The Cambodian Genocide: Pol Pot

Pol Pot was born over eighty years ago on May 19, 1925. He would later seize control of Cambodia and become their political leader ruling the country through communism. To better understand the Cambodian genocide which ensued, we take a look into the mastermind who planned it all, Pol Pot. Pol Pot was born as Saloth Sar in the small village of Prek Sbauv. He was the eighth of the nine children and livid his years as a young child on a small fishing village. His parents were wealthy and had ownership of fifty acres of rice paddy. When he was five to six years old, he was sent to live with one of his older brothers to be educated. However Saloth was initially a poor student and had failed the entrance examinations to high school and instead had …show more content…
Khmer Rouge followed many ideals of Maoist communism but interpreted it their own way. The CPK was created The goal was to create a classless society where everyone would be in the same state of having to farm the land. Their economy would be based on their crop output and the country would be largely isolated from other nation-states. To create this society Khmer Rouge took significant steps to cease educations and created 'Year Zero' through their reconstruction methods. Cambodia was known as Kampuchea through their reign and was to be returned back to a 'golden age' where peasants would cultivate land as opposed to by educated in the city. 'Year Zero' was a time where citizens would focus their labor to the State and therefore give up all of their personal, community and religious allegiances. The only acceptable lifestyle was the way of a agricultural worker who would maintain relatively poor. The life of a citizen would be heavily controlled by the state such though that people would not be able to listen to music, choose their marriage partner or even wear their desired clothes. Khmer Rouge attempted to more or less reintegrate the old rural lifestyle for citizens, void of modern technologies and western influence. All members of society was to be the same low class farmer where their loyalty would be with the State and only the State where even parents would have no authority over their …show more content…
With an ideology of the general population being crop laborers, Khmer Rouge would give harsh punishments and ruthless orders, sparing no child, elder or disabled persons. In order to pursue the goal they would eliminate any who opposed the idea and educated persons were assumed so. Educated persons such as doctors, scientists and lawyers were killed along with their extended families. With civil rights abolished, Khmer Rouge began their campaign by displacing citizens and forcing them to relocate. Those who did not move or obey were slaughtered, along with those who didn’t move fast enough. "To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss," was a common saying by those who followed Khmer Rouge. This meant that sparing lives would yield no benefit, so better to destroy people and leave no doubt. This foreshadows the murderous intent of Khmer Rouge, shrugging off human lives as just another obstacle to create a socially engineered society. Khmer Rouge had policies such as torture, mass executions, forced relocation and labor. A total of up to two million Cambodians would eventually be die over the course of four years with execution, starvation, disease and overwork being the main contributors. No one was safe as something as simple as wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language could be killed. Even those with little education were tortured and executed in special centers. One of the most famous centers

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Pol Pot And Cambodian Genocide

Pol Pot Cambodian Genocide