The Genocide in Cambodia - Essay Example

Although the United States was aware of some atrocities through refugees, the only help provided by the Americans was an asylum for Cambodian refugees.
When the Khmer Rouge came to power, the first order was to empty all cities. The goal was to create an agricultural-based society with all members living in rural areas. The flaw to Pol Pot’s plan was he expected this change to happen overnight. The young, old, sick, dying, man, woman, and everyone else had to leave the city (Chandler, 2000: 95). This alone created casualties. Some city residents only had ten minutes (Kiernan, 2002: 38). The residents that refused, no matter if sick or unable to leave, were killed. All the urban population had to relocate to the countryside in a matter of weeks.

The second type of casualties occurred in the countryside. The old people, rural people, and the new people, urban people had a distinctive line drawn between them. Rural people were given larger rations of food, easier work details, and local positions of power. The urban people were given less food, harder work details, and no power at all. The urban people were not prepared for a hard rural life. Most of these people were scholars, businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, and so forth. Much of the real genocide occurred through starvation. The urban people were not given enough to eat and did not have the skills to survive like their rural counterparts.

The last set of casualties was due to arrest, deliberate torture, and assassination. Urban people were subject to arrest by the Khmer Rouge. Areas like S-21 were used to detain suspect people (Chandler, 2000: 7). These prisons obtained confessions through torture, and then the victim was murdered. Few people ever came back from a Khmer Rouge prison.

Estimates of the deaths in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge vary from 1.5 million up to 5 million Cambodians (Kiernan, 2002: 475). The United States and other international countries received reports from Cambodians fleeing to Thailand (Kiernan, 2002: 282). A greater number of refugees were crossing over into Vietnam. Still, countries do not go to war over ‘humanitarian issues’ or ‘genocide’. Countries only go to war for their individual purposes, for instance, to stop communism or prevent another country from taking territory. The Cambodian genocide did not affect other countries, so the world looked the other way.

The United States was not going to fight another war in Indochina after losing in Vietnam. However, the Americans did provide visas and refuge for that fleeing persecution (Kiernan, 2002: 424). The Vietnamese had no reservation about fighting Cambodia. Cambodia used Chinese supplies to fight Vietnam (Kiernan, 2002: 401). Despite this help, when Vietnam decided to invade it only took seventeen days to overcome the Khmer Rouge. Vietnam set up a new government and helped free the Cambodian people. The Khmer Rouge was forced into a small jungle area.

The reason for so little help from the Americans came down to the communism versus democracy argument. The Vietnamese and Cambodians were communists. The U.S. had already been defeated in Vietnam, so they abandoned the region. Nothing, not even genocide would entice the Americans back, or even help Vietnam in their efforts. In the end, the U.S. acted in their own interest, leaving the Cambodians to their fate.