Cambodian Genocide
Webster Dictionary defines the word genocide as; the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. Cambodia was a mostly peaceful, small country in South Asia with a population of about 7 million.
Imagined being brutally ripped from your family and never seeing them again, being ran out of your home, and never knowing what will happen next. In 1975, Cambodia hit all 8 stages of a genocide, being one of the deadliest genocides.The genocide began after The genocide first began after the Cambodian war with the Khmer Rouge taking over Phnom Phen with the help of U.S bombings. About 2 million people died during the genocide because of Khmer Rouge.
Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, claimed that this would help return them to their basic times creating a utopia, even though he went in the other direction. Khmer Rouge was the group of cambodian communist that took control. Him and his followers, killed 25 percent of their population by murdering, overworking and starving them to death. They mainly targeted doctors, teachers, monks, journalists, the rich, artists, and/or anyone with an education. They also targeted various religious and ethnic groups during the genocide like, religious enthusiasts, Buddhists,
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The Vietnamese only intervened in the genocide because Khmer Rouge forces began to launch attacks on Vietnam’s borders (8 Stages of Genocide Cambodia). The reign of the Khmer Rouge finally ended in the year of 2000. After the genocide the country of Cambodia was left in ruins. “Since production began five years ago, the television show, "It's Not A Dream," has reunited members of 54 Cambodian families shattered by the genocide” states CNN in 2015. This is just one example of the many ways in which Cambodia's traumatized society is beginning to undertake the fraught, painful business of reckoning with their history
The definition of genocide is killing a large group of people of a certain origin. The Holocaust was in Germany and started in 1933. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were in charge of the Holocaust. The Cambodian Genocide took place in Cambodia. Cambodia is in Southeast Asia (“Cambodian”). Pol Pot was the leader of Khmer Rouge and the group was in charge of the Cambodian Genocide (“Cambodian”). The Cambodian Genocide started in 1975 and ended in 1978 because Khmer Rouge was ended by Vietnam (“Cambodian”). The Holocaust and the Cambodian Genocide are similar in the administrations’ treatment of their victims and in the fact that their victims were desperate for a leader, but different in U.S. involvement and government motivation.
The killing of so many Cambodian people fueled the Khmer Rouge to begin a power grab, where they staged a coup to take control of the government. They succeeded and
The Cambodian genocide occurred in the late twentieth century in Cambodia; the Holocaust took place in the beginning of the twentieth century in Germany and Eastern Europe. In the Cambodian Genocide and the Holocaust, individuals experienced a lack of allies because people were more concerned about self-preservation than they were about the other party. Bystanders, such as the United States and characters in Night, did not help because they valued their own safety over the safety of others. Allies were only motivated to help if they were sure it would disadvantage them.
The Cambodian Genocide has the historical context of the Vietnam War and the country’s own civil war. During the Vietnam War, leading up to the conflicts that would contribute to the genocide, Cambodia was used as a U.S. battleground for the Vietnam War. Cambodia would become a battle ground for American troops fighting in Vietnam for four years; the war would kill up
Later that same year, Pot and the Khmer Rouge took control over Cambodia. Pot wasted no time in starting his mission to reconstruct Cambodia. He thought that all the educated people needed to be killed (Melicharova). Also he thought that all noncommunist aspects of Cambodia needed to be wiped out. All rights you had were now gone. Religion was banned and if you were any kind of leader among the Buddhist monks, you were killed instantly (Melicharova). All kids were taken away and sent to work in the fields (Melicharova). If anyone was currently working and had a job, they were immediately killed along with their family members. It got so bad that you could be killed for just laughing, crying, and knowing another language. The Khmer Rouge motto was “To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss” (Melicharova). If you were lucky enough to escape death, you were put into the fields working usually from 4am to 10pm unpaid (“Pol”). From lack of food and sleep, people often became very ill which sadly led to death.
In the late 70’s, nearly 2 million Cambodians died of overwork, starvation, torture, and execution in what became known as the Cambodian genocide. A group known as the Khmer Rouge took control of the country in April 1975. Over the course of
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 .
In Democratic Kampuchea, in 1975, the radicalistic Khmer Rouge party formed under the communist leader Pol Pot, who was inspired to create a political nation that followed the footsteps Stalinism and Maoism. Compared to the Holocaust, which was singlehandedly the worst genocide in the 20th century in my opinion, Pol killed a believed 1.7-3.0 million Cambodians.
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 genocide of Cambodia started on the year of 1975 and ended on 1979. This is considered the Khmer Pogue period, where Pol Pot , Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan and the Khmer Rouge Communist party took over
There have been many cases of mass genocide in history. One such case was Adolf Hitler was a dictator who was leader of the Nazi party in Germany. The Nazis committed a mass genocide of the Jewish people, and anyone else who they didn't see to be “perfect”. Hitler's goal was to reform Germany into a utopian, or perfect society. Similar is a Cambodian man called Pol Pot, who also committed a mass genocide in order to make the perfect society. He lead the communist group in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge using the people's fear and easily given trust. While the public's opinion of Pol Pot and the goals and impacts of the movement is important to know about, his overall life is more important to know about because it shaped his character which would cause the Cambodian genocide. Pol Pot had a privileged way of growing up compared to other Cambodians, which led him to think that he was superior to others. He was able to quickly gain power due to the people's already bad feelings towards the previous government. With that power Pol Pot made a lot of choices that would forever impact Cambodia, such as a mass genocide.
The angered Prince Sihanouk formed a small movement called the Khmer Rouge that plotted to overthrow Lon Nol who was now our leader. Thankfully; after a few years of derelict, the Khmer rouge began to lose political power; But, that changed with the rise of Pol Pot, who is formally educated in radio technology. Pol Pot revitalized the fading Khmer Rouge and the group began regaining popularity as a Marxism-Leninism group which attracted the support from other communist countries such as China; but the Khmer rouge even received extensive military aid from the U.S and Britain. Even today as I am forced to work twelve hours a day at hard labor I think to myself if the genocide would all be possible without the "help" of the U.S, Britan, and
The underlying foundations of the Cambodian genocide are found in the Maoist political and economic beliefs of the Khmer Rouge administration. The most important leaders, all of whom studied in Paris in the 1950s and became active in the communist movement together, were Saloth Sar (who would later re-brand himself as Pol Pot), Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan. 30 The significance of their time together in France is that they developed what to them seemed a coherent political and economic model for the future of their home country, Cambodia.31 The last real stage in transforming
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,
Located in Southeast Asia between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia was home to one of the bloodiest political regimes to exist in the 20th century. In a country, in which American government reports in 1959 documented, was full of “ ‘docile and passive people…[who] could not be counted on to act in any positive way for the benefit of US aims and policies’”, the United States conflict in neighboring Vietnam brought about incredible changes to an unsuspecting people (qted. in Dunlop 70). The countryside was bombed by the United States in order to uproot suspected North Vietnamese holdouts and supply routes starting in 1969. These bombing raids, which devastated