From 1975 to 1979, approximately 2 million people in the nations of Laos and Cambodia were mass murdered by their regional governments as an act of repression. The act was headed by the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot in Cambodia. This was a communist regime, bent on eliminating all political opponents. Before the Khmer Rouge took over the government, there had been five years of bloody civil war in Cambodia. However, the worst killing had yet to come. The U.S. had supported the president Lon Nol when the communist forces, supported by other communist regimes such as Vietnam and China, took over the capitol. As with nearly every ruthless dictator, Pol Pot had his own secret police which he used to a brutal extent. Ironically, the Khmer Rouge regime was ended when its previous supporter, communist Vietnam, invaded Cambodia and imposed a new government, due to Cambodian aggressions against Vietnam.
             When the Vietnamese arrived, still battle-hardened from the Vietnam War, they were shocked to find mass graves, killing fields, and torture chambers dotting the countryside and capital. In all, during the forty-five months of communist rule, around 2 million, or twenty-one percent of the population had been killed. The secret police of Pol Pot had converted the once-bustling high school of Tuol Sleng into a death camp, where prisoners were tortured using brutal methods into confessing for crimes they never committed, then killed for their supposed "crimes." Often, entire villages of accused "supporters" were routed outside their homes and into the fields, where they were shot down, then thrown into mass graves which are still being discovered today. Frighteningly, in many ways, the Cambodian Genocide parallels the genocides committed by Hitler during the Holocaust. Despite having so much to learn from, history tends to repeat itself; perhaps we can try to prevent further cases of genocide in the future by observing our past mistakes.
             ...