Pol Plot And The Khmer Rouge

Dictatorship in international politics have never failed to prove, it's disastrous results. While the more popular Hitler's ethic cleansing of Jews and Stalin's holodomor echo in the pages of history.

A lesser known yet nowhere insignificant in the horrors it inflicted was the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia.

One of the very few of dictatorial history in South Asia.

In 1975,Sarloth Sarah better known as Police Plot, plunged his country into the most profound hell.

Amongst the uncertainty of war between American and Vietnamese forces, the Khmer Rouge succeeded in conquering the capital, Phnom Penh.

The Cambodians welcomed them as heroes but little were they aware of the impending doom,to engulf them for the next 4 years.

Immediately massive excavation from the capital began, everyone was stripped off of their property and entered into communes,into forced labour.

The extremist notions of radical politics learnt in China shaped the mode of Pol Plot's dictatorship.

Overnight, all basic rights have been abolished,the once bustling capital was a ghost town overnight and markets, media, postal services disappeared.

•Religion was seen as the enemy of the state. Buddhist monk were executed, pagodas destroyed and books burned.

•No form of westernisation was tolerated, 90%of doctors were executed.anyone with glasses or in possession of books orspeaking english made them a candidate for death.

•The Khmer Rouge had prejudice against the Vietnamese. Thus, all current Vietnamese within its borders were to be shot at sight. Even the ones, who seemed to look like the Vietnamese were unjustly murdered.

Cambodians married to Vietnamese people had to bear with their spouses execution.

The intellectuals were to learn from the young, illiterate peasants.
Only physical labour was allowed and anyone old, diseased or too weak to labour were beaten to death.

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S21
The greatest symbol of pol plot's reign of terror was a secondary school turned into a detention centre.

The S21 saw the execution of 17,000 Cambodians on charges of mere suspicion.

The most horrifying fact was that the assassins ranged between 10-15 years, who were turned into killing machines through sessions of political indoctrination.

All the prisoners were to be prove themselves not guilty of being a CIA agent or Vietnamese agent. The confession sessions were held by zealots who tortured the accused irrespective of their innocence.

Most detained Cambodians restored to suicides unable to bear the daily tortures. They jumped from the the high floors of S21,later the building was sealed with nets.

Babies were murdered by smashing their heads against trees to save ammunitions and various torture followed.

In thekilling fields of Cambodia dead bodies was soon strewn in a holocaust comparable to that of Hitler's and Stalin's.

S21 now stands as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.its chilling archieves provide detailed accounts of the prisnors who passed through it.

1979,Vietnamese tanks rolled through Phnom Penh, a city that had been a near ghost town during the Cambodia genocide, to signal the overthrow of the regime of Pol Pot, the ultra-communists' leader who managed to escape in a jeep at the last minute.

Since then 7th January, is celebrated as the victory over genocide day.

1998,Pol Plot passed away in sleep in jungles of Thailand while in exile. The same time around, while Bill Clinton has passed orders for his arrest and trial.

Till his last days as reported by interviewers, plot never admitted of his sins and believed he had only helped his motherland.

In his peaceful death,
the unjust gruesome execution of 12 million Cambodians never received justice.