Reflection

The reflection I have on this genocide is deeply touching. It feels personal to me as these are my fellow people. The many innocent people who died have the same views as me and that’s something I will never forget. It makes me feel the true pain these people had and what they were facing every single day.  The amount of people who died  compared to the number of people  who know about this tragedy is not enough. The number of deaths, 1.7 million innocent people died. This number I cannot comprehend; and only today are these 5 leaders of the Khmer Rouge are getting prosecuted now. The one thing that angers me most is that their notorious leader, Pol Pot dies in 1998. I wanted him to be beaten, tortured and starved like he did to all 1.7 innocent people.

Resolution

After  four years of terrible rule and mismanagement of the government, Pol Pot is now becoming unfavorable within his own people and now his own right hand men are turning against him. When he started to kill innocent people based on their ethnicity, he first called it purification.” The first step in "purification" was to force all of the people of Cambodia out of the cities and into agricultural reeducation camps. During this mass exodus, no one was spared. People who once held high-level posts in the Lon Nol government were ordered to report to a transformed building in Phnom Penh”(Etcheson). This just shows how ruthless these leaders were. They did not care if a person held a high level position in office or if they were just a commoner in society. Later on during its present time, Cambodia found a way to help prevent something like this not happen again. One of the most important things to do is to identify the groups that may pose a threat to the society and the government. This is how the communist party started, they first posed a threat to the local government and took no hesitation to take over and begin its widespread killings. As Pol Pot used camps as his main method for controlling people these camps were not so successful in containing people. “Each camp tried to be self-sufficient and there was little to no communication between camps” (Etcheson). By making these camps, the Khmer Rouge had one idea in mind, that was the equal everyone out, by doing this Pol virtually eliminated all the social classes and made everyone of equal ranking.

The Current Situation

 As what happened in 1975-1979 was bad enough for the people in this small southeastern country, there are still steps for these people to take so that this terrible killing never happens again. One of the basic steps for preventing this is to make sure there is no genocide in present day Cambodia. For now there is none. As some people around the world forgot about who actually was in charge of these killings, the U.N remembers vividly about who led the Khmer Rouge. “Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh — is charged with crimes against humanity, and is this first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the U.N.-assisted tribunal”(USA Today). The only downside for prosecuting the leaders is that there are only 5 living people left who the U.N can accuse of for this terrible crime against humanity. This wonderful news comes to the victims of this horrible tragedy as somewhat closing. “The trial comes 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, 13 years after the tribunal was first proposed and nearly three years after the court was inaugurated.”(USA Today). While all 5 people are currently on trial, not all 5 leaders have been proven guilty. As these men are on trial, other steps can be put into place so this doesn’t occur in the future. Some lessons were learned from this terrible event, one of the biggest lessons learned is that the government can’t let the people take to much power over the Council of Ministers. In Cambodia this is one of the major ruling bodies that play a large role into what laws go into affect and how much power they have.

The Cost

As the Cambodian Communist Party took over, they wasted no time in putting down their foot to people who oppose their party. The death toll of the people and the country was devastating. Not only did Pol pot order his men to kill innocent people in the streets but he also orders his men to destroy the local towns that had a large population density. The people mainly who died were Buddhist people and some people who opposed the vicious behavior of the Vietnamese Communist Party. These mass killings not only affected the people and their towns but it had a severe effect on the nation’s economy. “Foreign trade was almost completely halted, though there was a limited revival in late 1976 and early 1977. Mainland China was the most important trading partner, but commerce amounting to a few million dollars was also conducted with France, with Britain, and with the United States through a Hong Kong intermediary”(Chandler). With most countries fearing what Pol Pot may do next, most all of Cambodia’s economic and trading partners left them astray. One of the main problems within the country was that all the corporations were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. These businesses within the country prospered before the communist party started to listen to the vicious orders of Pol Pot. In total, after all the terrible orders given by Pol Pot and its other high ranking officials, the death toll rose to about 2.5 million people dead. Some numbers may differ from source to source but most agree it was between 1.7-2.5 million people dead. “1.7 million People killed out of a population of 8 million (21% of the country's population)” (Chandler). As 20 percent of the population was gone, this played a tremendous affect on how the economy and everyday life played out.

The Cause

The cause of this terrible massacre is no surprise to the people of Cambodia. “Cambodia traditionally has suffered from ethnic rivalry leading to several exchanges of political power between the substantial Vietnamese minority and the Buddhist Khmer majority”(Etcheson). This shows how civil uproar and conflict happens often and is no surprise to the people. All the civil conflicts the people have been facing greatly affect them. Many people now fear the Khmer Rouge due to the fear of execution and torture. Mainly, the Khmer Rouge favored in the killing of anyone who didn’t believe in the same ideas as them. “Ethnically, the targets of the cleansing were Vietnamese and Chinese nationals, Muslims (particularly ethnic Chams), and Buddhist monks. They all were virtually, if not entirely, eliminated from the population by expulsion, execution, or starvation” (Etcheson). One of the underlying causes of the Cambodian Genocide was the fact that these people were Buddhist and opposed the communist party. At the time the majority of the country’s population was Buddhist, so this presented a large problem. Pol Pot, the leader of the communist party had ways in deterring the ways of the strong hearted Buddhist people. He called it “cleansing”. These techniques were used in the mass destruction of the high ranking people and the commoners. Cleansing was the method of the elimination of unwanted people by the use of torture or persecution. While cleansing was going on, Prince Sihanouk was in a bit of a dilemma. He was trying to please both the rising communist party, and the United States. While the Prince’s focus was mainly on the United States, the communist party saw a weakness and attacked it fiercely. They performed a coup and Lon No a high ranking official within the communist party took over.

The Facts

“Cambodia, a tropical kingdom in Southeast Asia, makes up part of the Indochinese Peninsula. It has suffered devastating civil conflict that began with the rule of the Khmer Rouge.”(WH Modern Era). This small country has been inundated with several civil conflicts and has had a corrupted past that is trying to fix the problems within their society. The second most horrific genocide behind the holocaust is the Cambodian Genocide; many people are unaware of this terrible incident. This terrible instance started when France made Cambodia as one of their colonies. When Prince Sihanouk was in power, he felt as though he should please the United States and his own people. He felt this task was very difficult and based on his decisions while in power led to the eventual downfall of the government and the rise of the Cambodian Communist party led by the notorious Pol Pot.  The timeframe of these terrible killings started in 1975 and ended around 4 years later in 1979. Pol pot had the idea that all his people should be “cleansed”. This means that he wanted to create a utopian agrarian society with all the people in Cambodia. The only way to do this is to eliminate the people who Pol Pot dislikes. This was the rule of the Khmer Rouge.  “The Khmer Rouge period refers to the rule of Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Khieu Samphan and the Khmer Rouge Communist party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea”(WH Modern Era). During this time the Communist Party and its followers were also named the Khmer Rouge, with that in mind many ethic groups grew to dislike this name very much. Some of these groups such as the Buddhists, which were 95% of the population in Cambodia and there were other tribal religions. But out of all the people, 2.5 million people died from these two groups. This had a tremendous affect in why this wide scale extermination took place.