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Analysis Of The Book 'Alive In The Killing Fields' By Nawuth Keat

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“The Khmer Rouge demanded,’Where’s the gun you bought last week?’
My uncle told him the truth, ‘I didn’t buy any gun.’
The Khmer Rouge raised his M-16 rifle and shot my uncle in the chest. Fired from that close range, the bullet careened through my uncle’s body, and blood spewed out behind him. He fell dead on the ground.”
The passage above was quoted from the book “Alive in the killing fields” by Nawuth Keat with Martha E. Kendall, it is a memoir of a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. Nawuth grew up in a small village in Cambodia, his family was rather wealthy than the rest of the villagers, this naturally made him family a target during the Cambodian Genocide. Nawuth’s mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and uncle are massacred at that time. From 1975 to 1979 1.5 to 3 million people died during the genocide, which is one quarter of the …show more content…

Communist Cambodia at that time was trying to create a form of agrarian socialism founded on the ideas Stalinism and Maoism. The Red Army forced urban population into farm or villages to be “reeducated” and killed people who refused to move. Many civilians were tortured by Pol pot as well. Like the Holocaust the Cambodian genocide also follows 8 stages. Pol Pot’s idea was to create an “Agricultural Utopia” which the farmers are the superior class on the top of the social structure (the old people) while others like the intellectus,educated people and people who has Vietnamese or Chinese ancestry are the new people. Unlike the Nazis, everyone who’s not a farmer or on Khmer Rough’s side is the target of the genocide. As the result, the symbolization of these new people are harder than the Jews. Anyone who associates with the West, city, education and other minorities like the Vietnamese and Chinese is a target of the genocide. Like civilians who wears glasses are killed because glasses is a symbol of the West

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