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Cambodian genocide historical context
The causes of the cambodian genocide essay
Cambodian genocide historical context
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Throughout the years 1975-1979 the Communist Khmer Rouge Regime party held control of the Cambodia and instituted the Angkar government system. In this system evolution and change was frowned upon. Intellectuals like students, teachers, monks, government officials, military workers, etc were considered corrupt. In the eyes of the Angkar, a model citizen was a peasant farmer who lived in the countryside and did not own any type of technology or possess any Western influence. Intellectuals (i.e. people who lived in cities like Phnom Penh) were forced to evacuate their homes and move into villages in the countryside. These villages were controlled by village chiefs and soldiers from the Khmer Rouge regime. The new villagers were forced to work long hours in the rice fields and the community gardens with …show more content…
Some Cambodians were shot. Others were hit over the head with hammers. Some Cambodians were executed by having their heads and other body parts cut off. At the end of the Cambodian Genocide (i.e. 1975-1979) over 2,400,000 innocent people were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
On December 25th, 1978 Vietnam organized a invasion of Cambodia. On January 7th, 1979, Phnom Penh was no longer controlled by Pol Pot, who fled to Thailand with the remains of his Khmer Rouge regime. A new government, created by Khmer Rouge defectors, was instituted. Once Pol Pot lost control of the capital of Cambodia he lost a substantial amount of power and no longer could face the people of Cambodia and the Vietnam troops head-on. He decided to flee to Thailand to continue his plans of creating a communist government in Cambodia. For the next 17 years he continued fighting Cambodian governments but eventually lost complete control of the Khmer Rouge. Before he could be tried for what he did throughout the years 1975-1979 he died of a heart attack (i.e. heart attack was caused by a
This genocide took place all throughout Europe. It started in Germany and spread all the way to Great Britain. (“Some of the things that are not). The Cambodian Genocide was an attempt by the Khmer Rouge to take over and centralize all Cambodian farmers (“Cambodian”). This genocide lasted from 1975 to 1978 when the Khmer Rouge was finally overthrown by the Vietnamese (“Cambodian”).
Imagery and politics are two closely related concepts. “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be” (McLuhan, 1971). The image has the power to make or break the politician. The impact of imagery also applies to the Government as a whole. The image created by the government influences the support of the population; because of this correlation, information regarding government affairs goes through filters; information that could negatively impact the image of the government may not be provided to the public depending on how important it may be for the general population to know. In the beginning of the Vietnam War, Laos was declared a neutral zone at a conference in Geneva by the United States and the Soviet Union (Jones, 2007). As the disputes about Laos’ future government structure continued, the United States believed it was time to take action and continue their fight against communism (Young; Buzzanco, 2006). The Americans were fighting the Cold War for the containment of communism and to make the world safe for democracy. If Laos became a communist country, communism would not be contained; this led to the Secret War. American officials did everything in their power to keep the information regarding the Secret War in Laos hidden. The prime reason for failing to acknowledge the public of the happenings in Laos, was to aid the government in the protection of their image. Many American citizens were against the government because of the war in Vietnam, which had started 10 years prior to the Secret War; knowing about Laos would give the general population more reason to protest. Furthe...
Most people in the world have not heard of the genocide going on in Laos today. Most people have not taken notice, read about it or bother to spend more than thirty seconds of their lives learning about it. The world has managed to almost entirely ignore the genocide of the Hmong people in Laos for over 30 years and still allows this crime against humanity to continue. Since the 1970s, the ethnic Hmong people in the Southeast Asian country of Laos have been persecuted by the Laotian government (Malakunas, 2000). This harassment is a direct result of the Hmong’s link to the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States in what has become to be known as the Secret War (Malakunas, 2000). The Laotian government officials directing this massacre have not been detained due to lack of evidence (Sommer P.4).
Rummel, R. J. "Chapter 4: Statistics of Cambodian Democide." Statistics of Cambodian Genocide and Mass Murder. Hawaii University, 23 Nov. 2002. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. >.
The Khmer Rouge years was a period of time that devastated all of the small country Cambodia, a story that was so well told by Loung Ung about the Pol Pot regime. The Khmer Rouge years was from 1975 to 1979 (http://www.cambodiatribunal.org). The Khmer Rouge, otherwise known as Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), conquered Cambodia for four years. The Khmer Rouge forced people to work in the fields including children. To make matters worse, the people that were forced to work were also malnourished and were living in grim conditions (http://www.wcl.american.edu).
The Cambodian Genocide was a trial and error of someone trying to make all people equal. Khmer Rouge had approximately 1.7 million people executed attempting to equal everyone out and make the world a “better” place. Although he tried very hard at this, he of course failed and and all of his attempts were, in the end pointless.
