Was Pol Pot A Dictator

After they seized power in Cambodia in April 1975, Saloth "Pol Pot" Sar and the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the death of 1.5-3 million Cambodian's and were perhaps one of the most ruthless regimes of the 20th century. The aim of this investigation is to evaluate Pol Pot's means of maintaining power from 1975 to 1979. An account of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge's drastic internal reforms including the slaughter of millions, economic reorganization, political restructuring, and the cultivation of social/ethnic groups will appear in section B. External forces including funding from China and the United States and repressive measures such as censorship, torture, and execution will be assessed. This

Later that same year, Pot and the Khmer Rouge took control over Cambodia. Pot wasted no time in starting his mission to reconstruct Cambodia. He thought that all the educated people needed to be killed (Melicharova). Also he thought that all noncommunist aspects of Cambodia needed to be wiped out. All rights you had were now gone. Religion was banned and if you were any kind of leader among the Buddhist monks, you were killed instantly (Melicharova). All kids were taken away and sent to work in the fields (Melicharova). If anyone was currently working and had a job, they were immediately killed along with their family members. It got so bad that you could be killed for just laughing, crying, and knowing another language. The Khmer Rouge motto was “To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss” (Melicharova). If you were lucky enough to escape death, you were put into the fields working usually from 4am to 10pm unpaid (“Pol”). From lack of food and sleep, people often became very ill which sadly led to death.

Cambodia is a small country of Southeast Asia, less than half the size of the state of California (“World Without Genocide: Cambodian Genocide”). The Cambodian government in the mid 1970’s was unstable as Lon Nol, the Cambodian prime minister, and his forces were being stretched dealing with conflicts of Vietnamese communists, and a rising group of Cambodian communists called the Khmer Rouge Party. (Peace Pledge Union) As the government grew weaker and began to loose control, The Khmer Rouge Party overthrew the country. They began killing for their cause in 1975. The Khmer Rouge Party, under the rule of a man called Pol Pot, enforced a new way of life following values and rules similar to Maoist-Communism (“World Without Genocide: Cambodian Genocide”). The Khmer Party attempted, in simplistic terms, to nationally centralize the middle or farming class of Cambodia (“World Without Genocide: Cambodian

The next two decades of Pol Pot’s life are best characterized by his endless political maneuvering within the Cambodian Communist movement. Having struggled to gain independence from French colonialism during the 1940’s, and again during the First Indochina War of the 1950’s, there were already several prominent Communist factions active in Cambodia upon Pol Pot’s return to his country. His initial task as a clandestine operative of the Marxist Circle was to evaluate each of these factions, and to rise to power in the most promising

The time before the Khmer Rouge came to be, Cambodia was a healthy and prosperous country. The rise of the Khmer Rouge was a local Communities party that believed that everything should be fair and equal. They were just like the Nazi’s; ruthless and careless. Pol Pot murdered artists because they thought they were to intelligent. The Khmer rouge took pictures of the victims that they killed by poison gases or with spades to help save on ammunition.

There is a Khmer word that describes the fate of two million people, about a quarter of the Cambodian population at the time – “Kamtech”, whose meaning is “to destroy with no traces left behind”. The responsible party is the Khmer Rouge, a political group who during the mid to late 1970s enacted a revolution according adopted the communist ideal of elimination of a social class system, and attempted to force that ideal on the population of Cambodia. Their leader was Pol Pot (born Saloth Sar), who promised that the policies set by the Khmer Rouge will bring the country to a state of utopia (Ly). If one were to look at film and pictures taken during the Khmer Rouge’s rule, there would be nothing to indicate that Pol Pot’s promises did not come to fruition: the surviving footage is almost entirely propaganda produced by the Khmer Rouge, and depicts Cambodia as the promised utopia (Panh). How can it be though, that in a country where the communist ideal has come to be, where everyone is equal and has their needs provided, that two million people are killed over the span of four years? Rithy Pahn, a film creator, tells the story of the missing people through his film The Missing Picture. In it, he tells stories of his experiences as an adolescent during the Khmer Rouge’s regime. The Missing Picture is ultimately about providing a replacement to the footage of Panh’s experiences (that was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge)—as a memorialization of the events that took place under the

Pol pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge regime. In his early years, he was born eighth of nine children on May 19th, 1925. He had a decent childhood and a good education, but we still ask ourselves questions like, what was it that lead him to kill over 2 million citizens of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979? What made him corrupt? How different is he really from Julius Caesar?

