Introduction: The Cambodian Genocide occurred between 1975 and 1979.
This was when Pol Pot and his group, called the Khmer Rouge, were in control of Cambodia. This new group did not want anyone to take their power, so anyone who was considered an enemy was killed, resulting in 1.5 to 3 million deaths of the Cambodian people.
Background: A very long time ago, Cambodia used to be strong under the Khmer Empire of Angkor. But as time went on, Cambodia had many changes. They were ruled by France, then they became independent, and then they were stuck in the middle of a war between the U.S. and Vietnam. The war devastated Cambodia and left the country poor and broken. Many citizens had to flee to the cities to remove themselves from…show more content… It is still being worked out today about what to do.
Statistics: During the Cambodian Genocide, many lives were lost. “Out of a 1970 population of probably near 7,100,000 Cambodia probably lost slightly less than 4,000,000 people to war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder.” (Rummel) Over half of these deaths were because of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, so they killed about 25% of the whole population. Even after Pol Pot was stopped, Cambodia still suffered tremendously. Around 650,000 more people died due to disease, starvation, or land mines. In 1975, the year the Genocide officially started, Pol Pot had built his army up to 700,000 men.
Genocide: This is the act of killing off an entire group of people, such as race, religion, or ethnicity. “The process is not linear. Logically, later stages must be preceded by earlier stages. But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.” (Stanton) The stages do not always occur exactly in this order, but they all occur one way or…show more content… They make lists of the “enemy” and set their plan in motion. Pol Pot and his group created a list of everyone who was considered the enemy and began making his plans to kill them off so he would be a powerful ruler.
Extermination: This step is also obvious, this is when they finally kill off the group. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge group would kill people on the spot by shooting them or beating them to death, they were brought to prisons where they were tortured to death, or they were forced to work in agricultural labor where they died of “fatigue, disease, and primarily from hunger, as a consequence of being given only 90 grams of rice a day for food.” (Kiernan)
Denial: This is the final stage of Genocide. During this stage, the bad group tries to hide all evidence of the Genocide by burning the bodies and scaring the witnesses into staying quiet. They also deny that they did anything wrong and blame it on the victims. Pol Pot treated the victims as scapegoats, trying to act like it was their fault for everything that happened. Pol Pot denied that he killed people and just said that he was trying to help them, he also said that he was just simply
