Khmer Rouge was headed by Pol Pot from the time of creation in 1963 until his death in 1998.  Khmer Rouge was a section of the Communists Party of Kampuchea.  From 1975 until 1979 Khmer Rouge ruled over Cambodia and caused great devastation among the Cambodian population.  Khmer Rouge is responsible for the mass Cambodian Genocide, which was one of the worst genocides of its kind in the twentieth century.

While Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia they executed over a million political leaders, teachers, merchants, intellectuals, and minorities.  In addition, over a million people died of lack of necessities because they were forced to work twelve consecutive hours without rest, food, or water.  Then when they were not working they were not provided with the proper necessities still, with little food, no hospitals, and no medication.

Khmer Rouge was charged of “crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, homicide, torture and religious persecution,” by Cambodian and international prosecutors in 2007.   Pol Pot, the leader of Khmer Rouge, combined “extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale.”  But what made them do these horrible things?  What could they have possibly believed in or wanted to possess them to do such things?

The basis of Khmer Rouge was communism, it was much worse than communism, but that was the biggest principle in their beliefs.  Communism comes from the word commune.  Commune means for people to share earnings and property and have no individual rights.  So in communism, all people are treated equally and have no rights to property or money, and the government has all ownership and the people are equal, in theory.  As you can now see, communism itself is not the enemy, it is the government in which communism is over.  Communism never works out properly because in most cases the government turns tyrannical.

Khmer Rouge was more than a tyrannical communist government though.  Pot Pol used fear to force the people to do what he wanted them to do, similar to what Hitler did in Germany.  To sustain fear in the people and to secure his place in power, Pot Pol had to do away with intellectual people that could educate the society and then possibly lead an overturn of the government, which would mean the death of his rule.  In order to get rid of all people with intelligence, Pot Pol used execution, which also helped maintain fear in the population.  With fear maintained, Pot Pol had nothing to worry about because no one would take a chance to speak out or rebel against him, in fear of their own lives.

It is unclear why Pot Pol could not supply the working people will adequate food, water and shelter.  Majority conclude he did not have the resources himself or he simply wanted to keep them weak and useless.  It is known he forced to make them work twelve hours a day so they would not have the energy or time to relax and think.  If they would have had time to think, then they may have been able to find a way to overthrow the government.

Khmerguy owns a website about Khmer music at KhmerPortal.com.