The Killing Fields Today

Today, this is a picture of the actually killing fields in Cambodia. Its hard to imagine that a little more than 30 years ago, millions were slaughtered right here.

Reflection on Pol Pot and the Killing Fields of Cambodia

Reflection- Brian Moran

After researching the events that happened from 1975-1979 in Cambodia, it is clear that the power of the United Nations is very limited when it comes to dealing with the sovereignty of other countries. When a leader such as Pol Pot gains enough power and supporters, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights cannot really protect the individual rights of the general public in that country. This is because the willingness of the United Nations to enforce the Declaration of Human Rights often stops short of overriding national sovereignty. During his time of power, Pol Pot banned all establishments like banks, hospitals, and schools, and 2 million people were killed because they did not fit the description of a perfect society the Communists were trying to achieve. Of course, the United Nations did not like or agree with the actions taking place in Cambodia, but they did not have enough international support to stop them.

In my opinion, the events of Cambodia and the Holocaust share a key similarity. The United Nations situation with Cambodia is comparable to that of the United States during World War II. The U.S.A. absolutely did not agree with anything the Germans were doing at the time, but the American public did not want to go overseas and become involved in another country. If U.S. government leaders had just disregarded the feelings of the entire country and gone over anyway, that would have been contradicting the very basis of democracy the government is built on. That is probably the way the United Nations felt too. They would have loved to stop what was happening in Cambodia, but without the support of the membership, diving in to that situation would be breaking the rules the U.N. set up in the first place.

To people like Pol Pot and Hitler, and to governments like those now in Sudan and North Korea, the principle of humanism does not even exist. Pol Pot killed millions of his own people for ridiculous reasons like they wore glasses, had an education, or were ethnically impure. To fully accept the idea that the individual matters, people need to realize the differences in each other, and embrace them. No two people are alike, and this just shows how crazy and impractical Pol Pot’s idea of racial cleansing and creating a population of “New People” was. There is no way to create a race of humans who are exactly the same, because everyone will always be different. Some many be similar, but never the identical. The Khmer Rouge rejected all principles of humanism and the UDoHR, and killed millions of innocent people because of it.

During my time working on this project, I was completely shocked and disgusted at the events that took place in Cambodia. I cannot really begin to understand what was going through the minds of Pol Pot and his followers at the time, and I feel nobody will. That kind of evil is rare, and it is easy to say the Khmer Rouge and the Nazi party go hand in hand as two of the worst and most destructive governments of all time. Both killed millions of their own people to try for racial cleansing, and nothing can justify their actions. I feel sorrow and remorse for those who were killed and tortured at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. They didn’t deserve to be treated in such barbaric ways, and the knowledge of their deaths will never be forgotten.

All in all, I can see now that the events of Cambodia were not only terrible, but also hard to stop. The United Nations was stuck without international support, and therefore was powerless to act quickly. As a result, I think many more people died than necessary, and maybe there is a flaw in the system. I feel that if such horrible events are taking place, on the scale of genocide, they need to be stopped whether the United Nations has international support or not. If something were to happen in the United States that was as horrible as the Holocaust and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, then the U.N. would have every right to step in and stop the atrocities occurring. Racial cleansing should never again be tolerated, and the United Nations should be the group to quickly enforce that around the world.

Pile of Bones

This picture shows a HUGE pile of skulls and bones. They use to be living people, who became victims of Pol Pots mass killings. It looks like a lot, but this is not even close to the amount of people killed in Cambodia from 1975-1979.

Involvement of the Khmer Rouge

The events that took place in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 were appauling at the very least. The Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia during April of 1975 and thousands of people suddenly lost all of their rights. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, ordered his soldiers to displace all Cambodians into agricultural forced labor camps. The purpose of this was to create a new group of citizens to make a new farming based "perfect" society.

The power of the Khmer Rouge was really unchallenged from the time they took control of Cambodia, until around the mid-1990s. Many of the main leaders of this radical goverment were well educated; they attended universities and tech schools in Paris, France. This combination of authority and intellegence made the lives of suffering civilians more difficult. They were told that they were only being moved 2 or 3 kilometers away, and they would be back in 2 or 3 days, because of U.S. bombing raids. Little did the innocent people know, they were being brought to their graves.

