The Role Of Genocide In First They Killed My Father

“The Congolese genocide is one of the biggest mass murders in modern history, counting eight to ten million murder victims and millions of others severely injured”(Korfiati). Belgian King Leopold ll was able to seize and abuse the Congo and its people, the Congolese, in Central Africa, from 1885 to 1908. He forced the Congolese into brutal slavery, exploiting resources in the region to profit from, becoming financially successful; however, genocide occurred. His main reason for such financial success was because of a force he used to instill his rule and terror, they were known as the Force Publique. Likewise to this genocide, in the book, First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, she shares her experience as a survivor of the Cambodian genocide,

Both leaders had organized their own system of soldiers in their respective societies to make sure that the people they ruled did not rebel. In the Congo, under Leopold, the Force Publique, who were also recognized as “the colonial administration, wielded control over the native population by imposing a regime of terror, and there were frequent mass killings and mutilations”(“The Free State of the Congo, a hidden history of genocide”). The main focus of this stage is that there is always a form of organization in genocide and it is typically by establishing militas to instill the orders of the leader. The organization in the Congo was the colonial administration, which includes the Force Publique, who gained control over the people by creating fear from imposing violence. The use of the Force Publique in the Congo allowed King Leopold to indirectly continue his brutality and exploit the Congolese. Similarly to how the Force Publique was a cruel system organized by King Leopold, the Khmer Rouge soldiers were a similar force under Pol Pot. In the book, during Loung’s first reunion with her cousins, she heard from her uncles, “since the Khmer Rouge have won the war, the soldiers removed the old village chief and replaced him with a Khmer Rouge cadre”(Ung 39). In order to take and maintain communist rule, Pol Pot used the Khmer Rouge to replace the village government so that the villages would be solely loyal to him. Through this stage of organization, both leaders, Pol Pot and Leopold, were successfully able to use their respective armies to control the people they took power