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.
Showing posts with label Matt Velasquez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matt Velasquez. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2007
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.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Personal Reflection- Matt Velasquez
This event tells us that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued by the United Nations is meaningless. If they cannot enforce the declaration then there is no use in having it in the first place. The U.N. cannot expect every leader of every nation to follow the declaration just because it is the right thing to do. I think that human rights should come before everything else and if the U.N. can't support that idea, someone else will have to. This event relates to the Holocaust in that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed that did nothing wrong. Also, this event was somewhat of a racial rejuvenation in the eyes of Pol Pot. Their goal was to create one ultimate race of people.
This event denies the principle of humanism and the idea that all individuals matter. People were killed based on their race, education level, economic status, and governmental status. According to the Khmer Rouge, only those who they thought were suitable for the new society could live. They clearly did not believe that the individual mattered of had any rights. I believe in humanism, but clearly some people on the world, as this event displays, do not.
This event makes me scared that people like Pol Pot can come to power and kill people in their countries. I think that if there was a way, people should have a better way of picking their leaders in all countries. The U.N. could regulate leaders in smaller, weaker nations so nothing like this could ever happen again. The problem with this is that this system would completely ruin the sovereignty of that nation. This event also makes me wonder how people who follwed Pol Pot could live with themselves killing innocent people. Especially since they used pick axes and shovels instead of guns to kill people. I do not understand those people. I really wished that more leaders were caught and prosecuted. The least the U.N. could do was prosecute the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, since they couldn't stop the killings when they were occurring. They should have at least tried the leaders earlier, not waiting until later this year to finally do it.
I have so much sorrow for all of the victims. I could not even begin to imagine what they went through and how scary it must have been for them. I pity them too because they didn't do anything wrong and they were still executed. The actions of the state in this situation were not at all justified. The Khmer Rouge had no right, according to the UDoHR, to kill anyone.
To me, peacekeeping efforts by the U.N. in sovereign countries are acceptable. If people are dying and or being tortured then the U.N. must do something. I think that if a leader tortures or kills innocent people in his or her country, then he or she forfeits their leadership and the sovereignty of their country. If the U.N. wanted to step into stop something horrible happening in the U.S.A., I would encourage it. These events would be taking place right in front of me, if not to me, so I think that I would want the U.N. to step in more than ever.
This event denies the principle of humanism and the idea that all individuals matter. People were killed based on their race, education level, economic status, and governmental status. According to the Khmer Rouge, only those who they thought were suitable for the new society could live. They clearly did not believe that the individual mattered of had any rights. I believe in humanism, but clearly some people on the world, as this event displays, do not.
This event makes me scared that people like Pol Pot can come to power and kill people in their countries. I think that if there was a way, people should have a better way of picking their leaders in all countries. The U.N. could regulate leaders in smaller, weaker nations so nothing like this could ever happen again. The problem with this is that this system would completely ruin the sovereignty of that nation. This event also makes me wonder how people who follwed Pol Pot could live with themselves killing innocent people. Especially since they used pick axes and shovels instead of guns to kill people. I do not understand those people. I really wished that more leaders were caught and prosecuted. The least the U.N. could do was prosecute the leaders of the Khmer Rouge, since they couldn't stop the killings when they were occurring. They should have at least tried the leaders earlier, not waiting until later this year to finally do it.
I have so much sorrow for all of the victims. I could not even begin to imagine what they went through and how scary it must have been for them. I pity them too because they didn't do anything wrong and they were still executed. The actions of the state in this situation were not at all justified. The Khmer Rouge had no right, according to the UDoHR, to kill anyone.
To me, peacekeeping efforts by the U.N. in sovereign countries are acceptable. If people are dying and or being tortured then the U.N. must do something. I think that if a leader tortures or kills innocent people in his or her country, then he or she forfeits their leadership and the sovereignty of their country. If the U.N. wanted to step into stop something horrible happening in the U.S.A., I would encourage it. These events would be taking place right in front of me, if not to me, so I think that I would want the U.N. to step in more than ever.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
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.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
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 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.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
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.
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