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The Fall Of Pol Pot And The Khmer Rouge

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Pol Pot was the leader of the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia that ruled from 1975 to 1979. Under the regime, approximately 2 million people died from execution or lack of food or illnesses. Many detention centers are also said to have conditions so harsh that only a handful of the thousands of people in them survived. This mass extinction was a result of aiming to create a classless peasant/farmer society. Believing this, Pot and the Khmer Rouge worked to rid the country of “intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants, and religious leaders” (History.com). The Khmer Rouge finally came to an end when the Vietnamese military invaded Cambodia in 1979. Pol Pot died 20 years later without ever having been convicted of crime or clearing his name. …show more content…

Close to half a million people died in the civil war but Cambodia would face many more deaths under Pot’s rule. The Khmer Rouge’s first actions after the civil war was removing 2.5 million citizens from Phnom Penh, the country’s capital. These civilians were forced into detention centers similar to labor camps. Other than high chances of death, civilians were also strictly controlled by the government. Every aspect of their lives was determined by the government and conditions were extremely harsh. When the Khmer Rouge was put down by Vietnamese forces, Pol Pot continued to use guerilla warfare tactics against the new Cambodian government but failed. He never rose to power again and died in 1998 while under a house arrest by a Khmer Rouge splinter

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