Fm Rouge Research Paper

During times of trouble it is the structure of families which bring stability and fuel resilience. Families often support each other to survive a trauma because they are support systems. The Cambodian genocide led by the Khmer Rouge regime attempted to tear apart families and exploit their special bond. The Khmer Rouge soldiers took towns captive or burned them, and recruited youths to join their cause (Pran IX). From 1975 to 1979, all Cambodians were forced to live in labor camps and were forced to work fourteen to eighteen hours a day with only a single bowl of rice to eat. Family members were separated from one another purposefully to lower morale. During this period an estimated one-third of Cambodian’s population died due to malnutrition, illness, and execution (Pran X). Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors compiled by Dith Pran is important because it confirms the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime, explains how the Khmer Rouge gained power, and how the Khmer Rouge attempted to indoctrinate young children against their parents.

This paper investigates and distinguishes, through my opinion, the impacts that Khmer Rouge’s also known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) had on a global scale. First, by addressing the impacts to the immediate country, Cambodia and the tactics used by this abhorrent organization. Furthermore, the ideologies used by said organization, to instill fear and distrust in the population; which lead to there early demise, but not after 1.7 million people lost or sacrificed there lives for their country, per se. The lesson to be learned from this is, no matter who you are or what power you have, eventually you will have to answer to the international community if you commit such egregious acts of violence.

Cambodia is a small country of Southeast Asia, less than half the size of the state of California (“World Without Genocide: Cambodian Genocide”). The Cambodian government in the mid 1970’s was unstable as Lon Nol, the Cambodian prime minister, and his forces were being stretched dealing with conflicts of Vietnamese communists, and a rising group of Cambodian communists called the Khmer Rouge Party. (Peace Pledge Union) As the government grew weaker and began to loose control, The Khmer Rouge Party overthrew the country. They began killing for their cause in 1975. The Khmer Rouge Party, under the rule of a man called Pol Pot, enforced a new way of life following values and rules similar to Maoist-Communism (“World Without Genocide: Cambodian Genocide”). The Khmer Party attempted, in simplistic terms, to nationally centralize the middle or farming class of Cambodia (“World Without Genocide: Cambodian

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

In Cambodia in the 1960s The Khmer Rouge Regime rose to power, which lead to the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s. Pol Pot, the leader of this group, believed in a new country without evils. He describes evils such as money and religion as the cause for the corrupt and terrible world he lives in. Pol Pot's goal was to bring Cambodia back to the middle ages. Pol Pot dreamed of a ‘perfect’ Cambodia in which the society “build a prosperous and happy Cambodian society in which all enjoy equality, happiness and a society free from all class or individual forms of exploitation, in which everyone strives to increase production and to defend the country (pg 415)”. He began enforcing communal farming as a new way of living. Pol pot states “When we have rice, we can have everything” is their ‘slogan’ (Journal of Contemporary Asia pg 414). Pol Pot along with the rest of the Khmer Rouge Regime believed strongly in the perks that come out of farming. They

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

Cambodia experienced mass death, approximately 1.7 million lives, during the Cambodian genocide of 1975 through 1979. The Khmer Rouge regime dominated the Cambodian government and attempted to purge the population of intellectuals, professionals and supporters of the original government. In an attempt to better the country’s economic standing at a horrendously rapid rate, the country instead experienced mass destruction. The purpose of this paper is to explore the various ways devastation was brought upon Cambodia and how it affected the populace. In the 1950’s the country was engulfed by the civil war north and south Vietnam was waging after gaining independence from France. The battlefield of the war overflowed into Cambodia and caused physical

In the years of 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot became the head of the most murderous revolution of our time. His communist regime with the Khmer Rouge created one of the largest, yet greatly under-looked atrocities of the time. The genocide in his Democratic Kampuchea has created a death toll that could be as high as 3,000,000 people, or 25% of the country's population. (Chandler, 1999; Cambodia Genocide) In an attempt to refashion his country, "people were simply sacrificed to our struggle, not killed," as Pol Pot himself stated. (Pol Pot: Life of a Tyrant, 2000)

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

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.

During the initial stages of the Khmer Rouge, there was a lack of understanding and misconception presented by the government, on why the change was being implemented. Many survivors recalls initially believing

The Khmer Rouge, otherwise known as the communist party of Kampuchea, was a socialist movement and they had control over Cambodia from 1975-1979. However, only the members of the movement and their leader, Pol Pot knew about it until 1977. The group first emerged when their country was in a struggle for land against French colonists. Cambodia was already in the middle of a civil war that had been going on since the 1940's, when this happened.

Workers were forced to work non-stop with only five hours of rest between work days. During the evenings, they were forced to attend lectures and demonstrations outlining the ways the revolution was enriching their lives. They broke up families and told the citizens that the only thing they needed to concern themselves with was the revolution. Because such a forced change in public policy rarely comes about smoothly, the Khmer Rouge set up barbaric tactics to maintain control of their people (Sharp).

There are many genocides that people are not aware of. One of them is the attempted genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge was able to gain power and remain in control of Cambodia for years without interference because they isolated the country from any foreign influence. Other countries had no idea what was happening inside Cambodia until years later. The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, wanted to create their own ideal communist society. So how did The Khmer Rouge gain so much power and control? Some argue that Pol Pot was the only one responsible for the power and control gained by the Khmer Rouge. On the other hand, others say that the notion of social hierarchy was

Pol Pot’s Attempt at a Utopia Imagine being forced out of your hometown, where you had been born, raised, and had your entire life planned with the intent of staying there. When the Khmer Rouge Party enforced policies that would eventually kill one and a half million to three million people, mostly from starvation and malnutrition, which is the one of the worse ways to die because it is a slow lingering process. They were trying to make the society more rural, which is known as an agrarian utopia. In a 4 year period from 1975 to 1979, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Party with the communist leader of Pol Pot had effectively managed to kill an estimated one and a half million to three million people through the practice of genocide and the Khmer