Before genocide had a name, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist was trying to get protection …show more content…
Pol Pot developed an interest in a communistic ideology. Pol Pot studied Marxism and became close friends with radical Cambodians who afterward, would become the leading forces of the Khmer Rouge. He would later become a member of the French Communist Party. Pol Pot was also convinced by the Vietnamese that the United States was the common enemy. After the United State’s bombing of Cambodia, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge gained a lot of support from Cambodians. He then stepped in and took over as the prime minister in an effort to recreate Cambodia from the ground up. Pol Pot, who was simply known as Brother Number One decided to keep his identity a secret for a couple of years after he took over …show more content…
Before that, the Khmer Republic and U.S dropped bombs on Cambodia, effectively killing hundreds of thousands of Cambodian citizens causing the Khmer Rouge to grow and gain a massive amount of support. When Pol Pot took over the Khmer Republic, he renamed Cambodia to the Democratic Kampuchea and immediately placed everyone in labor camps. In the beginning stages of the genocide, prisoners usually died just from starvation. People could be arrested and later executed with no evidence against them. When the amount of people grew to an uncontrollable amount, the Khmer Rouge started murdering people in the killing fields. According the the article, “The Cambodian Genocide”, child soldiers were used because they were “easy to control and would follow orders without hesitation, to the point where many were forced to shoot their own parents.” Child soldiers made it even easier for the Khmer Rouge to butcher and exterminate prisoners. On the other hand, brainwashing adolescents to go to the lengths of slaughtering people without remorse shows the mindset they had when conducting the massacre. The killing fields alone took the lives of over a million people. Prisoners were also held at the S-21 prison, which used to be a high school. The school was used for torturing and interrogating anyone unfortunate to end up in there (“The Cambodian Genocide”). Other countries only decided to talk about the