Khmer Rouge Presentation By Rebecca Grace Emma Fausta

Khmer Rouge Presentation By: Rebecca, Grace, Emma, Fausta, Nikita, Nataliya, Fiorella

Pol Pot: The Khmer Rouge was a brutal regime that ruled Cambodia, under the leadership of Marxist dictator, Pol Pot, from 1975 -1979. Pol Pot’s attempts to create a Cambodian “master race” through social engineering ultimately led to the deaths of more than 2 million people. Those killed were either executed as enemies of the regime, or died from starvation, disease or overwork.

Kampuchea: As a leader of the Khmer Rouge during its days as an insurgent movement, Pol Pot came to admire the tribes in Cambodia’s rural northeast. These tribes were self-sufficient and lived on the goods they produced through farming. He felt the tribes were like communes in that they worked together, shared in the spoils of their labor and were untainted by the evils of money, wealth and religion. Once installed as the country’s leader by the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot and the forces loyal to him quickly set about remaking Cambodia, which they had renamed Kampuchea, in the model of these rural tribes, with the hopes of creating a communist-style, agricultural utopia. Declaring 1975 “Year Zero” in the country, Pol Pot isolated Kampuchea from the global community. He resettled hundreds of thousands of the country’s city-dwellers in rural farming communes and abolished the country’s currency. He also outlawed the ownership of private property and the practice of religion in the new nation.

Life Under the Khmer Rouge: In power, the Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from all foreign influences, closing schools, hospitals and some factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, and collectivising agriculture.

Evacuation of the Cities: In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would be moved only about "two or three kilometers" outside the city and would return in "two or three days". People who refused to evacuate would have their homes burned to the ground and would be killed immediately. The evacuees were sent on long marches to the countryside, which killed thousands of children, elderly people and sick people. Upon arrival at the villages where they had been assigned, evacuees were required to write brief autobiographical essays. The essay's content, particularly with regard to the subject's activity during the Khmer Republic regime, was used to determine their fate.

Economic Activity: Khmer Rouge economic policies took a similarly extreme course. Trade was officially restricted only to bartering between communes, a policy which the regime developed in order to enforce selfreliance. Banks were raided and all currency and records were destroyed by fire, eliminating any claim to funds. Commercial fishing was said to have been banned by the Khmer Rouge in 1976.

Family Relations: The regime was primarily interested in increasing the young population. In this as in some other respects, the Khmer Rouge followed a morality based off of the attitudes of pre-war rural Cambodia. The regime promoted arranged marriages, particularly between party cadres. As well as reflecting the Khmer Rouge obsession with production and reproduction, such marriages were designed to increase people's dependency on the regime by undermining existing family and other loyalties.

Education: The Khmer Rouge wanted to "eliminate all traces of Cambodia's imperialist past", and previous culture was one of those. Their policies dramatically reduced the cultural inflow as well as Cambodian knowledge and creativity. Their goal was to gain full control on all the information that people received, and spread revolutionary culture among the masses.

Cambodian Genocide Workers on the farm collectives established by Pol Pot soon began suffering from the effects of overwork and lack of food. Pol Pot’s regime also executed thousands of people it had deemed as enemies of the state. As part of this effort, hundreds of thousands of the educated, middle-class Cambodians were tortured and executed in special centers established in the cities. During what became known as the Cambodian Genocide, an estimated 1. 7 to 2. 2 million Cambodians died during Pol Pot’s time in charge of the country.

Main leaders in Khmer Rouge Kaing Guek Eav (aka Duch) - in detention since arrest in 1999 Ran interigation and detention centre in Phnom Pehn Oversaw the execution of S-21 final prisoners Nuon Chea - second in command to Pol Pot one of the founding members of the Khmer Rouge key player in devising and carrying out mass execution policies

Main leaders in Khmer Rouge Ieng Sary - deputy prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea known as the face of the khmer rouge government indicated in interviews that he was active in rounding up individuals Ieng Thirith - Wife of Ieng Sary social affairs minister participated in the planning, direction, co-ordintation and ordering of widespread purges only woman in the main five senior figures to be charged and arrested. Khieu Samphan -one of the most powerful officials, took over from Pol Pot as the group’s leader.

