot would re-write their histories.

The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) was their official name, Pol Pot later in 1963 he became the party’s secretary and leader. A coup was staged, and Prince Sihanouk was no longer the head of state, the Khmer Rouge had been gaining more members and had an alliance with Sihanouk. With this alliance and the help of Vietnam, Lon Nol began losing territory and battles. The U.S began dropping bombs in Cambodia killing many and having more join forces with the Khmer Rouge, on April 17, 1975, the capital Phnom Penh was taken by the communist group. The Khmer Rouge treated its population as slaves and worked

His actions motivated the French to allow Cambodia to become entirely independent finally and in 1955 Sihanouk resigned for his father and elections were held. Sihanouk formed his political movement. From 1955-1970, he dominated politics in Cambodia so much so that it is sometimes called the 'Sihanouk era. Sihanouk's reign began to crumble in 1968 due to to the communist's civil war. They took control and began their reign by renaming Cambodia, Khmer Republic. The rebels also captured Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, starting the horrific and tragic era of Cambodian history. This group, the Khmer Rouge, was led by Pol Pot (or Saloth Sar) also known as 'Brother Number One.' Pol Pot declared that history would begin again in Cambodia. The first year of their rebellion was now the first year of history. In 1975, Cambodia was mostly an agricultural country, but when Pol Pot gained power, he decided it should be wholly agricultural. By making this decision, people from the towns and cities were forced to move to the countryside. The Vietnamese stepped in and invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and quickly

Some say that Pol Pot was responsible for the power and control of Cambodia because “Pol Pot cut Cambodia off from the world. He banned foreign and minority languages and attacked the neighboring countries of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand in an attempt to regain ancient ‘lost territory’” (The life of Pol Pot- Cambodia 4). This statement is true because the Khmer Rouge did gain part of their power by isolating the country, but Pol Pot is not fully responsible for that. There were other people involved, like Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan all of these people were also leaders in the Khmer Rouge. Nuon Chea was the second leader in the Khmer Rouge he is known as “The evil genius of the movement” (Chandler 1), because he is the one who was in charge of the prison system. He was one of the one’s with a heartless mind, planning tortures and executing innocent people.