Cambodia Killing Fields Research Paper

Cambodia’s Killing Fields of the mid to late nineteen-seventies took almost two million lives and left generations scarred and torn, but only recently has the full story come to light (Sambath, 2010). The mass murders took place across a number of farmland sites in Cambodia, formerly known as Kampuchea by the communist party, shortly after the country’s civil war between the Cambodian government, the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the growing communist party, Khmer Rouge, who was allied with Northern Vietnam. Some lost mothers and fathers, others lost sons and daughters. Aunts and uncles, infants and elders; there was no exception to the killings of the Khmer Rouge. Kill or be killed, that was the message to the military of the Khmer Rouge during

They would kill babies in front of their families, rape children and force people to work to their death. There were work camps of young people who were forced to build infrastructure for the regime on little to no food (Sambath, 2010). So many people were killed that jobs were left undone, the country began to fall into a food shortage by the end of the nineteen-seventies and survivors explained that working for the government was, in some cases, worse than the death the people they knew had faced (“Former Khmer Rouge soldier”, 2012). The regime brought the country into one of the worst recessions it had ever seen and left those alive so shaken that the country would never fully return to what it had been before the Khmer

Nuon Chea would often not participate in the trails, choosing instead to view the happenings from a secured bunker under the courthouse where he watched the televised proceedings. Instead, his lawyer, Victor Koppe, spoke for him about the court saying, “Nuon Chea couldn’t care less if you convict him again to a life sentence. He really doesn’t care because, rightfully so, he doesn’t take this institution seriously. (Mydans, 2017). Justice was being served, yet the perpetrators did not care. They found the council before them to be preposterous, not because they were being tried but because it did not make a difference to them or the public. They were old and close to death, and the council before them was spending millions to prove what everyone already knew they had done. Their lives were lived thoroughly, if in semi-hiding for much of it, and the court could not take that away from them because it had taken so long to find its bearings and take