Khmer Rouge

Paper Summary:

The paper notes that the beginning of the ascendancy of the Khmer Rouge and so the road to auto-genocide in Cambodia, can be found in Vietnam and the Vietnamese War, which begin in the 1950s under the French and then transferred to the conflict involving the United States on the side of South Vietnam. The paper also considers how genocide changed to auto-genocide as a culture of killing became the norm for the leadership.

From the Paper:

"The beginning of the ascendancy of the Khmer Rouge and so the road to auto-genocide in Cambodia, can be found in Vietnam and the Vietnamese War, which begin in the 1950s under the French and then transferred to the conflict involving the United States on the side of South Vietnam. Kiernan (2004) traces the beginnings of the Khmer Rouge by considering Pol Pot's development in the 1960s and how that leader used genocide to eliminate certain minorities in the country. He started a process that in time turned on itself and expanded beyond the minorities of the Vietnamese, the Chinese and the Muslim Cham (Kiernan, 2004, p. 345). The Vietnamese eventually invaded Cambodia and fought against a coalition of communist and non-communist resistance elements. The Vietnamese were joined by the forces of the new Phnom Penh government."

More papers on Khmer Rouge:

• Research Paper # 97003 : "Khmer Rouge & Cambodian Education"
• Essay # 28653 : "Khmer Rouge Propaganda"
• Analytical Essay # 29573 : "Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge"

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