Baton Rouge

‘During that time, about 1.5 million Cambodians out of a total population of 7 to 8 million died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork.’ (HIstory.com Staff, 2009). The period of the Khmer warfare is the most remarkable moment of Cambodia’s history. It is also the most catastrophic one. The cultural and civil background of the monarchy and republican eras was suppressed by the Khmer communist regime. During this period Cambodia’s expressive heritage nearly disappear, not only…

was an oppressive regime known as the Khmer Rouge. ‘Oppressive’ is not even a harsh enough word to describe the atrocities they committed. Over 25% of the population of Cambodia died in a four year span. The terror started…

The memoir First they Killed my Father voices the thoughts of a five-year-old Cambodian girl who endures a life of war. The novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, explores the two sides, both victim and oppressor, both Jew and German through the eyes of two children, Shmuel and Bruno. Both texts are written but with the intention to be spoken of, and to spread the powerful message they contain. First they Killed my Father is the autobiography of the conscious Loung Ung and The Boy in the Striped…

During the Vietnam War, about 14 years after the war started, a platoon of 140 men from Charlie Company of the United States Army went into a small village called My Lai and slaughtered 504 Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village that consisted of 700 inhabitants. The My Lai Massacre was a tragic event that altered the lives of not only the men involved, but also the American public as the truth about that day finally came to surface. My Lai, also known as Pinkville, is located in the…

First They Killed My Father, a tile which fits both the tone of the book and the storyline. It is a foreshadowing for the cruel events of murder in the book; and though Keav was the first of the family to pass away, Loung’s father was the first to be killed. As Professor Inness-Brown says: the title already tells the audience that her father is killed, but the word “first” shows us that there are more cruel events to will follow. Also mentioned by Professor Inness-Brown: these events are…

The social movement of Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (in translation: Mothers of the Plaza the Mayo) was founded during a dark period of Argentina’s history- the so called Dirty war. The Dirty war (Spanish: Guerra Sucia), which was also known as the Process of National Reorganization (Spanish: Proceso de Reorganización Nacional or El Proceso), was a period in which suspected dissidents and subversives where persecuted by the Argentine government. It started in roughly 1974 (although some sources…

Being separated from the person you love for two weeks might be hard. But being separated from your own sibling for almost 15 years is what Loung Ung had to go through with her sister Chou, and that’s after escaping a war, too. In the book Lucky Child by Loung Ung, Loung and her sister Chou are separated when Loung is given the opportunity to go to America with her brother and her sister in law. Chou is forced to stay in Cambodia with the rest of their family where the war is still going on,…

genocide was. What was so awful about this genocide is that the government that was in place, the Khmer Rouge, forced millions of people out of their homes and into the wilderness. People were also forced to work in terrible conditions in labor camps. This relates to the forced labor and heartless treatment of the Jews that the Nazis perpetrated. The group that instigated this genocide was the Khmer Rouge, they rose to power from the Americans constantly bombing Cambodia and killing up to…

tragic events in world history, and the United States did close to nothing about it. The Genocide fulfilled all 8 stages of Gregory Stanton’s 8 Stages of Genocide on the dot. Classification is the first stage of genocide, which Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took part in, They classified the people of Cambodia into young and old, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, communist supporters and non-communist supporters. The symbolization used to distinguish the Cambodian civilians in Phnom Penh is…

Khmer Rouge not only changed Cambodia but essentially destroyed it, leaving a trail of political and social destruction behind. The Khmer Rouge was responsible for turning Cambodia into one huge labour camp, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and ruining the lives of those who weren’t killed. They emptied hospitals of their patients and withdrew citizens from cities, making this one of the most inhumane and brutal regimes in human history. After being tortured for years by the Khmer Rouge,…