The Khmer Rouge's radical plan to create a new perfect communist society used the limitation and violation of their population’s rights. They isolated the country from all foreign influence, closed schools factories and even hospitals. The government also violated human rights by outlawing all religions and stopping all currency and all forms of banking. The Khmer's Rouge justification for the violation of human rights was to create the Cambodian people into a "New People" through agricultural forced labor and the limitations of these rights.

Once the Khmer Rouge came to power in April of 1975, the rights of many minorities in the country were drastically reduced and violated human rights. The Khmer Rouge gained power once they had taken the Cambodian capitol, Phnom Penh. The leader of this group was Pol Pot, and once in power he used his power to create a radical communist state that's main objective was to make the people "new". The government leadership was totally directing this event, the government was the Khmer Rouge and they implemented these conditions on their population.

The Khmer Rouge, the government, setup the conditions for the minorities such as intellectuals, ethnic Chinese, ethinic Vietnamese and many other minorites located in Cambodia. Pol Pot and his followers did not setup laws like the Nuremberg Laws set up in Germnay during the Holocaust. Nobody who was killed in the Killing Fields of Cambodia did anything against the laws set up at the time. In fact, Pol Pot killed thousands of innocent civilians because of his plan to create a classless, "perfect" communist society.

Pol Pot, a massive communist supporter, believed that by forcing the Cambodian people to work in agricultural camps it would create them into a "New People". Pol Pots goal was to create Cambodia into a perfect communist state. The Khmer Rouge attempted to create a classless society by seizing all private property and then forcing them into agricultural labor camps. These people were killed at the agricultural labor camps from various reasons ranging from work exhaustion, starvation and even execution.

Of course, the people who were tortured and killed did not commit any offense or break any law to deseve the punishment they were subjected to. Pol Pot created insane reasons why his own people did not fit his category of perfection. Some of these reasons included a person was educated; someone had a connection to the former establishment government, and even someone who was not sufficiently contributing to the economy. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazi party, believed these people stood in the way of their path to a perfect race. As a result, millions of innocents died for no reason.

As time went on, and Vietnam won the Vietnam War against the United States, America started to give military support to the Cambodians. Pol Pot gave his Khmer Rouge leadership to Khieu Samphan in 1985, but continuted to be a driving force in the communist’s party. From then on, the killings and torture really started to cease. In 1991, other Cambodian politicans called for a disarment, but the Khmer Rouge would not stop fighting. In 1998, Pol Pot died of a heart attack, and that was pretty much it for the Khmer Rouge. Khieu Samphan surrendured, most of the leaders of the government were captured, and the Killing Fields of Cambodia became history.

Now, the history of the horrors that occurred in Cambodia are not taught to the childern living there. In 2005, 75% of the childern were too young to remember the years of the Khmer Rouge, and those who do know have only heard of it through parents and grandparents. Trials for the remaning Khmer Rouge leaders have yet to start, and they expect to take place sometime in mid-2007. The trials will be conducted by the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force, a group established in 1997 to leagally oversee the fair trials givin to the fallen leaders.

These horrible events happened between April 1975 and January 1979. The Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh in 1975 and immidiately began killing those that they thought were unfit fot the new society. When the Vietnamese army invaded and captured Phnom Penh in January 1979, the killings stopped, but some members Khmer Rouge stayed in charge as leaders of a Cambodian puppet government. A long lasting civil war and numerous rebelions resulted in the Khmer Rouge's ruling in Cambodia. Millions of people died in and after the killings and many people will never be the same.

The Leader of the Killings : Pol Pot

This is a picture of the man who was responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people, Pol Pot. His dream was to create a race of "New People", and as a result millions of unworthy humans were slaughtered in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. He is considered to be one of the worst mass-murders ever, along with people like Hitler and Mao Zedong.

Khmer Rouge

This is a picture of the official flag of the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was the leader of this government during the horrible genocide that occured in Cambodia. Many of the remaining leaders left from the Cambodia wait to go on trail. Those trials should take place sometime in mid-2007.