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Year Zero History

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Cambodia is a country that has been deeply affected by political warfare since the 1960s but was greatly affected by the reign of communist party known as the Khmer Rouge. Pilger, in his film Year Zero speaks to the shocking state of Cambodia after the genocide that was led by Pol Pot and his regime. The film gives an in depth understanding of the effects after the four years of the regime in rule and gives further clarification to how it impacts politics within Cambodia for decades to come. Year Zero was filmed in 1979 only three years later from when Pol Pot was named prime minister and with his regime decided that the entire country of Cambodia would go through a transformation that he would call year zero. This was a totalitarian regime …show more content…

It depicted the truth of the state of the country and showed the cities in complete disaster. The country was almost completely destroyed with forests growing in cities where life once bustled and religious temples or hospitals in complete ruins. The film does an accurate job of going through the history of what happened from 1975 to 1979. The information given on the Khmer Rouge rein during this time matches with historical political conditions of Cambodia. For example, in 1979 the same year the film was released Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia and aided to dispose of the Khmer Rouge government (Khmer Rouge, 2016). Pilger specifically states throughout the film that the only aid that has been received by Cambodia has been sent from Vietnam. Even though Vietnam themselves were a country in need of assistance they were able to spare what little food they had and aided Cambodia with what little rice they could spare to try and feed the thousands of starving people. While the film states that the United States bombed Cambodia by permission of Nixon and Kissinger, it does insinuate that was why the Khmer Rouge regime was able to take over. However, political history shows that it actually destabilized what was an already fragile government. In fact, in 1965 the head of state of Cambodia named Sihanouk broke off relations with the United states and the radicals were not satisfied with

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Nixon wanted to end the war just like every other American. He had many plans for this war and one of them was called Vietnamization. Vietnamization was a policy that would replace U.S. troops with South Vietnamese troops and supply them with supplies and weapons (Rubel 182). It was a way to retreat U.S. troops and end involvement in the war. Even though he ended involvement in the Vietnam War by withdrawing U.S. troops, he decided to bomb enemy forces in Cambodia (Lillegard 71).

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1594 Words | 7 Pages

The Elimination: A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts His Past and the Commandant of the Killing Fields. Rithy Panh is an internationally and critically acclaimed Cambodian documentary film director and screenwriter. Rithy Panh was a young boy when Khmer Rouge revolutionaries arrived in Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. Starting that day, he and his family were designated “new people”—the revolution’s code for those who needed “re-education”—and forcibly evacuated out of the city. That day began a terrifying experience that gradually took away most of his family, forcing Rithy to survive a series of brutal, and often arbitrarily cruel, ordeals.

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1212 Words | 5 Pages

With the US military helping South Vietnam against the North Vietnam. The South Vietnam didn’t not feel like they had support under the Western’s power, which South Vietnam didn’t because Nixon was trying to help the South Vietnam, but no involving US soldiers to fight in the war. Although, Nixon made the Vietnamization policy to stop US involvement it cause more of a uprise for the US position in the war. The New Economic policy and Nixon Doctrine both policies made by Nixon was only towards his presidency and not actually stopping the US involvement. Nixon said it would make a change in the US involvement to better but instead Nixon didn’t follow up upon his campaign promises.

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936 Words | 4 Pages

On March 8th 1965, America entered the Vietnam war. The United States entered the war in an effort to prevent the spread of communist beliefs. On May 30th, 1970, President Richard Nixon declared that the South Vietnamese army, along with American troops were going to invade the country of Cambodia. This was to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines. The news of the invasion struck people with anger and fear throughout America.

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462 Words | 2 Pages

The Cambodian Campaign was a series of military operations conducted in eastern Cambodia during 1970 by the United States and the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. These invasions were a result of the policy of President Richard Nixon. A total of 13 major operations were conducted by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam between April 29 and July 22 and by US forces between May 1 and June

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896 Words | 4 Pages

The denial of human rights in Ukraine and Cambodia has had huge impacts on regional and international communities. Ukraine was very independent, and Stalin wanted to remove the threat that the Ukrainians were becoming. In Cambodia, Pol Pot attempted to create a utopian Communist agrarian society. When Stalin came into power after Lenin’s death in 1924, the government was struggling to control and unwieldy empire.

