During the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia was turned into a giant labor camp creating a system of terror, genocide, and attempted cultural annihilation-a series of drastic events that the country is still recovering from. The years contained within this regime were devastating for the nation of Cambodia, with the establishment of the Khmer Rouge, a left-wing Communist political party whose actions have had an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on the political, economic and social structure of Cambodia-ruining the lives of millions.
As a strong communist organization with aims for Cambodia that would leave the country in dire need of help, the Khmer Rouge defectively impacted the easy-going life Cambodians knew. With much determination, the Khmer Rouge was an insurgent movement of varying ideological backgrounds developed against the Lon Nol regime in 1960 (Rowat 2006). It began as a left-wing organization made up of a small group of French educated communists, but soon grew to become Cambodia?s leading and most influential political party. Following the establishment of the party, the Khmer Rouge?s revolutionary army grew rapidly, aiming to consolidate its control taking over most of the country (Dennis 1988). Their leader Pol Pot was an admirer of Maoist communism, which is where the group?s strong communist ideas originated. Pol Pot?s ideologies for the future of Cambodia were truly corrupted and powerfully triggered the downfall of the nation of Cambodia (Peace Pledge Union 2007). Pol Pot wanted to wipe out all traces of the old Cambodia and start a new society, one that was strictly ordered and structured by a series of rules. With the Khmer Rouge becoming even more powerful in the very late 1960s, US bombers interfered to st...
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... 30 000 Vietnamese. In December of 1977, the Khmer Rouge broke off diplomatic relations with Vietnam, who retaliated with an attack 30 km into Cambodia in 1978 (Sutherland 1990, p. 158). Upon occupation, the Vietnamese were welcomed at first by the Cambodians as their saviours from the Khmer Rouge extremists (Sutherland 1990, p. 161).
During the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia was turned into a giant labour camp creating a system of terror, genocide, and attempted cultural annihilation, a series of drastic events that the country is still recovering from. The years contained within this regime were devastating for the nation of Cambodia, with the establishment of the Khmer Rouge, a left-wing Communist political party whose actions have had an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on the political, economic and social structure of Cambodia, ruining the lives of millions.
Compared to Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot looks like the good guy! Even though both dictators were incredibly bad Hitler takes the cake for managing to kill and torture over 6 million people. On the other hand Pot wanted to make everyone work on one huge federation of collective farms. The Holocaust was an attempt by Hitler and the Nazi party to take over Europe and create a “Master Race” (“Holocaust,” “Some”). The Holocaust lasted from 1933 to 1945, when Hitler finally committed suicide in fear of being captured by American troops. This genocide took place all throughout Europe. It started in Germany and spread all the way to Great Britain. (“Some”). 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”). The Cambodian genocide happened in Cambodia, a country in south-east Asia. Khmer Rouge, started in 1960 and their leader Pot are the reason for the horrible genocide (“Cambodian”). Both Genocides are different in there own ways. The goal of the Cambodian genocide was to revert back to “year zero” and to make everyone work on a huge collection of farms. Whereas the goal of the Holocaust was to create a “master race” which ended up killing over 6 million people. These genocides are also similar in many ways, two of which are their government overthrows and who they killed.
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 occurred between 1975 and 1979. Pol Pot began with isolating Cambodia, and deporting all of the foreigners. The Cambodian Genocide was not only an attack on the people, but Cambodia’s pride, because there was no valid reason for doing this, the amount of people who were killed is ghastly, and how Cambodia looked after the genocide is horrendous.
The Hmong have been singled out for persecution by the communists in Laos because out their link to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (Malakunas, 2000). The CIA hired, armed and trained about 40,000 Hmong soldiers between 1961 and 1975 to fight the Secret War in North Vietnam (Malakunas, 2000). The Hmong soldiers fought in Northern Vietnam stopping Vietnamese soldiers from getting to the American soldiers in Southern Vietnam (Malakunas, 2000). In North Vietnam the soldiers saved thousands of American soldiers by stopping cargo and travelling military (Malakunas, 2000). They also rescued American pilots from crashed helicopters and planes (Malakunas, 2000). They sacrificed many of themselves often to save just one pilot (Malakunas, 2000). The Secret War was kept secret because the country was supposedly neutral and had several international treaties banning foreign troops from fighting there (Malakunas, 2000).
