Pol Pot In Cambodia

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Under Pol Pot's leadership, and within days of overthrowing the government, the Khmer Rouge launched themselves into an organized mission: they ruthlessly imposed an extremist programme to reconstruct Cambodia on the communist model of Mao's China. The population should, they believed, be forced to work as labourers in one vast federation of collective farms. Anyone in opposition - as intellectuals and educated folks were assumed to be - must be eliminated, beside all un-communist aspects of traditional Cambodian society. So, at short notice and with threat of death, the inhabitants of towns and cities were forced to depart with them. The ill, disabled, old and extremely young were driven out too, no matter their physical condition: no-one was spared the exodus. People that refused to go away were killed; so were those that did not leave quick enough, and also people who would not obey to orders. All political and civil rights were abolished. children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps. Factories, faculties and universities were shut down; inc...

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