Cambodia Exploished By Pol Pot Regime, Khmer Rouge

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 Khmer Rouge forces took over Cambodia, and evacuated the nation's cities. They emptied schools, hospitals, factories and abolished all forms of money and wages. Religion, popular culture, and all forms of self expression were forbidden. They were forced into the countryside to do forced labor, and got less than 90 grams of rice a day. Where most people died from fatigue, disease, execution, and starvation. Now people of Cambodia are exchanging this terrible genocide for healing. Trying to find peace and a resolution for all those who have lost loved ones, or encountered this terrible genocide

The Cambodian Genocide initially started during the vietnam war. Cambodia was practically in the middle of it working neutral. They still got bombed many times though, mostly from the US and communism eventually began trying to change something but what really happened was the Cambodian Genocide of the 20th century. The genocide ended with over 2,000,000 deaths. (P.P.I.C.)

From the dawn of time up to current day, genocides have been happening throughout history. Some earlier genocides have not even been recorded or documented. Most genocides also share similar reasons for occurring. Genocides happen because one group wants complete control and absolute power over another. For instance, people can be killed for having different ideas or not being similar to to the opposing group. It is clear that genocides only end with senseless and brutal discrimination which results in many deaths. From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge carried out a genocide in Cambodia killing all people who seemed to oppose them and their communist government (“The Cambodian Genocide”).

There exists a country in Southern Asia, known as Cambodia. This is a small and poor country that experienced dramatic changes in the past century. The Cambodian, or Khmer, society was a very capitalistic country consisted a small population of the rich and a large majority of the poor. The wealth gap between the rich and the poor proved to be fatal. This unreliable economic system soon became the cause of the Khmer Civil War in 1967. This civil war was started by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), who later renamed themselves to Khmer Rouge. Led by Pol Pot, this Kampuchea party was made up of mainly the lower and middle class who greatly despised the rich, who they believed shared a narcissistic view and an extreme corruption. The Khmer Rouge was able to defeat the Khmer Republic and took over

Before the Khmer, Cambodia was one of the most economically advanced countries in the world. Now the country is one of the poorest in the world, and has one of the highest death rates in the world. Food/Oil prices have greatly affected the poverty in the country. As the shortage of food/oil gets greater, the entrepreneurs have to raise their prices so they will be able to sustain their families. The less money the citizens have to pay with, the harder it is for those entrepreneurs to make money which hurts the country’s economy drastically. Also the lack of food intake from the Cambodians affects their productivity and efficiency

The Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, which lasted until January 1979. For their three-year, eight-month, and twenty-one day rule of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge committed some of the most heinous crimes in current history. The main leader who orchestrated these crimes was a man named Pol Pot. In 1962, Pol Pot had become the coordinator of the Cambodian Communist Party. The Prince of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, did not approve of the Party and forced Pol Pot to flee to exile in the jungle. There, Pol formed a fortified resistance movement, which became known as the Khmer Rouge, and pursued a guerrilla war against Sihanouk’s government. As Pol Pot began to accumulate power,

From 1975 to 1979 Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge regime, had a goal to create a society that was completely self-sufficient. In four years the Khmer Rouge killed, tortured and starved to death somewhere between 1.7 and 2 million innocent Cambodian civilians, ultimately destroying any trace of humanity within Cambodia. Forty years later the people of Cambodia are still suffering and the country is still trying to put the pieces back together, both physically and emotionally.

Without the intervention of the French, Cambodia could have become integrated into another South Asian country, and disappear as a sovereign nation. (Cambodia Tribunal) While the French seem to be a blessing to Cambodia, the few negative effects created the poor, naive Cambodia that Pol Pot came to power in. In the early 20th century, education was severely neglected. Over time, it was slightly increased, but was never up to par. According to Cambodia, a Country Study, there was only one “institution of higher learning” in Cambodia in 1950. The country was not educated. The Khmer Rouge/Democratic Party of Campuchea’s Socio-Communist ideas took advantage of the unknowledgeable Cambodians, and ended up herding them like sheep, eventually leading them to their death. French colonists did not allow Cambodians to participate in the government, so they did not know what to do when independence finally arrived at their front door in 1945.

