11/12/2023 0 Comments Pot committed definitionThe Vietnamese Army invaded Cambodia in 1979 and removed Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from power, after a series of violent battles on the border between the two countries. Legend has it, some were executed for merely appearing to be intellectuals, by wearing glasses or being able to speak a foreign language.Īs part of this effort, hundreds of thousands of the educated, middle-class Cambodians were tortured and executed in special centers established in the cities, the most infamous of which was Tuol Sleng jail in Phnom Penh, where nearly 17,000 men, women and children were imprisoned during the regime’s four years in power.ĭuring what became known as the Cambodian Genocide, an estimated 1.7 to 2.2 million Cambodians died during Pol Pot’s time in charge of the country. Those seen as intellectuals, or potential leaders of a revolutionary movement, were also executed. Pol Pot’s regime also executed thousands of people it had deemed as enemies of the state. Hundreds of thousands died from disease, starvation or damage to their bodies sustained during back-breaking work or abuse from the ruthless Khmer Rouge guards overseeing the camps. Workers on the farm collectives established by Pol Pot soon began suffering from the effects of overwork and lack of food. He also outlawed the ownership of private property and the practice of religion in the new nation. He resettled hundreds of thousands of the country’s city-dwellers in rural farming communes and abolished the country’s currency. Once installed as the country’s leader by the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot and the forces loyal to him quickly set about remaking Cambodia, which they had renamed Kampuchea, in the model of these rural tribes, with the hopes of creating a communist-style, agricultural utopia.ĭeclaring 1975 “Year Zero” in the country, Pol Pot isolated Kampuchea from the global community. The tribes, he felt, were like communes in that they worked together, shared in the spoils of their labor and were untainted by the evils of money, wealth and religion, the latter being the Buddhism common in Cambodia’s cities. These tribes were self-sufficient and lived on the goods they produced through subsistence farming. KampucheaĪs a leader of the Khmer Rouge during its days as an insurgent movement, Pol Pot came to admire the tribes in Cambodia’s rural northeast. Prince Norodom was forced to live in exile. Notably, the Khmer Rouge opted not to restore power to Prince Norodom, but instead handed power to the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot. With the capital in its grasp, the Khmer Rouge had won the civil war and, thus, ruled the country. In 1975, Khmer Rouge fighters invaded Phnom Penh and took over the city. Eventually, the Khmer Rouge side seized the advantage in the conflict, after gaining control of increasing amounts of territory in the Cambodian countryside. For the next five years, a civil war between the right-leaning military, which had led the coup, and those supporting the alliance of Prince Norodom and the Khmer Rouge raged in Cambodia.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |