Throughout history, there have been many dictators that received a name for their docile or cruel acts in order to better their country. Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong are among the few of history's infamous leaders. However, one that hasn't received as much attention for his attempts to improve his home country is the Cambodian leader, Saloth Sar. However, he is more famously known as Pol Pot. The few people throughout the world that still remember the dictator remember him for his more sinister actions involving the residents of Cambodia. However, despite these methods, his intentions and actions served a noble purpose. Upon believing that the country would benefit from a different form of government, Pol Pot dedicated his life …show more content…
Also, he had all threats to his reign, including intellectuals and politicians, tortured and executed within S-21, the old high school that the Khmer Rouge secret police was based within. In addition, Pot created re-education camps in order to instill his way of thinking within the people within his country. However, many of the people who worked within the work camps were malnourished and overworked, resulting in the deaths of many residents. The estimated amount of deaths of Cambodians is between 1.5 and 3 million casualties. In 1979, after four years of such an unprecedented reign, the Vietnamese continued to attack their borders. Even when Pol Pot was made aware of the attacks, the entire country was invaded by the Vietnamese army. Despite attempting to regain his power a few times over, it wasn't enough. Fearful for his life, he lived underground for several years. During his absence from Khmer Rouge activity, the communist group split into two factions, with the larger group sided with Sihanouk and his government. In 1997, Pol Pot was finally captured and sentenced by the Cambodian government to life under house arrest. After a year, he was killed by heart failure on April 15,
Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot-the leader of the Khmer Rouge followed Maoist communism, which they thought they could create an agrarian utopia. Agrarian means that the society was based on agriculture. They wanted all members of society to be rural agricultural workers and killed intellectuals, who had been depraved by western capitalist ideas. A utopia means a perfect society. This idea went to extremes when The Khmer Rouge resumed that only pure people were qualified to build the revolution. They killed Cambodians without reasons by uncivilized actions such as: cutting heads, burying alive… There were about 1.7 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Compared to Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot looks like the good guy! Even though both dictators were incredibly bad Hitler takes the cake for managing to kill and torture over 6 million people. On the other hand Pot wanted to make everyone work on one huge federation of collective farms. The Holocaust was an attempt by Hitler and the Nazi party to take over Europe and create a “Master Race” (“Holocaust,” “Some”). The Holocaust lasted from 1933 to 1945, when Hitler finally committed suicide in fear of being captured by American troops. This genocide took place all throughout Europe. It started in Germany and spread all the way to Great Britain. (“Some”). The Cambodian Genocide was an attempt by the Khmer Rouge to take over and centralize all Cambodian farmers (“Cambodian”). This genocide lasted from 1975 to 1978 when the Khmer rouge was finally overthrown by the Vietnamese (“Cambodian”). The Cambodian genocide happened in Cambodia, a country in south-east Asia. Khmer Rouge, started in 1960 and their leader Pot are the reason for the horrible genocide (“Cambodian”). Both Genocides are different in there own ways. The goal of the Cambodian genocide was to revert back to “year zero” and to make everyone work on a huge collection of farms. Whereas the goal of the Holocaust was to create a “master race” which ended up killing over 6 million people. These genocides are also similar in many ways, two of which are their government overthrows and who they killed.
Pol Pot, known as the butcher of Cambodia, took an estimated 1.5 million lives ("Pol Pot"). Ruling for a total of 18 years he was by far the worst ruler Cambodia has ever had. His goal was to establish an agrarian utopia which to him was the perfect society ("Pol Pot"). Pol Pot created a military dictatorship that built up a strong fear factor within all citizens. Seven out of twenty thousand people survived when put into one of Pol Pots prison camps ("Pol Pot"). Pol Pot had a big impact on Cambodia's population.
Daniel Goldhagen (2009) states that in less than four years, Cambodia’s political leaders induced their followers to turn Cambodia’s backwards and regressing society into a massive concentration camp in which they steadily killed victims. Furthermore, a deeper understanding of the Cambodian genocide is provided within Luong Ung’s personal narrative, “First They Killed My Father” (2000). Ung’s memoir is a riveting account of the Cambodian genocide, which provides readers with a personalized account of her family’s experience during the genocide. She informs readers of the causes of the Cambodian genocide and she specifies the various eliminationist techniques used to produce the ideological Khmer vision. Nonetheless, she falls short because
In 1975, The Khmer Rouge became the ruling political party of Cambodia after overthrowing the Lon Nol government. Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society. They wanted to form an anti-modern, anti-Western ideal of a restructured “classless agrarian society'', a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. The Khmer Rouge revolutionary army enforced this mostly with extreme violence. The book “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers”, written by Luong Ung, is the author’s story of growing up during this time period. She was five years old when the Khmer Rouge came into power. As stated in the author’s note, “From 1975 to 1979, through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor, the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the country’s population.”
