Pol Pot

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 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

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.

People were ordered out their houses so that the Khmer Rouge could convert them into bases of operation. Houses that weren’t being used as bases were instead being used as make shift orphanages.

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

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

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.

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,

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 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

Some negatives impacts are, The Khmer Rouge control, roughly Eighty-percent of the people live in rural areas; lack trained medical personnel, facilities and medical supplies, a weaken economy, approximately ninety-percent of the population adherents of Buddhism and various other religion and ethnic minorities were targets of genocide for western influences; discrimination practices, and decline of conflict caused significant damage to Cambodia’s economy (Aliprandini). Donovan (1993) in 1975, the Khmer Rouge destroyed the Cambodian legal system. Legislators, prosecutors, judges, lawyers, and law professors were killed or forced to flee the country. Law books were destroyed and the buildings that had housed to courts and the law schools were converted to other uses. The situation has improved slightly since then. The Cambodians have suffered and endured decades of control under a dictatorship form of government that prohibited currency, marriage, and religious beliefs. The Cambodians have endured murder of its people and military soldiers, warring countries and the demolishing of cities and villages, resulting in the mental and physical decomposition of the of the

Ever since the actions in Cambodia occurred, it has been debated whether it was an actual genocide. The general definition of genocide is the purposeful and methodical execution of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia demonstrated that a government can be guilty of genocide against its own nation. The radical communist party led by Pol Pot took over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. After 1979, the Khmer Rouge left a traumatized Cambodian culture that continues to undergo the repercussions of the genocide. People over the age of forty in Cambodia have stories to tell of fear, cruelty, hunger and the loss of family members. However, the Cambodian government is not making an effort to recognize the negative occurrences that have posed itself in the history of their culture.

In 1976, after massacring hundreds of thousands of former government officials and supporters of the previous government, the Khmer Rouge began purging their own ranks. They utilized brutal tactics such as, “’the victory pole’ where four people would be tied together, their backs to the pole, facing opposite directions. Then a guard would shoot one in the head covering the others in blood and brains.” (Dunlop 87). They converted city schools into prisons and arrested people for any slight charge perceived against the revolution. Distrust with each other became so rampant among members inside the party that “vanquishing the enemies” became the most important task of the Khmer Rouge Regime. Food shortages occurred, electricity became scarce, and disease became a major problem for the population. Even the most useful resource for the Khmer Rouge executioners became scarce; they sometimes ran out of bullets after a heavy night of prison executions.

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