Pol Pot
Travel Location: Phnom-Penh,Cambodia
In this blog I am going to attempt to explain what happened to the people of Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime. While we were in Phnom Penh, we visited the Tuol Sleng Museum and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. When we arrived in Cambodia we were unsure whether it was appropriate to visit. Having spoken to local people they actively encourage the people of Cambodia and tourists to visit the sights, learn and understand what happened in the hope that this will never happen to any country ever again. The entrance fees to the sights are small they are clearly open to share the experience, not to make a profit.
As with every huge event in history there are always many factors which influence and lead up to the main event. Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge, he managed to manipulate and persuade many uneducated people who lived in rural areas that the current government was not in control and that he could change things and do lots of good for the country. This gave him a large a large following and an army of soldier s.
After the Khmer Rouge soldiers had raid the parliament in April 1975 the people of Cambodia thought they were finally safe and the country could look forward to a brighter future. However, Pol Pot had a different plan. He lied to the people living in the capital city of Phnom Penh saying that the American army was planning to bomb the city in two days time. People were forced to take what they could carry; that they would be able to return to their homes in a few days. This was a huge lie the people would not be allowed to return home, instead they were forced to work in the rice fields or murdered.
The Khmer Rouge had a vision of making Cambodia completely self reliant and to detach the country from the rest of the world. Pol Pot and his officials believed that American influences and all modern technologies, the media and advances in health care were no good for the people and renamed Cambodia the Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot wanted to erase all the past history of the country and separate it from the rest of the world so he decide to start the calendar on ‘Year Zero’
The vision was based around the production of rice. His aim was for the country to yield double the amount of rice in one year. The plan was to have enough rice to feed the people, save some for seed the following year and sell some to China so they could by some more agriculture machinery. Unfortunately this was not realistic and they couldn’t produce the quantity of rice that Pol Pot demanded, but rather than tell him and risk being killed, they gave him the rice that was supposed to feed the workers so that it could be sold to China, leaving many people to die of starvation.
Pol Pot diminished all the money in Cambodia and banned people from bartering (selling and trading things). He shut down all forms of electricity, media-including newspapers and banned all travelling. They killed anyone who was seen as educated so they murdered all the doctors, nurses, dentists, Buddist Monks, people who had worked in technology and teachers . They even murdered people who had previously been farmers but had fled to the city thinking it was safer than the rural areas because Pol Pot saw them as city dwellers, classed them as the ‘new people’ and saw them as worthless.
They closed all the hospitals, schools, temples throughout the land and the capital city became a ghost town with just a hand full of people working there in a rubber factory.
People were not allowed to wear glasses and were all forced to wear the same clothes; a black top black trousers/skirt, the same sandals and a scarf. People were also ordered to have their hair cut in the same style. Everyone worked the rice fields, the days were very long and the people had very little food. At meal times they were not able to sit with the families they had to sit by gender and by age.
The Khmer Rouge soldiers were very cruel and were everywhere. They would move people in the middle of the night so they did not know where they were, often separating families and friends.
The soldiers would collect people that they thought might be trying to escape, not working hard enough or be plotting against the Khmer Rouge and would take them to a very scary prison called S-21. At the prison the guards would hurt the people- men, women, children and even babies until they would confess to things that they had done or things that the guards thought they might have done. They would make people say names of people they knew which might not have been doing what the Khmer Rouge wanted.
When the guards had finished with the people they would take them to a field and kill them. The bodies would land in large pits with other bodies. The soldiers didn’t want people nearby to hear any noise they would hang a music speaker from a large tree and play music.
People were very scared to talk to each other about how they were feeling in case somebody was listening and told the Khmer Rouge. Listening to people who lived though the regime they all said the hardest part was not being able to trust anyone, even your own family. This meant that people stopped talking to each other altogether because people even feared there were people listening under their beds at night.
The first few people that managed to escape and cross over to the boarder tried to explain what tragic things were happening but the people didn’t believe them because what they described was so horrific.
Eventually the Vietnamese ‘liberation’ of Phnom Penh, the capital city happened in 1979. It was only then that world sat up and listened to what had happened to the people of Cambodia , in the 44month reign of terror inflicted by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge approximately 1.8million people died from the original population of around 7million.
The next few years were incredibly hard for the people of Cambodia, they did not know whether loved ones were alive or dead and where they might be. There was not enough food and everyone’s belongings had been taken from them, the countryside was covered in land mines and people were very poorly because there had been no medical treatment.
Thankfully now thirty years on the people of Cambodia have rebuilt their lives and are now able to trust again. The Cambodian people that we met all had a great sense of fun, a very strong will to survive, a great love of their family and an amazing ability to over-charge!
Molly’s Mum I am sure your gift aid will have helped made a great difference to those children in Cambodia.
