Gina Burroughs Ms. Padgett English 2 Honors 3 December 2016 Cambodia’s 1970s Genocide Genocide, the deliberate killing of many people, may be thought of as a thing of the past, but it continues to recent times. The Holocaust, one of the most famous genocides to this day, occurred in the early to mid 1900s. There have been several since that time, including the genocide of Cambodia in the 1970s. From 1975 to 1979, a genocide commenced by Pol Pot, a Communist leader, took place in Cambodia. Cambodia is located next to Vietnam, in Southeast Asia. “Situated on the Indochinese peninsula, Cambodia is bordered by Thailand and Laos on the north and Vietnam on the east and south,” as declared in “Cambodia.” Cambodia’s location …show more content…
The article “Talking About Genocide” indicates that “Prince Sihanouk and his followers joined forces with a communist guirella organization founded in 1960 and known as the Khmer Rouge. They attacked Lon Nol’s army and civil war began.” Lon Nol was a politician and prime minister of Cambodia at the time. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were the driving force behind the war in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge initiated it, and Pol Pot was the head of the party. The civil war in Cambodia was caused by the communist party attacking Lon Nol’s army and seizing the country’s capital, Phnom Penh. “They immediately began emptying the city’s population into labor camps in the countryside,” according to “The Cambodian Genocide.” The Khmer Rouge enslaved people into camps with to gain power over the Cambodians. They made anyone who opposed them suffer the poor conditions of these