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451 Words | 2 Pages

Overall, I thought this film was very informative and I learned a lot. It was very interesting. The film opened my eyes to a new world that I had never seen before. It informed me on history that I had no idea about.

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630 Words | 3 Pages

Nixon then announced a military invasion into Cambodia, where areas of communist sanctuaries were helping North Vietnam and Viet Cong. Afterwards, he went to China, where he ended a decade’s worth of feud between the Sino-American

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651 Words | 3 Pages

The movie, The Village, and the novel 1984 provides new insight and connections on a “utopian” society. Both are very similar to each other in a way that their utopian society has many flaws. 1984 is about a rebellion against an iron-fisted totalitarian government while The Village is about an attempt to protect the innocence of people. In these societies, the leaders lie in order to try and achieve a utopian world. Both societies have different purposes to control the people through fear, but despite their attempts to create a utopian society, they were only successful to a certain extent.

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509 Words | 3 Pages

When the suspect arose that North Vietnam was transporting supplies to South Vietnam through Cambodia, Nixon was unable to have a reasonable conversation with his opponents and instead turned into more radical measurements. He and his adviser Henry Kissinger established the Operation Menu, which was a series of top secret bombings that “were kept secret from the American public and the U.S. Congress because Cambodia was ostensibly neutral.” So, instead of peaceful communication Nixon decided to drop napalm bombs into a tiny neutral country full of innocent people without any certainty that he would even hit the so called enemy whatsoever. This resulted in devastating loss of life in Cambodia as the number of deaths rose as high as 150,000 civilians. Today, the effects of the bombings can still be seen as close to a 500 people die in the affected regions, because of the different kinds of unexploded

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1802 Words | 8 Pages

As Vietnamization took place, the United States military would withdraw 150,000 from South Vietnam within a year (Dean 73). Simultaneously, he was supplying the Southern Vietnamese people with military support and even helping with their government. When Nixon helped politically, he “expand[ed] its political base in rural areas… offered U.S. assistance to help South Vietnamese officials organize local elections and implement social reforms and economic development initiatives” (History.com Staff 1). While Vietnamization was taking place a treaty titled The Paris Peace Accords was negotiated between all of

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1353 Words | 6 Pages

The Vietnam War was fought to stop the spread of communism that threatened the United States way of life. War strategies that were used were harsh, major battles bloody, and war opposition at home was high. The leaders of our countries decisions caused devastating effects that not only shook our country but the whole world. The United States had fought wars in the past to stop the spread of communism.

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1046 Words | 5 Pages

It shows the enormity of the corruption of the system, as it has no regard for human life. The only thing it cares about is giving people a show to keep them busy and entertained. By changing history, the government alter fundamental values and ideas and over time succeeds in making them the acceptable norm of the society. The most explicit example of this is the government’s ability to convince the people that books brings nothing but confusion and sadness in the life of those who read them. Thus it became a recurrent and usual for people to shun away from all the knowledge reporting anyone who possess

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864 Words | 4 Pages

The setting of the movie looks very dystopian like because the streets are dark, gloomy and deserted. There also seems to be a lack of human life on the streets as all the people lock themselves up in their houses. Also through the movie, the government goes through a lot of problems that leads them towards a scandalous state. The scandalous state of the government tells us that the government is about to come to end and be defeated by the one who claims himself to be the hero known as V. The qualities of totalitarianism depicted in the movie are secret police, fear, violence, lack of trust, dictatorship and propaganda. Secret police is shown to us in movie when Evey leaves her apartment after curfew.

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719 Words | 3 Pages

It is hard to imagine a life where people have to leave their family multiple times and fear that they will lose a family member at any moment. Loung Ung, a Cambodian girl, had to endure this through most of her childhood. She has to deal with the loss of most of her family at the young age of five. Family plays an important role within people’s lives. Without them, life becomes a challenge many never thought of having.

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