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They First Killed My Father Essay

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Recommended: Cambodian genocide

Global Studies
P.6
Yuriczi Servin Tellez

For this piece, I want to portray the effect the Khmer Rouge’s control over Cambodia had on individuals who were separated from their loved ones. During the terror, children were exposed to cruel treatment and witnessed violence. In the movie They First Killed My Father, a variety of scenes were shown depicting the awful treatment of the Khmer Rouge. It started with forced labor, and families to depart from each other. Parents/older family members were tortured or beaten while the younger members were not given proper meals, beaten if disregarded rules, labor, and at certain times, were told to get rid of bodies. Children were sent to Reeducational camps, where they were brainwashed into …show more content…

The Cambodian Genocide began in 1975, led by a communist group known as the Khmer Rouge, classified as The Preparators. Cambodian citizens were classified as “the victims” of “the perpetrators” to refer to Cambodians who were not seen as entirely human by the Khmer Rouge.
Before Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia on April 17, 1975, people under the control of the Khmer Rouge were classified as base people, candidates, and depositees. These terms were used to refer to the people deposited from cities into communes.
When a color, symbol, or name is assigned to a group of people to refer to, that is known as Symbolization. There was a plan for the Eastern-zone people to all be killed off, so they were assigned a blue scarf that was classified by the Khmer Rouge Central Committee, as an intent to have an ethnic …show more content…

The Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot had created a plan to separate victims into different categories based on the trust the Khmer Rouge had in them. The most trusted were called “old citizens” and the least trusted who were from the pro-West and city dwells were referred to as “new citizens”, or “deportees” eventually moving onto “candidates” and finally “full rights citizens”. However, a majority of the citizens never moved up. Re-education was forced onto the citizens which encouraged a communist lifestyle, those who refused were killed in fields surrounding the S-21 (Camp Toul Sleng

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Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, is no ordinary dictator; he was highly driven by the ideology of total revolution which had four separate, but related components. First, and most important of all, is the push for total independence and self-reliance, second, the dictatorship of the proletariat, third, total and immediate economic revolution, and lastly, a complete transformation of Khmer social values (Jackson 135). To implement this ideology of total revolution, the Khmer Rouge had to resort to permanent purges in order to eliminate all potential competitors and to “create a society with no past and no alternatives” (Jackson 137). Pol Pot divided Cambodian society into five classes: the working, the peasants the bourgeoisie, the capitalist, and the feudal class. However, in an effort to create an egalitarian society, the only acceptable classes were the “workers, peasants, and the revolutionary army” (Jackson 136).

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