Still today Cambodia is a forever changing society that faces many challenges. Cambodia is mostly poor but there is a distinguished majority that is somewhat wealthy. Many different religions, cultures, and ethnic groups have established colonization in Cambodia but they all have one thing in common…poverty. The Khmer Rouge created an everlasting effect on Cambodia that will most likely be a problem for many more years to come. (Hidayat, 2010)

Prior to the 1960s Cambodia was considered a peaceful, neutral and to an extent prosperous country, however, nowadays it is known as one of the most tragic empires of all time. Geographically squeezed between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia suffered a great blow with the wakening of the Vietnam War. Essentially, the fighting in neighboring Vietnam spread to Cambodia when the Americans started suspecting that various Vietnamese Communists were hiding in bases along different areas of Cambodia’s border. The American bombings killed thousands of innocent civilians and more importantly destroyed much of Cambodia’s existing social and economic structures. The devastating situation gave way to a wicked revolutionary Pol Pot who led the Khmer Rouge forces in Cambodia from 1963 until 1997. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were in pursuit of transforming the Cambodian society to a utopian one and bringing the country to ‘’year zero’’ as Pol Pot put it. In only four years, from 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge forces killed two million people while the devastation Pol Pot wreaked on his country remains hard to comprehend. The rise to power of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was inseparable from US intervention. Although it was indigenous, Pol Pot’s revolution would not have won power without US economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until

The rise of power of the Khmer Rouge guerilla movement was linked to the rule of King Norodom Sihanouk who assumed the power of king after Kampuchea now Cambodia won its independence from French control. During his reign, war and crisis was tearing through Cambodia’s close neighbor Vietnam. The two countries who were involved in the war the United States and North Vietnam both tried to use the lands of Cambodia. Trying to avoid war and conflict from reaching their nation Sihanouk agreed to the proposal by North Vietnam to use their land as a refuge. Due to North Vietnam taking refuge and asylum in Cambodia, The United States Air Force also asked Sihanouk if they could bomb his country to eliminate the North Vietnamese army. After seeing the

Saloth Sar aka Pol Pot (19th May, 1925- 15th April, 1998) was a Cambodian revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge. He was the 8th of 9 children born into a moderately wealthy rice farming family. He grew up in Prek Sbauv, a small fishing village, where his family owned 50 acres of land or roughly 10 times the national average as well as several buffalos. Pol Pot was educated at several different schools in both Cambodia and France. In Cambodia, he attended a Buddhist monastery, Cloe Miche, a catholic school in Phnom Penh and briefly Lycée Sisowath, an exclusive school for academics. He then moved to Paris after gaining a scholarship and he studied radio technology. Upon Pol Pot’s return to Cambodia, the region was rebelling against the French colonial rule in order to gain independence, which they achieved a year later. Meanwhile, Pol Pot joined the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP), an underground Marxist- Leninist party. Between 1956 and 1963 Pol Pot became a taught history, geography and French literature whilst also plotting a revolution simultaneously.

39 years ago, Cambodia was misfortunate with creating one the saddest tragedies of the 20th century. It started off with the fall of the Khmer Republic, when the communist Khmer Rouges took over the country that led to the slaughtering of over 2 million people. After four dark years, what’s left was a civil war torn country that was left unstable throughout the 90’s with a corrupted Prime Minister name Hun Sen. Sen, a former Khmer Rouge led Cambodia as Prime Minister; Second to the King. On July 28th, 2013, it was the day of the elections where everything was set to change. The citizens that represented Cambodia went to the polls and voted. For some people, it was their first time voting and for all, it was a vote as if their lives

These factors include the healthcare systems and national expenditures for healthcare, ethnic diversity and cultural factors, gender equality, communicable and noncommunicable diseases, technology in global health, and health policies. Cambodia, overall, has seen a major improvement in recent years following the Khmer Rouge, with major strides especially in economic growth, education, and some communicable diseases. However, Cambodia still struggles in some areas due to it’s lack of infrastructure, making areas like improving access to healthcare and decreasing poverty difficult. If Cambodia wishes to improve in all areas, it will need to focus on using its fast economic growth to help improve its infrastructure.