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...
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...
Therefore, the mass murders that took place in Cambodia was a genocide and not a civil war as the people of Cambodia had no means to defend themselves while the Khmer Rouge went on a killing spree that cost two million lives in an attempt to “ purge out impudence” and to model Tse Tsung Mao’s communist China .
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
The Holocaust was one of the biggest genocides that killed nearly 11 million innocent people. Even after the effects of the Holocaust people thought that there will never be another genocide again, but there are still many around the world today. Such as the genocide in Cambodia, that cost the lives of nearly 2 million people. Khmer Rouge, just like Hitler, orchestrated this mass murder of people. Both leaders had a vision in their minds to make their nation only a certain race of people. In Germany, they only wanted Aryan people, while in Cambodia, they only want Agrarian people. Both these genocides used fear, to make it possible. For example, in both countries if you questioned the government or helped people hide, you would be killed. Both Cambodia and Germany had a vision in their mind to make their nation a utopia, with perfect citizens, but what they didn’t realize was that they were doing the opposite. Learning about both genocides teaches many people that it’s okay to be different and we shouldn’t punish people because of it. What both of these nations didn’t see by doing this is that they lost
The Holocaust was a period when Adolf Hitler created a genocide and killed millions of people. Many people killed were Jewish but other types of people were killed such as gypsies, homosexuals, disabled, prisoners of war, and high ranked government officials. A common experience for the Nazis prisoners were concentration camps. These various camps held countless people that were starved, harassed, and put into horrible working conditions. One of the main concentration camps was known as Auschwitz.
“Ho founded the Vietminh political organization and conceived the strategy that would eventually drive the French from Vietnam. He and the other Communists who constituted the Vietminh leadership skillfully tapped the deep reservoir of Vietnamese nationalism, muting their stressing independence and “democratic” reforms. Displaying an organization and discipline far superior to competing nationalist groups, many of which spent as much time fighting each other as the French, the Vietminh established itself as the voice of Vietnamese nationalism (Herring5).”
The day that the survivors of the Cambodian Genocide will never forget, was the day that the Cambodian society took a turn for the worse. On April 17, 1975, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge went to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, took control and renamed it Democratic Kampuchea also known as DK. Pol Pot announced to all the citizens that he had to “purify” the Cambodian society. Although the Cambodian genocide did not kill as many people as other genocides such as the Holocaust, it is still just as important. I think that the Cambodian Genocide is an awful thing that took place and I feel bad for all the victims of racism. I also think that the perpetrators in this situation are heartless because of the torture that they put the people Cambodian society through because those people were discriminated and did not deserve it. Just like other people who get discriminated by in other genocides such as the Holocaust. When the Jews were discriminated by Nazi’s in the Holocaust .
Oppression is perhaps the worst crime that man will ever inflict upon himself. Despite a tyrant's will, the fighting spirit of the oppressed never dies out. Oppression has the power to turn an average commoner into a force to be reckoned with. If you take a man's freedom from him he has nothing to lose, making him extremely dangerous. Since 248 A.D., this oppression plagued South East Asia by the French, the Chinese and others. At the end of World War II in August of 1945, the French were trying to re-establish control over their Indochinese colonies. This weak moment would be seized by Vietnam to free themselves from French rule and declare their independence.
“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past,” is the Cambodian proverb that describes the strength of the country well and is represented in the art produced by Cambodian artists. (Britannica) Cambodia has powered through the communist drama brought by the Khmer Rouge, which set their progressive history off track. The communist ideas expressed by the Khmer Rouge threatened the freedom, progression and happiness of the Cambodian arts.