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Practices

The Four-Year plan (1977-1980) consisted of the abolishment of all markets, businesses and urban living to build an agrarian utopia based on expanded rice production. After national defense, Pol Pot placed cultivation of rice as the nation’s second most important policy. The Four-Year plan aimed at achieving an average yield of 3 tons of rice per hectare every year. This posed as an impossible task for a country that had never produced that much rice before. With added repercussions from war, the country lacked tools, farm animals and a healthy work force. Pol Pot aimed to make Democratic Kampuchea (the name given to the country after Pol Pot’s occupation) completely independent on both political and independent measures. However, the Khmer Rouge’s leaders were ignorant to the fact that inevitable difficulties were to follow the implementation of this plan (DY).

The creation of cooperatives (also known as labor camps) was one of Pol Pot’s most iconic practices. By 1975, after the civil war between the Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol’s government, “High – Level Cooperatives” had been established. These cooperatives usually consisted of 1000 families or an entire sub-district. Almost all people living in urbanized areas were forced to live in these cooperatives and perform hard labor. People were forced to live, work, eat and rest as one singular unit. To the Khmer Rouge there was no concept of family. Children were taught to totally cut themselves of from their families and were told to only trust Angkar. The Khmer Rouge felt this was the best way to abolish ownership and capitalism throughout the country. The Khmer Rouge also forced people to give up all their property so that it could be used collectively. This action was very similar to Mao Zedong’s actions and also those of other significant Communist leaders. The effects of these cooperatives left many people to die of starvation and/or exhaustion (DY).

Security was one of the measures that the Khmer Rouge refused to compromise on. Pol Pot believed that there were enemies everywhere. Many members of the public were often accused of being CIA, KGB or Vietnamese intelligence which generally resulted in their execution, without trial. Pol Pot also executed any people that even remotely posed as a threat to his plans and regime. This included the educated, those of different ethnicities, foreigners, those who showed signs of dissent towards Angkar and those associated with other political parties and leaders. “Culprits” were generally taken to a field, killed and buried in mass graves used for numerous people’s remains. Pol Pot also established 200 prisons, formerly referred to as “security centers” or “security offices”. The most famous of these prisons is the S-21 located in Phnom Penh. This prison, formerly a high school, was used for detention, torture, interrogation and in some cases execution. Pol Pot was responsible for the loss of almost two and a half million lives. In an attempt to “clean” the population so that it was made up of pure Khmers that withheld a “pure” mentality and background Pol Pot nearly exterminated half his country’s population. Many experts consider this to be “The twentieth century’s worst genocide (extermination of a certain group of people)” (DY).

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