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Pol Pot: The Cambodia Genocide In Cambodia

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“The Cambodian Genocide refers to the attempt of Khmer Rouge party leader “Pol Pot” to nationalize and centralize the peasant farming society of Cambodia virtually overnight, in accordance with the Chinese Communist agricultural model.” When Sihanouk becomes the head of state, he breaks ties with the US and allows North Vietnamese guerrillas to set up based in Cambodia. In return, the US begins to plot secret bombings against the North Vietnamese on Cambodia soil. In 1970, Sihanouk is overthrown in a coup by the Prime Minister Lon Nol. He proclaims Cambodia, the Khmer Republic, and sends an army to fight the North Vietnamese. Lon Nol is overthrown as the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot occupies Phnom Penh. The country is re-named Kampuchea. The …show more content…

In 1977, Pol Pot begins a second series of purges to eliminate all communist dissidents and moderates. This time around, the executions were more widespread and affect all of Cambodia’s population not just certain groups. In 1979, North Vietnam takes over Phnom Penh forcing Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge to flee to Thailand and the People’s Republic of Kampuchea is established. Hundreds of thousands educated middle class are tortured and executed in special centers; others were starved or died from disease or exhaustion. Total death over the four years were at least 1.7 million approximately 21% of the …show more content…

The Khmer Rouge was a communist party of Kampuchea. Pol Pot ordered the killing since he was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. Duch, ran the most notorious prison, S-21, while he did not commit the killing he order behind the desk who was to be killed. The Khmer Rouge army was made up of uneducated peasants from provinces, which had never been in a city before. The Khmer Rouge ordered the persecution of intellects, religious figures, and ethnic minorities are the victims of the genocide. Anyone who would oppose the regime was order to be persecuted such as doctors, intellects, teachers, former military, police force, lawyers etc. As well, as anyone who could not make the trip to the collective farms such as the ill, elderly, and young were killed on the spot. In addition, citizens who were Christians, Buddhists, and Cambodia Muslims were ordered to persecute and killed for their beliefs. Another group was the persecution of Cambodian Vietnamese origin and anyone else that was not of Cambodia origin. Vietnamese and Chinese were the ethnic minorities that were ordered to

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The pills dance in my palms, gleaming white and inviting…. Somewhere in Cambodia, I dream that Pa and Ma are sleeping together in the ground. I close my eyes and wait for Pa to come take me with him. In her crib, Tori cries but I ignore her.” (180-181) Loung has a deep need to kill herself not only because of her painful memories of Cambodia but also because of her grieving for Pa, Ma, Keav and Geak.

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Imagine being younger and forced to live in horrible conditions. In Loung Ung’s memoir, First They Killed My Father, she explains how she feels about the horrific conditions she was going through as a child of war. To begin with when Ung was younger her life was threatened on a daily basis because of her beliefs. For example in the the text explains ,“Capitalist should be shot and killed” (Ung #312).

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Pol Pot 's strategy of purging Cambodia of intellectuals and professionals enabled him to temporarily silence opponents to his brutal regime and achieve a fleeting ‘communist ideal’, however the resilience and memory of the Cambodian people did not enable him to abolish history. The 17th of April 1975 gave rise to the Khmer Rouge for four years who infiltrated the capital city of Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The government introduced a communist regime, ruled by Pol Pot, with a seemingly impossible goal to create an agrarian utopia. Pot’s ideology involved the abolishment of history through the targeting of intellectuals and professionals, influenced by the likes of Marxist ideology. Pot’s ideology was enforced upon the nation after the Khmer Rouge

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Causes of the Cambodian Genocide The Cambodian genocide took place from 1975 to 1979; it is estimated that some two million Cambodians were systematically murdered by the Khmer Rouge and its followers (Power 90). In Alexander Hinton’s article, “A Head for an Eye” he recounts in details the experience of Gen, a survivor of the Cambodian Genocide. After the Lon Nol government was overthrown by the Khmer Rouge, the Communists began their witch-hunt in an attempt to identify and kill anyone who was associated with the former regime, as well as the educated, the Vietnamese, the Muslim Cham, the Buddhist monks, and other “bourgeois elements” (Power 101). During the investigation, it was revealed that Gen’s father was a teacher–this fact alone was

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To illustrate, sambos husband and many others were taken by the khmer rouge and told that the husbands were being educated on military tactics and were going to be gone for only week that turned into being three months, soon the wives were starting to get suspicious they knew they were gone and would never see them again. The Khmer rouge did this so they could isolate the women because they would be weaker without the men. To add, sambo and her family were moved from city to city to isolate families and takeover(Thouch pg1). The first city they were pushed to was Phnom Penh and didn’t stay there for long because it was a Buddhist hospital. Next they were directed to go to Kheann Svay by the Rouge.

