Cambodia turned poorer and weaker during the Vietnam War because the darn Americans bombed them and Laos for no particular reason.
ANOTHER VIEW: Disagree totally with the original answer.Cambodia offered the sanctuary of their country (which was supposedly neutral in the conflict) to the North VIietnamese military in an attempt to shield their military forces from the strategic strikes and attacks by the US and their allies during the Vietnam War. The reason Cambodia did this is open to question: Possibly they did it because they were politically allied with, and in sympathy with, the North Vietnamese, or perhaps because they were afraid of military retribution against their own country if they did not offer their help. Either way, their allowance of the use of their supposedly neutral country by enemy combatants opened their borders to military incursions by the US and allied forces to eradicate the North Vietnamese military threat. No military or political action was directly initiated against the country of Cambodia or its people.
Pol Pot(the leader of the Khmer rouge) wanted to turn Cambodia into a communist country.He attempted to create a utopian agrarian society, he thought he would purify Cambodia and wanted everyone to be communists. He tried to get rid of all impurities in society including capitalism, western culture, urbanization, religion, and all foreign influence, also doing this to make sure that no one would be able to find loopholes in his regime.
His Khmer Rouge imposed a version of agrarian collectivization on Cambodia, forcing people from the city to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and labour projects, working towards Pol Pot's goal of "restarting civilization", something he called "Year Zero". More than a million people died as a result of slave labour, malnutrition, disease and brutal executions under his cruel regime.
The Khmer Rouge destroyed the whole Cambodian systems of government, business, agriculture, education, security, civilian lives, culture, religion, environment, trading, and a lot more. Million of people were killed during the Khmer Rouge. Thousand of thousand of Cambodian had forced themselves to leave their homeland and migrated to countries such as: US, France, Australia, Canada, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam.
they were under the rule of pol pot and they were also evil they were a military force that went against the Cambodian government. "Pol Pot" was trying to bring Cambodia back to what he called 'Ground Zero'. 'Ground Zero' was his idea of what a utopian society should be. In order to reach this perfect society, all the citizens would have to be peasants who lived life on a subsistence level. Another theory is that was afraid that since he wasn't very powerful, revolt and overthrow could easily be obtained. So killing all of the city dwellers was his only hope for retarding a coup, because he figured that only the educated and already tainted citizens would have the power to unite against him."
An attempt by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming society resulted in the deaths of 25 percent (approx. 2 million) of the country's population from starvation, overwork and half were by executions. In the "The Killing Fields", a 1984 film, journalist: Dith Pran, feigns simple-mindedness as intellectuals are made to disappear.
Combodia.
The Khmer Rouge was the communist group that seized control of Cambodia in 1975. They instigated the Cambodian Genocide, which killed three million people. The Khmer Rouge was deposed in 1979 by the Vietnamese army.
Pol Pot (Khmer Rouge leader)
Pol Pot's followers were called the Khmer Rouge. They were a radical communist group that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Under Pol Pot's leadership, the Khmer Rouge implemented brutal policies that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.
The Khmer Republic was proclaimed on 9 October 1970, and surrendered to the Khmer Rouge on the morning of 17 April 1975. Most of its leadership was executed almost immediately.
Lon Nol was the prime minister of Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge in 1972-1975.
Cambodia.
Combodia.
Cambodia
Millions of people who opposed the Khmer Rouge were killed.
Cambodia
Khmer Rouge
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Cambodia
he made the world aware of the Khmer rouge's brutality He took Photographs of what was happening in Cambodia and sent them to a newspaper in America. If it wasn't for him we wouldn't know a lot of the things that we know about the Khmer Rouge's reign in Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge was the communist group that seized control of Cambodia in 1975. They instigated the Cambodian Genocide, which killed three million people. The Khmer Rouge was deposed in 1979 by the Vietnamese army.
Cambodia, April 1975.