Role Of Politics In Cambodian Politics

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

Pol Pot once said, “although a million lives have been wasted, our party does not feel sorry.” Pol Pot was the ruthless dictator of Cambodia during the 1970s and was single handedly responsible for millions of deaths and suffering. Pol Pot was considered a dictator because he was the leader of three consecutive parties and governments in Cambodia, and in all of them, he made his own people suffer while trying to make radical changes. His main goals were to completely reshape his country Cambodia, into a communist society based on peasants and agriculture. He wanted to create a new type of Cambodia where the population was made up of entirely workers and peasants, and all evidence of the wealthy classes was removed. Pol Pot wanted an equal society

Critical Election- An electoral “earthquake” where new issues emerge, new coalitions replace old ones, and the majority is often displaced by the minority party; critical election periods are sometimes marked by a national crisis and many require more than one election to bring about a new party era.

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,

In 1962, Pol Pot was leading the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as Khmer

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.

In 1975 the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh and the Cambodian government surrendered (Dennis 1988). With the Khmer Rouge?s power stronger than ever, Cambodia had no chance of rescuing themselves from the bottomless pit that would soon become their fate.

Pol Pot’s image was to create an Agrarian society, which focuses the economy on producing and maintaining crops and farmland. By this he set Cambodia back to year zero, basically hitting a refresh button. The reason this worked was due to the fact that the U.S. used Cambodia as land for bases during the Vietnam War, and often they bombarded parts of Cambodia

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

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had both an immediate and long lasting affect on the condition of Cambodia’s population and the nation itself. Cambodia is a nation where 50% of the urban population is dissatisfied with their standard of living and available resources and services. The events of 1975 to 1979 caused repercussions in the society which has impacted the livelihood and wellbeing of the whole

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.

In 1940s, because of supporting by the Vietnamese, the Cambodian communist movement was created to fight against France colonization. In 1962, Pol Pot had become the leader of CPK was flee into the jungle to escape from King Norodom Sihanouk, because

Cambodia was, to a great extent, orientated toward a Communist upheaval due to the historical milieu. There are three solid reasons to support this theory. Firstly, that centuries of foreign intervention pushed Cambodia to hunger for independence and revolt, secondly, that Cambodian ideologies were influenced and heightened by a global insurgency of Marxism and finally, that

Cambodia’s history contrasts a glorious past with recent tragedy. Located in Southeast Asia between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia’s history of conflict with its neighbors and European colonialism has led to distrust and nationalism. Fear of foreign occupation or being partitioned by its neighbors lingers in the Cambodian national psychology. Once part of French Indochina, Cambodian gained independence in 1953 when King Sihanouk convinced France that only complete independence would undercut the appeal of communism in Cambodia.

Corruption is a complex political, social, and economic anomaly that negatively affects developing and developed countries. It weakens democratic institutions, holds economic development, widening the rich-poor gap and certainly leads to governmental instability. The World Bank definition of corruption states that “…the abuse of public office for private gain”.