Pol pot khmer rouge history

From to , the Khmer Rouge's one-party regime killed millions of its own people through mass executions, forced labour, and starvation, in an event which has come to be known as the Cambodian genocide. In response, Vietnamese-backed communists created a rival government, the People's Republic of Kampuchea , but failed to gain international recognition.

Sihanouk, opposing the new government, entered into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge against them. Taking advantage of Vietnamese occupation of eastern Cambodia, massive United States carpet bombing ranging across the country, and Sihanouk's reputation, the Khmer Rouge were able to present themselves as a peace-oriented party in a coalition that represented the majority of the people.

Thus, with large popular support in the countryside, the capital Phnom Penh finally fell on 17 April to the Khmer Rouge. Tensions between Cambodia and Vietnam were growing due to differences in communist ideology and the incursion of Vietnamese military presence within Cambodian borders.

Pol Pot was a Cambodian politician and revolutionary who was the dictator of communist Cambodia from until his overthrow in

The context of war destabilised the country and displaced Cambodians while making available to the Khmer Rouge the weapons of war. The Khmer Rouge leveraged on the devastation caused by the war to recruit members and used this past violence to justify the similarly, if not more, violent and radical policies of the regime.

The birth of Democratic Kampuchea and its propensity for violence must be understood against this backdrop of war that likely played a contributing factor in hardening the population against such violence and simultaneously increasing their tolerance and hunger for it. Early explanations for the Khmer Rouge brutality suggest that the Khmer Rouge had been radicalised during the war years and later turned this radical understanding of society and violence onto their countrymen.

Phnom Penh fell on 17 April Sihanouk was given the symbolic position of Head of State for the new government of Democratic Kampuchea and, in September , returned to Phnom Penh from exile in Beijing. A year after the Khmer Rouge takeover, Sihanouk resigned in mid-April [ 8 ] made retroactive to 2 April and was placed under house arrest, where he remained until , and the Khmer Rouge remained in sole control.

In deportations that became markers of the beginning of their rule, the Khmer Rouge demanded and then forced the people to leave the cities and live in the countryside. The roads out of the city were clogged with evacuees. Similar evacuations occurred throughout the nation.