"Pol Pot in Cambodia 1975-1979." The History Place : Genocide in the 20th Century: Pol Pot in Cambodia 1975-1979. The History Place, n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
The Biography Editors state that the Watergate burglary occurred June 17, 1972 where five men were apprehended for breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. The five men were Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, and James W. McCord Jr. The Watergate scandal revolved around multiple crimes that were committed. The crimes that have been stated in articles such as, the Washington Post, dealt with political espionage, obstructing the investigation, breaking and entering which led to wiretapping phones. Also, there was campaign fraud during President Nixon’s reelection. The five men who were arrested were all associated and working on behalf of the president’s reelection campaign. As stated by The
Pol Pot shut the country off from all outside influences such as newspapers, radio, television, mail, and even money. This was Pol Pot’s attempt to go back in time and have a higher control over the people. Human rights were revoked, no more free speech, religion was forbidden when 90 percent of the people were Buddhists. There was no traveling was permitted and the whole community was put on schedules and have strict rules. People who broke even the smallest rule were killed. People who were inhabitants were forced out of the cities by the Khmer Rouge army. Two million people had to leave Phnom Penh and travel to the countryside to be under complete Pol Pot control. Approximately twenty thousand died while traveling to the countryside. The individuals, who admitte...
The Crips, as we learned in module 3 are one of the most notorious black or predominately African American gang founded in Southern Los Angeles, California in 1969. This gang was co-found by 16-year-old Raymond Washington and Stanley Tookie Williams III. Even before the Crips however, there was a gang known as the Hoover Groovers. The Hoover Groovers would later form an alliance with the Crips and change their name to Hoover Crips.
Adolf Hitler was born in Austria-Hungary on April 20, 1889, to mother, Klara Hitler, and father, Alois Hitler; a German by blood.
The trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg has been a controversial topic for decades. Whether debating the constitutionality of their capital punishment, or the ethics behind the trial, people all over the world are split over if they should have been condemned to death or to a prison cell. Both positions can be well supported, but I believe that the execution of the Rosenbergs was completely justified.
Cambodia would become a battle ground for American troops fighting in Vietnam for four years; the war would kill up to 750,000 Cambodians through U.S. efforts to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. This devastation would take its toll on the Cambodian peoples’ morale and would later help to contribute to the conflicts that caused the Cambodian genocide. In the 1970’s the Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement would form. The leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, was educated in France and believed in Maoist Communism. These communist ideas would become important foundations for the ideas of the genocide, and which groups would be persecuted.
Cambodia’s genocide was a means for the communist party to absorb mass amounts of power. Each person that was tortured and killed under the hands of the Khmer Rouge added to the fear amongst the
Conspiracy theories are a big part of our world. They allow us to find answers to difficult and upsetting questions. Conspiracy theories can also provide an escape from reality. These theories make you think and question the world around you. Conspiracy theories provide a new perspective on certain topics in our country.
The Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as the Khmer Rouge, took control of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, which lasted until January 1979. For their three-year, eight-month, and twenty-one day rule of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge committed some of the most heinous crimes in current history. The main leader who orchestrated these crimes was a man named Pol Pot. In 1962, Pol Pot had become the coordinator of the Cambodian Communist Party. The Prince of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, did not approve of the Party and forced Pol Pot to flee to exile in the jungle. There, Pol formed a fortified resistance movement, which became known as the Khmer Rouge, and pursued a guerrilla war against Sihanouk’s government. As Pol Pot began to accumulate power, he ruthlessly imposed an extremist system to restructure Cambodia. Populations of Cambodia's inner-city districts were vacated from their homes and forced to walk into rural areas to work. All intellectuals and educated people were eradicated and together with all un-communist aspects of traditional Cambodian society. The remaining citizens were made to work as laborers in various concentration camps made up of collective farms. On these farms, people would harvest the crops to feed their camps. For every man, woman, and child it was mandatory to labor in the fields for twelve to fifteen hours each day. An estimated two million people, or twenty-one percent of Cambodia's population, lost their lives and many of these victims were brutally executed. Countless more of them died of malnourishment, fatigue, and disease. Ethnic groups such as the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cham Muslims were attacked, along with twenty other smaller groups. Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000 Chinese living in Cambod...