Cambodia Quotes
Saloth Sar Pol Pot. He was responsible for the brutal killing of over 1 million of his own people.
Saloth Sar Pol Pot. The mass murders took place in “killing fields” where the victims were buried alive or hacked and bludgeoned to death and then buried in mass graves. The twisted logic was that the capitalists and educated people must be eliminated and therefore, cities must be eliminated. Pol Pot and his associates calculated that only 2 million people were really needed to run Cambodia if it was only a rural agricultural state. So anyone who did not farm or have those skills was unnecessary to their concept of a state. See {631144}.
Saloth Sar Pol Pot. His view was that any small merchant or tradesman running a business was a capitalist, and all educated were enemies of the people. He moved entire populations out of the cities into the countryside where they would live as peasants or be murdered as about 20% of the entire population as. Therefore, in his warped view, the capitalists could no longer “control” Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge were as brutal as any, regime that ever was in power. Undoubtedly he was tortured so it is hard to tell if he was confessing to something real or saying what his torturers wanted to hear.
He was responsible for the genocide of 2 million Cambodians.
Saloth Sar Pol Pot. He exterminated over 1 million of his own people who were obstacles to his idea that all people should live in villages. Victims included people who were city residents, intellectuals which meant anyone with an education, and even people who wore glasses were killed.
See {601401} for the neighbors’ view.
Under his and Pol Pot’s command, the Khmer Rouge exterminated nearly 2 million Cambodians. He was the number two often referred to as “Brother Number two.” In a 1998 corrupt bargain, the government agreed never to prosecute him for genocide or any of his crimes.
Saloth Sar Pol Pot. He was, like Adolf Hitler, one of the most terrible mass murderers in history.
Ford was then a member of Congress. This was known as the “Domino Theory” and was the strategic reason that sending troops to Vietnam was in America’s vital Interest. However, the Domino Theory was incorrect. Vietnam did fall to the Communists, and yet NONE of the countries became communist. Actually, they became even more democratic.
Thailand had invaded Cambodia, and Vietnam intervened and repulsed the Thai. However, they tried to “civilize” the backward Cambodians, and these efforts at cultural and political reform were no appreciated. A full scale rebellion broke out. See {607693} and {43139}. The Vietnamese, the stronger, generous power who had provided so much, could not understand the anti-Vietnamese feeling.
Thompson sailed into Phnom Phen in a gunboat. With armed “bodyguards” he forced his way into the palace, manhandled the king’s secretary who tried to prevent him from seeing King Norodom, and presented the treaty to the king who signed it. Cambodia had sought French “protection” from the two great powers adjacent, Vietnam and Thailand—see {601401}. In addition to the pressure of the two large neighbors, Norodum’s government was extremely weak and the French were ready to back a rival Sisowath. One of the ironies of this egregious example of gunboat diplomacy is that one of the first things the French did under the clause was to abolish Cambodian slavery. There were a few good things that occurred with most colonialism. The argument has always been was the good worth the bad that inevitably came with an undemocratic form of government.
The Khmer Rouge starved their political enemies in killing fields.
The word “smashing” is a literal translation from the Khmer language. It is not used in the metaphorical sense as we are used to. To save money, arms, bullets and resources the Khmer Rouge method of execution was to “smash” the victim’s head in with a shovel or other implement. This slogan told people literally to murder their political enemies in this brutal way.