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Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father is a vivid, detailed memoir of a young girl’s experiences in Cambodia throughout the Khmer Rouge era. It records in expressive detail the horrors suffered by the Ung and her family while living under the oppressive rule of the insane Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, First They Killed Her Sister by Soneath Hor, Sody Lay and Grantham Quinn is a lengthy criticism in direct opposition to the aforementioned memoir. Although the authors of First They Killed Her Sister made some excellent points throughout their assessment of First They Killed my Father such as showing how Ung having misrepresented some aspects of Khmer culture and history, they completely and utterly failed in their attempt to discredit her based on the claims that she perpetuated racial tension and distorted what really happened in 1970s Cambodia, which breaks down the few good points they did have. The critics correctly assert and prove that Ung misrepresented certain aspects of Khmer culture and history, showing that at times, Ung’s description of what had happened was distorted or partially fabricated.

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The plan went down on November 1st after the coup (History.com Staff), Ngo Dinh Diem did not surrender directly after he was told to, so the soldiers bombed his palace (“Diem Murdered During Coup”). Ngo Dinh Diem then surrendered, but it was too late. Vietnamese leaders then told Ngo Dinh Diem that they were not going to kill him and that he could leave the country. They next day Southern Vietnamese Soldiers captured him and killed him in a car

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They also shut down factories, schools, universities, hospitals, and all other private institutions because the Khmer Rouge considered it western advances. The Khmer Rouge also killed different The Khmer Rouge killed approximately one and a half to three million Cambodians lost their lives at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.   On July 25, 1983, the Research Committee on Pol Pot’s Genocidal Regime issued its final report, including detailed province-by-province data.   The data showed that the number of deaths was 3,314,768.   About 25 percent of the population died because of the Khmer Rouge idea of relocating the people to

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They want to come and take away the Khmer’s treasures, including you” (Ung 132) showing that the children of the

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Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge which is responsible for the deaths of 25 percent of the country 's population from starvation, overwork, and executions. Pol Pot was born in 1925 to a farming family in Cambodia, a country formerly part of French Indochina. At the age of 20, Pot studied radio electronics in Paris but soon became occupied in Marxism resulting in him leaving his studies. Losing his scholarship, he returned to Cambodia and joined a secret Communist movement in 1953. In 1954, one year after Pot became committed to the Communist movement, Cambodia gained its independence from France.

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The citizens who lived in Pheon Phen had grown up with the niceties such as running water, and indoor plumbing. However, the citizens who has grown up in the farms and villages of Cambodia did not have these luxuries. Although the rebels were given orders not to loot or kill without proper cause, the members of the Khmer Rouge were greatly tempted. However, they were not tempted by monetary possessions, but with vehicles and motor-bikes. The Khmer Rouge however, lacked knowledge on how to operate these machines so they repetitively crashed the cars into trees.

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The punishment of guards, doctors, and nurses officiated with the Khmer Rouge with imprisonment or death, is unreasonable and unnecessary. Senior officials associated with the Khmer Rouge are the real cause of all the atrocities committed during the reign of Pol Pot and his dictatorship, they are also responsible for both the physical and mental pain they caused millions. A guard of a working camp explained that the Khmers rouge had a very superior agricultural system and that’s why he became a guard, however he explained that “if you did anything wrong, you were deemed an enemy. So rows and rows of people were executed”(Poeuv). In Pol Pots utopia he had planned for everyone to be equal, at least all civilians, he based a majority of his laws and policies off of the political ideology of communism, in communist society’s or society’s that base their beliefs off of

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These ideas came from the Chinese Communist agricultural model. Cambodia had a population of just over 7 million people and almost all of them were buddhists. The genocide started from a harsh climate of political and social turmoil (Krkljes). The Cambodian genocide had taken the lives of many innocent people just as the Holocaust had taken the lives of Elie Wiesel’s loved ones in the book Night right

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Lon Nol lost support because he failed to provide for the people. The people turned to the Khmer Rouge, who, according to source C had “readiness to work hard in the fields, lack of corruption and concern for the peasants’ welfare”. Thus it is shown that Lon Nol and the corruption in the government aided the Khmer Rouge to rise to power, simply because the people were suffering and turned to a more promising form of

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1537 Words | 7 Pages

I interview Mrs. Katie Delay, Four County Career Center’s Visual Design Instructor, to gain a better understanding in the field of educating visual arts. This interview gave me an opportunity to listen and learn from the experience of an inspiring person I can relate to. One can read books or stories from random teachers to try to scrape the surface of understanding of the art education but when you hear the stories and experience from someone who ignited your inspiration and has lived the life you aspire to have; it means the world. I intend to teach in a similar setting as Four County due to it being a vocational school and given the opportunity to teach practical art skills to enable student with a head start in their career. Being a previous

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