Command Structure - three units to the prison; a documentation unit, a defense unit, and an interrogation unit documentation unit responsible for transcribing tape-recorded confessions, typing the handwritten notes from prisoner’s confessions, preparing summaries of confessions, and maintaining files photography sub-unit, workers took mugshots of prisoners upon arrival, pictures of prisoners who had died while in detention, and pictures of important prisoners after they were executed defense unit was the largest in S-21, guards were mostly teenagers Guards were not allowed to talk to the prisoners, learn their names, yo beat them, forbidden to observe on interrogations and any guards that would make a mistake, were arrested, interrogated, jailed and put to death Within interrogation unit: hot-sub units used for torture & cold sub-units If prisoners refused to confess, would be transferred to hot sub-unit

Tuol Sleng: most famous prison in Cambodia

Tuol Sleng : Life in prison -Once prisoners arrived, they were photographed and asked to write autobiographies, starting from their childhood till their arrest. - After that, they were strriped down till their underwear and had their possessions taken away. -Then the prisoners were taken to their cells, ones that went to small cells were shackled to the walls or floor, and if one was held in a bigger cell, they were shackled to long pieces of iron bar. -In addition to being shackled, they slept with their heads in opposite direction and did not have floor mats, mosquito nets, or blankets. -Aswell, they were forbidden to talk to each other.

What the cells looked like

The prisoners day began at 4: 30 am and they were stripped for inspection. -The guards checked if the prisoners had any objects that they could use to commit suicide, as well to see if the shackles were tight enough. -They received four spoonfuls of rice and watery soup twice a day. -It was also not allowed to drink water without the permission of the guards, if one did they were beaten. - They were also hosed down every four days, which just shows how they were treated like animals and not like humans.

- The prison was very strict, so if a prisoner ever disobeyed the rules that resulted in severe beatings. - Every action had to be approved by one of the prison guards, if one did not get permission they were as well beaten - Something horrific that also happened to these prisoners, was that sometimes they were forced to drink their own urine and to eat their own faeces. - Due to their unhygienic living conditions the prisionners started to develop many skin diseases, lice, rashes and other ailments. - In addition, the medical staff they had at the prison were untrained , which lead the not being to help the sick.

Torture and extermination - Most prisoners were held for two to three months and within two to three days they were brought in for interrogation. The torture systems at the jail were fabricated to make the prisoners confess to the crimes they had committed. Prisoners were also routinely beaten and tortured, for example by electric shocks, hanging and other various devices. In addition some were suffocated with plastic bags or cut with knives. Other methods to get the prisoners to confess also included pulling out their fingernails, putting their heads under water and the use of waterboarding. - Women were also sometimes raped by the interrogators, even though sexual abuse was against the Democratic Kampuchea policy. -Many prisoners died from the abuse they received , however it was discouraged to killing them right away since the Khmer rouge needed their confessions.

Waterboarding “Prisoners' legs were shackled to the bar on the right, their wrists were restrained to the brackets on the left and hot water was poured over their face using the blue watering can”. Mugshots

-In their confessions many prisoners combined events from their life to imaginary events that they were doing for the CIA, KGB, or Vietnam. - It is also believed that most of the prisoners were innocent from the charges they had against them , but from all the torture they started to fabricate false confessions. -The prisoners that had confessed were then killed by a group of teenagers lead by Comrade Teng. In the first year of the prison’s existence, corpses were buried near the jail but by the end of 1976, the bodies were taken to Boeung Choeung Ek, which was 15 km away from the prison. After prisoner’s were killed, they were put in graves that held from 6 to as many as 100 people. -Out of around the 20, 000 people imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, there were only 12 known survivors, consisting of 7 adults and 5 children, but unfortunately after their release, one of the children died shortly.

America responsible for Khmer Rouge barbarties -The United States were responsible for the Khmer Rouge barbarties at a huge degree. -During the war with Vietnam, The United States bombed Cambodia in order to destroy Vietcong supply lines. -They dropped 539, 000 tons of bombs, killing approximately 150, 000 Cambodian peasants. -The Bombs destroyed the majority of food supply. -Before the bombing happened, the Khmer Rouge barely existed in 1969.

