Genocide in Cambodia WHAP/Napp
“Pol Pot, the leader of the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, about 1.5 million Cambodians out of a total population of 7 to 8 million died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork. Some estimates place the death toll even higher. One detention center, S-21, was so notorious that only seven of the roughly 20,000 people imprisoned there are known to have survived. The Khmer Rouge, in their attempt to socially engineer a classless peasant society, took particular aim at intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants and religious leaders. An invading Vietnamese army deposed the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Pol Pot died in 1998 without ever being brought to justice. Pol Pot came from a relatively affluent family and studied in France. When he returned to Cambodia in 1953, the whole region was revolting against French colonial rule. Cambodia officially gained its independence later that year. In 1960 Pol Pot helped to reorganize the Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party into a party that specifically espoused Marxism-Leninism. Three years later, following a clampdown on communist activity, he and other party leaders moved deep into the countryside. Pol Pot and the newly formed Khmer Rouge guerilla army launched a national uprising in 1968.
In March 1970, General Lon Nol initiated a coup while Cambodia’s hereditary leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was out of the country. A civil war then broke out in which Sihanouk allied himself with the Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol with the United States. At the same time, about 70,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers stormed across the border to fight Viet Cong troops who had taken sanctuary there. U.S. President Richard Nixon also ordered a secret bombing campaign as part of the Vietnam War. Over the span of four years, U.S. planes dropped 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia, more than three times the amount dropped on Japan during World War II. By the time the U.S. bombing campaign ended in August 1973, the number of Khmer Rouge troops had increased exponentially and by January 1975, the Khmer Rouge had entered the capital city of Phnom Penh.
After taking power, the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh’s 2.5 million residents. Former civil servants, doctors, teachers and other professionals were stripped of their possessions and forced to toil in the fields as part of a reeducation process. Those that complained about the work, concealed their rations or broke rules were usually tortured in a detention center, such as the infamous S-21, and then killed. The bones of people who died from malnutrition or inadequate healthcare also filled up mass graves.Under Pol Pot, the state controlled all aspects of a person’s life. Money, private property, jewelry, gambling, most reading material and religion were outlawed; agriculture was collectivized; children were taken from their homes and forced into the military; and strict rules governing sexual relations, vocabulary and clothing were laid down. The Khmer Rouge, which renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea, even insisted on realigning rice fields to create the symmetrical checkerboard pictured on their coat of arms.” ~ History
1. As South Vietnam fell to communist rule(A) U.S. troops stayed in Vietnam
(B) Chinese communists attacked Taiwan.
(C) The Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia.
(D) Thailand fell to communism. / 2. The Khmer Rouge are best known for
(A) Their traditional music and dance
(B) Hospitality and spicy cuisine
(C) resisting the Spanish colonization
(D) murdering nearly two million people in Cambodia
Key Words/
Questions / I. The Khmer Rouge
A. The ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979
B. On April 17, 1975, victorious Khmer Rouge troops entered the capital
C. Great relief that the five-year civil war had come to an end
D. Embittered after years of brutal civil war and American bombing
1. Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh with icy stares
E. Troops began to order people to abandon homes and leave Phnom Penh
1. In order to create the ideal communist society
2. All people would have to live and work in the countryside as peasants
3. All city dwellers became enemies of the new communist state
II. Restructuring Cambodia
A. Pol Pot, leader of Khmer Rouge, developed a “four-year plan”
1. Cambodians were expected to greatly increase rice production
2. With traditional tools and manual labor
3. To meet these new demands on rice production, strict policies
4. Workers labored in fields for 12 hours a day without rest or food
B. Many people lacked any experience in manual labor and died
C. “Keeping new people [city dwellers] is no benefit”
“Losing them is no loss.” – a Khmer Rouge slogan
D. Foraging for food was a capital offense
1. Despite fact that food allowance was so low caused many starved
E. New rules in Kampuchea were being imposed by Angka (“The Organization”), the secretive team of Khmer Rouge leaders
1. Angka banned family relationships and often took advantage of children
2. Young children were seen as being pure and untainted by capitalism
F. French speakers, educated, wore glasses, practiced Buddhism: killed
G. Families with connections to previous Cambodian governments and former soldiers as well as civil servants were often executed
H. Among Khmer Rouge’s rules, religion, money, private ownership were banned; communications with outside world eliminated; families dismantled
I. 2000 years of Cambodian history had now come to an end; April 17 was the beginning of Year Zero for the new Cambodia: Democratic Kampuchea
III. Background to Khmer Rouge and More Facts
A. Pol Pot isolated people from rest of world and set about emptying cities, abolishing money, private property, religion, and setting up rural collectives
B. Finally overthrown in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops, after a series of violent border confrontations
C. Khmer Rouge received support from China, Vietnam’s rival to north, while Vietnamese were assisted by U.S.S.R., which competed with China
D. Vietnamese soldiers shocked to see that Cambodia was pockmarked by sunken depressions of dirt
E. The depressions marked the spots of mass graves: of Cambodians slaughtered by their own countrymen (the Killing Fields)
F. Pol Pot died before being brought to justice
- ______in Cambodia is multi-terraced like an Indian stupa with seventy-two small stupas that contain Buddhas.
