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.