What are the Killing Fields?
During the early 1970s, Pol Pot successfully eliminated some of his political enemies through summary executions, and managed to force an evacuation of several large cities. The idea behind these forced evacuation was to “re-educate” complacent city dwellers to the ideals of an agrarian society, which would be governed by a benevolent Communist government. This vision led to a horrific event known as the Killing Fields. In 1976, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge army officially became the rulers of a new Cambodia, renamed Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot wasted no time implementing his plans for an ethnically purified Communist country. Since he saw little need for more than a few million loyal citizens, Pol Pot used this opportunity to systematically remove intellectuals, political opponents, those of mixed race, the elderly and the crippled from the country’s population count. From 1976 until Vietnamese intervention in 1979, the Killing Fields of Kampuchea were in operation 24 hours a day, 7
Shortly after the last Americans were evacuated from Vietnam in 1975, both Cambodia and Vietnam fell under Communist rule. One of the chief architects of the Communist party in Cambodia, also known as the Khmer Rouge, was a despot named Pol Pot. Although Pol Pot himself was highly educated, he became resentful of the intellectuals and capitalists who controlled Cambodia’s largest cities and politics. Most of his Khmer Rouge recruits were from peasant stock, and were systematically conditioned to accept his views of a new society. During the early 1970s, Pol Pot successfully eliminated some of his political enemies through summary executions, and managed to force an evacuation of several large cities. The idea behind these forced evacuation was to “re-educate” complacent city dwellers to the ideals of an agrarian society, which would be governed by a benevolent Communist government. This vision led to a horrific event known as the Killing Fields. In 1976, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge arm
