When Pol Pot came to power in 1975, he called that year “Year Zero”. This was to signify that this year would be the start of an old yet new civilization. Pol Pot was very keen to replicate the system that was used in ancient Angkor. The day after he came to power, Pol Pot ordered everyone who was living in the cities to vacate and move to rural areas elsewhere. Those who refused were killed. These rural areas became known as communes or labour camps. In these communes, everyone had to work, eat and sleep there. It became like a small village in which everyone did the same thing every day. The only thing the people would do all day was grow rice. Rice growing was probably the most important aspect of the Angkor civilization according to Pol Pot. To reinforce the fact that everyone was equal (idea of communism), Pol Pot ordered that everyone be dressed in the same black clothes made of the same materials. While the people moved out of the cities, the Khmer Rouge picked out intellectuals and monks and killed them in wide open fields. These fields today are known as the killing fields. Pol Pot believed that the people who had had a proper education would realise that the Khmer Rouge were going to end up killing everyone. To stop the rest of the population rebelling, Pol Pot murdered the “critical thinkers”. The monks also held a very influential position within the society so they had to be killed too. While conducting these mass killings, Pol Pot was very careful not to let the public know that he was masterminding everything. Therefore, he created a non-existent being called Angka. Whenever orders were given to the people working in the communes, they would be told that Angka was ordering them. This underlined the fact that some superior authority who was not to be questioned was giving them orders. As time went on, Angka became a God to the people working in the communes. Another, and one of the most inhumane practices that he enforced was the use of child soldiers. These children were easy to brainwash and were taught to hate their family. The rapid advance in technology enabled these child soldiers to become the most fearful law enforcers for the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot murdered anyone who he thought was remotely opposing him. In total, he was responsible for the genocide of over one and a half million Cambodians, intellectuals, monks, soldiers and even some Vietnamese after relationships between the two countries began to deteriorate.