-Bombing caused a huge amount of support for the Khmer Rouge. -In 1970, the Monarchy was taken over by United States backed military forced to start attacking Vietnam from a different angle. -Monarchy supporters and many Viet Cong troops united with the Khmer Rouge as a result. -The communist party has formed a much stronger army. -In 1975, the United States pulled all of its troops out of Indochina leaving the government defenceless. -Khmer Rouge went for the opportunity and took the capital with ease, seizing Cambodia and started committing its barbaties. -After they took over the United States supported the Khmer Rouge financially and politically to make another cold war frontline against the Soviet Union.

After 1975 The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, xenophobic, paranoid and repressive. The genocide was in part the result of the regime's social engineering policies. The Khmer Rouge, previously a marginalized guerrilla group, propagandized the bombing campaign to great effect; by the CIA's own intelligence estimates, the US bombing campaign was a key factor in the increase in popular support for the Khmer Rouge rebels. After their victory in 1975, the Khmer Rouge oversaw a period in which another one-to -two million Cambodians died from execution, hunger and forced labour. A few days after they took power in 1975, the Khmer Rouge forced perhaps two million people in Phnom Penh and other cities into the countryside to undertake agricultural work. Thousands of people died during the evacuations. The Khmer Rouge wanted to transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society in which there were no rich people, no poor people, and no exploitation. Under the terms of the CPK’s 1976 “Four-Year Plan, ” Cambodians were expected to produce three tons of rice per hectare throughout the country. This meant that people had to grow and harvest rice all 12 months of the year. In most regions, the Khmer Rouge forced people to work more than 12 hours a day without rest or adequate food.

Phychosis The policies of the Khmer Rouge were genocidal and unorganised, that were mostly focused on extermination the urban population , than to solve the problem artificial urbanization, which were made by American bombing and their own military operations. They had a fear of renewed Americans bomb. The Khmer Rouge was conceived and build out of political , social and technological insanity, that made it exist as a state of psychosis. This psychosis was created by American military actions, that were going on in Cambodia. From the beginning to the end they treated their actions as a side-show to the war in Vietnam/. The vietnamese also responded peculiarly. They provided the Khmer Rouge with weapons. In late 1978 the pushed the defeated remnant back into jungle without negotiating with Khmer Rouge or trying to reconcile their defences. Khemer Rouge was blamed excesses on Pol Plot and his Chinese backers, side-stepping the fact that both regimes were organized same Marxist-Leninist doctrine. But after so many years of tragedy, abuse and near annihilation by external powers and internal factions, many Cambodians are fatalistic and seem to expect the worst. .

Life in Cambodia Today Democratic Kampuchea was one of the worst human tragedies of the 20 th century. Nearly two million Cambodians died from diseases due to a lack of medicines and medical services, starvation, execution, or exhaustion from overwork. Tens of thousands were made widows and orphans, and those who lived through the regime were severely traumatized by their experiences.

Joseph Conrad Birth : December 3, 1857 Berdyczew, Poland Death: August 3, 1924 Bishopsbourne, England Polish-born English writer

Apollo and Evelina Korzeniowski

-Belgian Congo -Zaire -Africa

Voyage inspiration -Heart of darkness= 1899 -An outpost of progress=1897

Brutality Congo vs Khmer Rouge - No moral restraints

Writing style - Punctuation and adjective positioned awkwardly Frustrating + struggle to read Conrad isn’t bad at english but rather is mastering it

The Timeline of the Khmer Rouge’s Rise and Fall from Power

Khmer Symbols

Timeline. . . 1940 s 1960 s King Norodom Sihanouk

Timeline. . 1963 Pol Pot

Timeline… March 1970 Lon Nol 1973

Timeline… April 17, 1975 Phnom Penh 1976 “Four Year Plan”

Timeline. . Late 1977 December 1978 January 7, 1979 -1990

Timeline… 1982 1990 October 23, 1991 → 1993

Timeline… 1998 March 1999

Sources https: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_rule_of_Cambodia http: //www. cambodiatribunal. org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/ http: //rabble. ca/toolkit/on-this-day/us-secret-bombing-cambodia https: //www. nytimes. com/1989/08/19/world/in-cambodia-a-deepening-fear-of-a-new-khmer-rouge-regime. html https: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge https: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge https: //www. mtholyoke. edu/~amamendo/Khmer. Rouge. html http: //www. cambodiatribunal. org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/ https: //msuweb. montclair. edu/~furrg/polpotmontclarion 0498. html http: //www. cambodiatribunal. org/history/cambodian-history/chronology-of-the-khmer-rouge-movement/