In the year of 1969, the president at this time in history, Richard Nixon and the Secretary of State, henry Kissinger authorized a top secret bombing campaign is eastern Cambodia, which harbored the Vietnamese bases and part of the ‘Ho Chi Minh” trail. In the year of 1970 the neutralist Prince Sihanouk, who led the country as head of the state and had managed at the time to keep Cambodia out of war in Vietnam and Laos, was overthrown in a coup by Lon Nol. A civil war between the year of 1970 to the year of 1975 between the American-backed Lon Nol government and the North Vietnamese soldiers and their Cambodian communist allies, the Khmer Rouge, killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over two million, mostly to the capital Phnom Penh, but also to Thailand and Vietnam. Indiscriminate American saturation bombing of the countryside in 1969-1973 a show of the American war in Vietnam devastated eastern Cambodia, also known as Kampuchea, forcing many villagers to flee the countryside or join the Khmer Rouge. The United States of America dropped more bombs on Cambodia, also known as Kampuchea, than it
Another similarity between the ideology of the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge is physical destruction. This technique not only indicates the main murder plan of the perpetrators, but also displays how they destroy their enemies by starvation, long hours of overwork, and diseases. During the Holocaust, the Nazis sorted out the weak and useless Jews, kept and forced other Jews to work ceaselessly. Along with that, the Nazis starved their targets or made them exhausted to death. According to the article “Genocide - A Modern Crime”, Raphael Lemkin states that the Nazis cut off Jews’ nutritional ingredients by giving them just a little amount of food rations, such as they only allowed protein rations of 20 per cent to the Jews. Moreover, the Jewish people
" Rejoice O young man in thy youth..." (Ecclesiastics). This quote begins the movie, Platoon, and serves as an ironic comment on what is to follow. Both the interviews in the text and the movie, Platoon, attempt to explain a significant human experience, one that was essentially a metamorphosis for many who took part in it. Vietnam was crucial to all who experienced it. The one constant thing is change.
Once American troops left Cambodia, the time known as the Khmer Rouge era started for Cambodia. This era contained four years of Pol Pot having control over the terrifying army. As he has control over this army, he leads them into Phnom Penh and starts the mass killing known as The Killing Fields. This area of land which was once a torturing ground and killing fields, is now the biggest tourist attraction in Cambodia. The goal of the Khmer Rouge was not to eliminate the Cambodian race but instead was to teach them to become loyal communists. As with all attempts at implementing communism, it was a total failure.
Although the two genocides are quite different at a first glance, they are interestingly similar upon deeper inspection. For starters, the Holocaust is best known for it’s brutal and inhumane treatment of prisoners, such as tattooing a number on their arm against their will and feeding them food that is not even fit for dogs to consume (“Holocaust”). It may be shocking for some people to hear that in Cambodia, it was just as atrocious, maybe even worse. During the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 most Cambodians were forced to leave their homes on such short notice that numerous families were killed on cite for not evacuating quickly enough. Those ‘lucky’ enough to escape immediate death were forced to work, unpaid, in labor camps until the fatigue wore down their immune system and they died of some wretched disease (“Genocide”). Another intriguing similarity betw...
The Cambodian Genocide has the historical context of the Vietnam War and the country’s own civil war. During the Vietnam War, leading up to the conflicts that would contribute to the genocide, Cambodia was used as a U.S. battleground for the Vietnam War. Cambodia would become a battle ground for American troops fighting in Vietnam for four years; the war would kill up to 750,00 Cambodians through U.S. efforts to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. This devastation would take its toll on the Cambodian peoples’ morale and would later help to contribute that conflicts that caused the Cambodian genocide. In the 1970’s the Khmer rouge guerilla movement would form. The leader of the Khmer rouge, Pol Pot was educated in France and believed in Maoist Communism. These communist ideas would become important foundations for the ideas of the genocide, and which groups would be persecuted. The genocide it’s self, would be based on Pol Pot’s ideas to bring Cambodia back to an agrarian society, starting at the year zero. His main goal was to achieve this, romanticized idea of old Cambodia, based on the ancient Cambodian ruins, with all citizens having agrarian farming lives, and being equal to each other. Due to him wanting society to be equal, and agrarian based, the victims would be those that were educated, intellectuals, professionals, and minority ethnic g...
The Cambodian genocide and the Holocaust are unique in the areas of by methods of extermination used and why they were killed. The Holocaust had different killing methods than the Cambodian genocide. Before some even made it to the concentration camps, “Einsatzgruppen - armed militias forming mobile killing units - follow the invading SS troops and commit mass slaughter of Jews throughout Eastern Europe” (“Genocide- Holocaust”). The existing camp at Majdanek, and also at Auschwitz (where a second camp equipped with huge crematoria and gas-chambers has been built), are adapted for slaughter (“Genocide”). These were called “Death Camps”. Ma...
The Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, which lasted until January 1979. For their three-year, eight-month, and twenty-one day rule of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge committed some of the most heinous crimes in current history. The main leader who orchestrated these crimes was a man named Pol Pot. In 1962, Pol Pot had become the coordinator of the Cambodian Communist Party. The Prince of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, did not approve of the Party and forced Pol Pot to flee to exile in the jungle. There, Pol formed a fortified resistance movement, which became known as the Khmer Rouge, and pursued a guerrilla war against Sihanouk’s government. As Pol Pot began to accumulate power, he ruthlessly imposed an extremist system to restructure Cambodia. Populations of Cambodia's inner-city districts were vacated from their homes and forced to walk into rural areas to work. All intellectuals and educated people were eradicated and together with all un-communist aspects of traditional Cambodian society. The remaining citizens were made to work as laborers in various concentration camps made up of collective farms. On these farms, people would harvest the crops to feed their camps. For every man, woman, and child it was mandatory to labor in the fields for twelve to fifteen hours each day. An estimated two million people, or twenty-one percent of Cambodia's population, lost their lives and many of these victims were brutally executed. Countless more of them died of malnourishment, fatigue, and disease. Ethnic groups such as the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cham Muslims were attacked, along with twenty other smaller groups. Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000 Chinese living in Cambod...
Cambodia has come a long way from its days under French rule and the disastrous rule of the Khmer Rouge. With 14.9 million people living a relativity peaceful and prosperous life, Cambodia still has a long ways to go to join the ranks of world powers. Education has flourished in Cambodia with most its population attending school and have gone on to even higher education. The main goal is to make sure all of its population is literate so they can be active in life. The government is taking an active role to provide the best for its people whether through reform whether through education or elections. It makes sure to never repeat it’s dark past and always have a bright future.