(B)Borobudur
(C)Kandarya
(D)Shiva
- Genocide ______.
(B)Often requires the cooperation of ordinary citizens.
(C)Is the systematic annihilation of a race or ethnic group.
(D)All of the above.
- Name the capital city of Cambodia.
(B)Pailin
(C)Kampot
(D)Phnom Penh
4. What factor caused Southeast Asia to experience major political change between 1200 and 1400?
(A) The Chinese and Mongols conquered parts of Southeast Asia at this time.
(B) The countries of Southeast Asia adopted Confucianism.
(C) The peoples of Southeast Asia began to adopt Christian ways.
(D) Democracy became a leading force in political change.
(E) all of the above
5. Which of the following is an example of a city built by the Khmer civilization?
(A) Kyoto
(B) Delhi
(C) Angkor Wat
(D) Burma
(E) Malacca / Prior to 1000 C.E., Southeast Asia was most influenced by which of the following?
(A) India and China
(B) China and Japan
(C) Korea and Japan
(D) Australia and Polynesia
(E) The Swahili states and the Ottoman Empire
7. China's strategy for modernization and economic development in the 1950s most closely resembled the developmental strategy of
(A) India
(B) Japan
(C) Britain
(D) the Soviet Union
(E) the United States
8. Which of the following pairs of belief systems offered opportunities for women to lead monastic lives?
(A) Buddhism and Christianity
(B) Buddhism and Judaism
(C) Confucianism and Hinduism
(D) Confucianism and Islam
(E) Hinduism and Islam
9. Although he called himself a Marxist, Lenin, unlike Marx, believed that
A) The revolution would be led by rural peasants, not industrial workers.
B) The revolution would be led by a small, highly disciplined party acting on behalf of the workers.
C) The revolution would be led by the intelligentsia acting on behalf of all Russia people.
D) The revolution would not succeed until Russian workers were joined by workers all over the world.
E) The revolution could not succeed if it alienated the church and the military.
Comparative Thesis Prompt:
Compare the causes and consequences of the Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot with one of the following genocides in World History:
The Armenian Genocide
The Holocaust
______
Determine if the following statements are true or false by marking a T or F by each sentence:
- Cambodia is a country in Southeast Asia.
- Cambodia was colonized by the French.
- Pol Pot was a nationalist and an advocate of free market capitalism.
- Pol Pot organized the Khmer Rouge along Marxist/Leninist lines.
- The United States conducted an illegal bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
- The United States’ bombing of Cambodia greatly increased the popularity of the Khmer Rouge.
- The Khmer Rouge evacuated the cities because they sought to modernize and renovate the cities in order to bring Cambodia into the twentieth century.
- The Khmer Rouge killed Buddhist monks.
- The Khmer Rouge killed individuals for foraging.
- The Khmer Rouge encouraged the learning of French.
- The Khmer Rouge advocated land ownership.
- The Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime.
- Pol Pot was never brought to justice.
Article Excerpt:
“S-21, the Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh was the location where the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge imprisoned and brutalized its enemies from 1975 to 1979. Van Nath was a former inmate of the prison. He remembered being brought there blindfolded and terrified: ‘I thought that was the end of my life. In my room people kept dying, one or two every day.’ Van Nath was kept in a room packed with 50 other inmates, shackled together and forced to lie down. ‘We could not sit. If we wanted to sit, we had to ask permission first. No talking, whispering or making noise.’ Van Nath described how male prisoners were whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. Prison guards mutilated women’s genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers’ arms and slaughtered. Van Nath was accused of being a CIA agent and given electric shock torture, but he survived when his jailers found out he was one of Cambodia’s most prominent painters. And what did they make him paint? ‘Pol Pot’s picture. Big pictures. I had to paint the same one again and again. If they didn’t like my painting that would have been the end of my life.’ So when Pol Pot finally fell in 1979, Van Nath returned to paint what he had really seen and heard at S-21. He did it as a memorial to the 14,000 who had been tortured and executed in the prison. It’s one of the few public reminders of the regime’s crimes.” ~ CNN