From 1975 To 1979 Pol Pot Was The Leader Of The Khmer Rouge

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

“To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.” These are the words the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot. His plan to convert Cambodia’s capitalistic economy to a communist economy failure is what inevitably led to the cause of the Cambodian Genocide. Pol Pot is responsible for the deaths of 1.5 million Cambodians during his reign between 1975-1979.

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,

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.

Pol Pot and his communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, ruled in Cambodia from 1975 until 1979, they undertook a wanton attack on the lives of all Cambodian people. Pol Pot’s actions to enforce a communist structure have had an impact which has carried though into 21st century Cambodia. The rich national culture was stripped back as they were forced into the ‘Year Zero’. The acts of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge are linked to the poverty being experienced by five million people.

The Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) was a period of complete chaos and destruction. In The Killing Fields, Eyewitness Accounts The Cambodian Genocide, and The Endurance of the Cambodian Family Under the Khmer Rouge Regime: An Oral History, Cambodia became controlled by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge entered Cambodia on April 17, 1975 in preparation for a nationwide “liberation campaign” (Mam, 119). The Khmer Rouge’s goals were to create a communist revolution that would place power in the hands of the peasants to benefit the state. They wanted to increase agricultural production and transform the Cambodian society (Mam, 119). Before the Khmer Rouge rose to power, Cambodian class, family, and religion played a huge role in Cambodian identity. The family tried to remain strong through resistance, making it difficult for the KR to implement their harsh plans. However, the Khmer Rouge did implement horrific policies that caused many Cambodians to endure suffering that lasted until the Vietnamese forces liberated Cambodia in 1979.

From the time humans began to exist in this world, hatred seemed to be a superior attribute that one comes accustomed to. This inevitable emotion has the ability to provoke people to engage in acts without thinking; but it is the acts that are premeditated that should be be classified as evil and brutal. This appalling endeavor is known as genocide, the deliberate destruction of a particular national, racial or religious group. Between the years of 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge party leader, Pol Pot seized power of Cambodia and forced civilians of urban regions into rural lands for labor in order to build his own agrarian utopia. Over the course of these four years, the Cambodians and other minor ethnic groups suffered through labor camps, starvation, and torture which all led up to their demise. As a result of these mass killings, the country 's population depleted by over 20 percent in just a few years. The country went through hardship during and even before the genocide began including wars, torment, and considerable numbers of deaths.

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 Khmer Rouge attempted to build a self sufficient, agrarian, communist society. In doing so they did horrible things to completely innocent men, women and children. They tried to reach their “perfect society” by taking everything away from the people. No religion, no ownership, no sense of self. Communism has never been effectively practiced in the course of human history, this instance in Cambodia was no

1 - In your opinion, how important are the years of the Khmer Rouge for modern Cambodia? Does their history still play a role in the counry's politics?

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 killing fields of Cambodia were bursting with bloodshed. The killing fields were a genocide that arose due to the takeover of the Cambodian people by Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge establishment. The Rouge party leader “Pol Pot” sought to nationalize and centralize the peasant farming of Cambodia essentially overnight, in unity with the Chinese Communist agricultural model. This stemmed in the gradual devastation of over 25% of the country’s population in just three fleeting years. In the foregoing years of the genocide, the population of Cambodia was just over 7 million, almost all of who

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 .

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

During the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia was turned into a giant labor camp creating a system of terror, genocide, and attempted cultural annihilation-a series of drastic events that the country is still recovering from. The years contained within this regime were devastating for the nation of Cambodia, with the establishment of the Khmer Rouge, a left-wing Communist political party whose actions have had an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on the political, economic and social structure of Cambodia-ruining the lives of millions.