Learning about the Khmer Rouge

The Khmer Rouge were the communists of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge first helped the king get power back from the military which overthrew him, but then they betrayed him and made Pol Pot, their own leader, the leader of Cambodia.

Pol Pot wanted everyone to become farmers and he thought that education, money, and foreign influence were all evil. He killed all the educated people and sent everyone else to become farmers in the jungle. Everyone who didn’t comply was forced or killed.



They turned Buddhist temples into prisons and had killing fields and killing caves where they would punish and kill people for not doing what they said.



We went to the memorial at the killing fields in Battambang. We saw two temples which became jails where the people who were forced to work were put at night. If someone was sick, they would go to the hospital which had no doctors. It was just a place to keep them until they were executed.



The memorial was called the Well of Shadows. It was a big well where the walls had bones in glass cases. It also had carvings about what the Khmer Rouge did to the people which were very gruesome.



The Khmer Rouge ruled for four years but it was probably the most devastating time in Cambodian history because all the educated people were killed. The only people who survived were illiterate which left the population worse off than they were a hundred years before.



I had never heard of the Khmer Rouge before. They were in power just a year before my dad was born so it happened very recently. It’s amazing that in forty years, the Cambodians have rebuilt the country but they are still recovering from all the damage that was done.