Cambodia and The Khmer Rouge
- During the Vietnam War, the small country of Cambodia was being drawn into the conflict due to their civil war.
- The civil war started when Prince Sihanouk was being overthrown by General Lon Nol, the president of the Khmer Republic. This caused Sihanouk to join the Khmer Rouge, a communist organization, to protect his position.
- American soldiers fighting in Vietnam assisted the Khmer Republic and ended up killing many Cambodians in an attempt to destroy Vietnamese communist support.
- When the Khmer Rouge won the civil war in 1975, the country’s name was changed to Kompu Enea and headed by a man named Pot Pol.
- Pot Pol made the country a communist regime, took away the rights of citizens, forced citizens to leave all cities, planned to make the country into an organization of farms labored by citizens, and killed all intellectuals in fear that they would overthrow the government; books, music and religion were banned, and people were placed in camps to prevent their escape and faced horrible working conditions.
- On December 20, 1978, Cambodia was invaded by the Vietnamese, who put an end to the reign of the Khmer Rouge; Pot Pol and the other members went into hiding in the vest and continued to fight until Pot Pol was arrested in 1997, and finally died in 1998 due to heart failure.
- By the end of Khmer Rouge’s reign, it is estimated that over two million Cambodians were killed, with survivors of the incident forever scarred by the suffering they were forced to endure.