Pol Pot was a young man who led the Khmer Rouge. Being a leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot led a rebellion alongside the regime of Cambodia. Due this, he was, therefore, elected leader of Cambodia in the year 1975. Pol Pot’s leadership was cruel, harsh and brutal. For instance, he confidently commanded civilians to move out of towns and cities into the country side. When they discarded his command, he forced them to move. This led to the creation of several camps and farms in the country side. However, the increased movement of people into the country side led to the accumulation of starvation and death of around half a million civilians (Weltig,

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,

Cambodian Communist Party leader, Pol Pot (1962), went into hiding from the then Cambodian leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk. While he was avoiding the Prince he created a movement called the Red Cambodians (Khmer Rouge) and tried to wage guerrilla warfare against Sihanouk. When a military coup staged by the U.S. took away Sihanouk’s power, he joined forced with Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. As the U.S. continuously bombed North Vietnam holding locations as far as Cambodia, their population of peasants began to feel the effects as hundreds of thousands were in the midst war games between 1969-1973; as a result the Cambodian peasants went to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The U.S. presence was seen as harmful eventually pulled away from supporting

The Khmer Rouge was the name given to the people of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, in Cambodia. It was formed in 1968 and was also known as the "Vietnam People 's Army". It was the ruling party of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, It was lead by a ruler named pol pot who was ruthless and did not care what the people said. Some of Pol pots comrade 's icluded, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu, These men worked together to help rule Cambodia.Its offical name was called the Democratic Kampuchua. Through there ruling the Khmer Rouge made freinds with North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and Pathet Lao during the Vietnam War against the anti-Communist.(www.cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian.../khmer-rouge-history/) This political party had been responisble for what is now known as the Cambodian Genocide. This was a result of its social engineering and policies. Cambodia had failed at trying to reform its agricultural stability it once had but it never succeeded, This failed attempt led to the widespread hunger in Cambodia . Cambodia had a supply of medicine and they miscalculated the amount of medicine a person needs and the medicine supply was not enough to supply all of cambodia leading to millions dying from diesese. A random act of executions and torture had been put on the innocent people of Cambodia. The party 's aim was to establish a classless state based on rural agricultural

On December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a land invasion of Cambodia in the hopes of ending the Khmer border attacks. On January 7, 1979, Pol Pot was disposed of and the capitol fell to Vietnam control. A temporary government was established and consisted of Khmer defectors. Pot retreated to Thailand with the remainder of the Khmer and fought a series of guerrilla wars against the new Cambodian government for 17 years. Pot lost power and later died of a heart attack just shortly after being arrested in April 1998. He did not live long enough to be tried in international court.

Here, we have one of Earth’s evilest men to get ahold of an excruciating amount of power. Saloth Sar, later changing his name to “Pol Pot” was Cambodia’s communist leader from 1975 to 1979. He was the 8th of 9 children and was the second of two sons. His family was prestigious and the Cambodian King Sisowath Monivong made many visits. Along with the Khmer Rouge movement, Mr. Pot managed to kill about 1.5 million Cambodians out of the 8 million at the time. His rise into power is a story of great triumph to evil, but for now let us see the origins of the Evilest Man on Earth.

Some say that Pol Pot was responsible for the power and control of Cambodia because “Pol Pot cut Cambodia off from the world. He banned foreign and minority languages and attacked the neighboring countries of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand in an attempt to regain ancient ‘lost territory’” (The life of Pol Pot- Cambodia 4). This statement is true because the Khmer Rouge did gain part of their power by isolating the country, but Pol Pot is not fully responsible for that. There were other people involved, like Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan all of these people were also leaders in the Khmer Rouge. Nuon Chea was the second leader in the Khmer Rouge he is known as “The evil genius of the movement” (Chandler 1), because he is the one who was in charge of the prison system. He was one of the one’s with a heartless mind, planning tortures and executing innocent people.

The domestic policy of Cambodia under Khmer Rouge rule was the advancement of agriculture only, they were to rebuild the nation using agriculture as a base and with revenues from that section use it to build industry and the industry would serve the development of agriculture. According to the “Four Year Plan”, Cambodians were expected to produce three tons of rice per hectare. Pol Pot along with Leng wanted to transform into a classless society without exploitation. Under this regime, many things were taken away from the people, it was like by taking away class, Pol Pot also wanted to take away their essence of humanity and culture. People were not allowed to practice a religion; , or show affection towards each other even to a family member. Muslims were forced to eat pork, Christian clergymen and Monks were executed. There were no