Analysis of Cult of Personality

Pol Pot lived in the period of 1925 to 1998, and his communist Khmer Movement led to the Cambodia in the period between 1975 and 1979. During the period, an approximate of 1.5 million Cambodians; out of the entire population of 8 million died from starvation, execution, disease and overworking. The composition of the Khmer Movement was intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants and religious leaders. The movement sought to establish a peasant society with no particular class differences. The intervention of a Vietnamese army brought the Khmer Rouge to the halt in 1979. However, the movement continued with guerrilla warfare with no successful rise to power (Kiernan, 2014).

Methods, Influences, and tactics used to organize a strong authority in own country

The control by the Khmer Rouge started with the coup in 1970 by General Lon Nol when Cambodia’s leader was away from the country. The leader, Sihanouk formed allies with Khmer Rouge after civil war broke. Lon Nol had the support of the United States. Thus, Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol's troops led to massive atrocities against the residents living in the country. Many U.S and South Vietnamese soldiers stormed the border to resist the North Vietnamese and Cong, who had taken camp there. During the time, U.S troops dropped many tons of bombs throughout Cambodia (Kiernan, 2014).

After the bombing of the U.S troops, the number of Khmer Rouge troops increased tremendously and occupied about three-quarters of the Cambodia’s territory. The troop began engaging in shelling Phnom Penh with rockets and artillery. The group then bombed the airport and the other areas in 1975. On April 1975, the troops managed to enter the City and ended the Civil Wars (Short, 2013).

Another method used to organize the strong authority was to evacuate Phnom Penh’s residents. The former civil servants, doctors, teachers, and other major professionals lost their jobs and forced to work in the fields as a re-education process. The opposers of the rules underwent torture in a detention center and then killed.

Under the control of Pol Pot, the state controlled every aspect of people’s lives. The main targets were money, property, jewelry, gambling, introduction of collective agriculture, and outlawing most of the reading and religion practices. Other tactics were forcing children to join the military, and there were strict rules on sexual relations, vocabulary, and clothing. Another tactic was realigning the rice fields according to the preferences of the leaders.

Accounts of the Religious, psychological, and political approaches used when and where they fit

The political approaches used by Pol Pot involved the occupation of most of the crucial positions in the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and the state hierarchies. Thus, he had influence throughout the country, and he served as the general secretary of CPK party since 1963. He has many associates and majority of the seats on the Central Committee. The strategy enabled Pol Pot to have influence throughout the land. An attempt to institute struggles from some leaders and members led to their execution as punitive measures (Kiernan, 2014).

According to the constitution used by then, the residents had religious freedom. However, it had several reservations by declaring that all the reactionary religions have adverse effects on the people and thus forbidden. The religious tactics used involved the execution of Monk, destruction of temples, and pagodas, and turned them into storehouses. The regime also defaced and dumped into rivers and lakes the images of Buddha. The people found praying and expressing their religious sentiments faced murder. The Christian and the Muslim communities faced massive persecution and labeled as part of the pro-Western who hindered the Cambodian culture and society. Other religious tactics used were burning off the Roman Catholic cathedral of Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge movement forced the Muslims to eat pork though they labeled as forbidden. The Muslims, who went against the practice, faced murder. Most of the Muslim and Christian Clergy imams faced execution whereas over a hundred Cham mosques destroyed (Kiernan, 2014).

Thus, the religious freedom guaranteed in the constitution was only a clause without strict observance since many of the other religious groups were termed reactionary. Hence, the religious approach by Pol Pol was disgusting to the Cambodian society.

Pol Pol exhibited no remorse at his death for the millions of people who perished in his reign. He was a perpetrator of mass deaths and created own notion of social justice and moral geographies. He used a psychological approach of trying to get inside the minds of the decision-makers and their followers. The leader justified every action leading to the support of legitimate mass killings. Pol Pol conceived Cambodia’s geography and attempted to construct in-existent geography (Tyner, 2008).

Conclusion

Khmer Rouge’s leader Pol Pot had great support from the Maoist communism. He initiated a rigorous campaign of reconstructing Cambodia and opposing the pollution that "Western Society" inflicted on them. He activated the mandate of a leader by making his subjects and soldiers obey his every command. He wanted Cambodia to become the Communist Republic in which there will be equality. Thus, he used fear as a weapon to make the subjects fear him and denounce all their former beliefs. Thus, the religious and political approaches used were a form of instilling fear to the residents to command respect.

References

Kiernan B.(2014) The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, Yale University Press, 2014. ISBN 0300142994,9780300142990.

Short P. (2013) Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare, Hodder & Stoughton, 2013, ISBN 1444780301, 9781444780307.

Tyner J.A (2008) The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmaking of Space, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2008. ISBN 0754670961, 9780754670964.

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