Pol Pot

Pol Pot, Brother No. 1 in the Khmer Rouge regime, is a name that sends shivers down the spines of most Cambodians and foreigners alike.  It is Pol Pot who is most associated with the bloody madness of the regime he led between 1975 and 1979, and his policies heaped misery, suffering and death on millions of Cambodians.

Even after being overthrown in 1979 he cast a long shadow over the Cambodian people: for many of them, just knowing he was still alive was traumatic and unjust.  He died on 15 April 1998.  Pol Pot, Brother No. 1 in the Khmer Rouge regime, is a name that sends shivers down the spines of most Cambodians and foreigners alike.  It is Pol Pot who is most associated with the bloody madness of the regime he led between 1975 and 1979, and his policies heaped misery, suffering and death on millions of Cambodians.  Even after being overthrown in 1979 he cast a long shadow over the Cambodian people: for many of them, just knowing he was still alive was traumatic and unjust.  He died on 15 April 1998.

Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in a small village near Kompong Thom in 1925.  He had a relatively privileged upbringing and his education included, ironically, some time in a wat (Buddhist temple monastery).  As a young man he won a scholarship to study in Paris and spent several years there with leng Sary, who would later become foreign minister of Democratic Kampuchea.  It is here that he is believed to have developed his radical Marxist thought, later to transform in to the politics of extreme Maoist agrarianism.  back in Cambodia, Saloth Sar became a school teacher, entering politics in the late 1950's.  Very little is known about his early political career.

 

During the 1960's Sihanouk switched from friend of the left to foe and back again, but in 1963 his repressive policies sent Saloth Sar and comrades fleeing to the jungles of Ratannakiri.  It was from this time that he began to call himself Pol Pot, although it was not for a number of years that anyone would make the connection between the one-time teacher and the leader of Democratic Kampuchea.  Once the Khmer Rouge was allied with Sihanouk, following his overthrow by Lon Nol in 1970 and subsequent exile in Beijing, its support soared and the faces of the leadership became familiar.  However, Pol Pot remained a shadowy figure in the hierarchy, leaving the public duties to Khieu Samphan and leng Sary.

When the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, few people could have anticipated the hell that was to come.  Pol Pot, with the help of others, was the architect of one of the most radical and brutal revolutions in the history of mankind.  Proclaimed as Year Zero, Cambodia was on a self-destructive course to sever all ties with the past.

Pol Pot was not to emerge as the public face of the revolution until the end of 1976, after returning from a trip to his mentors in Beijing.  During his leadership he spent much of his time living in Phnom Penh, moving from residence to residence, paranoid about his security.  He granted almost no interviews to foreign media and was seen only on propaganda movies produced by government television and on the occasional broadcast by Yugoslav journalists.  Curiously enough, however, those who did meet Pol Pot during this period described him as a genial and charismatic man.  Such was his aura and reputation that by the last year of the regime a cult of personality was developing around him and busts were produced.

He was fervently anti-Vietnamese, a sentiment fuelled by the pivotal role the Vietnamese played in arming and advising the Khmer Rouge during its jungle years.  It was the Vietnamese that called the shots in the early days of the guerrilla war, something that rankled a fiercely patriotic Pol Pot.  He was never to forget that the Vietnamese considered the Cambodian revolution of secondary importance to their own.  Ironically, it was the Vietnamese that turned out to be his greatest enemy, invading Cambodia on 25 December 1978 and overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government on 7 January 1979.  Pol Pot and his supporters were sent fleeing to the jungle near the Thai border, from where they spent the next decade launching attacks on government positions in Cambodia.

(wife & Daughter) Pol Pot spent much of the 1980's living in an armed compound in Thailand, and with the connivance of both China and the West was able to rebuild his shattered forces and once again threaten the stability of Cambodia.  It is thought he stepped down as nominal head of the Khmer Rouge in 1985, but no doubt continued to call the shots from behind the scenes as he had done in the earliest days of the revolution.  Throughout the 1980's and 1990's his enigma increased as the international media speculated as to the real fate of Pol Pot.  His demise was reported so often that when he finally passed away on 15 April 1998 many Cambodians refused to believe it until they had seen his body on television or in newspapers.  Even then many were skeptical.

Pol Pot is a name known throughout the world, yet little is known about the man himself.  Even the author of his biography Brother Number One, Cambodia expert David Chandler, could not find more than 200 pages to write about the man.  He granted an interview to journalist Nate Thanyer in 1997, but this was far from revealing as he disclaimed all responsibility for the excesses of his regime.  It would be equally misleading to put together a portrait of the man from Khmer Rouge sources now living in Piling, as it is all too easy to blame a dead man for the horrors of their rule.  The truth about many episodes in his life will now never be known: he has carried his secrets to the grave.

 

-Lonely planet Cambodia

Masters of the killing fields
BBC News : Friday, 24 July, 1998, 12:00 GMT 13:00 UK

 

The Khmer Rouge today: Demoralized and faction-ridden

By regional analyst Joe Havely:

Twenty-three years ago, time began again in Cambodia.

The Khmer Rouge and their infamous leader, Pol Pot, had taken power. "Year Zero" had begun.

Money, private property, education and religion were abolished and Cambodia's towns and cities were emptied as the population was forced into massive, unworkable agricultural collectives.

This was the era of the Killing Fields in which more than a million people would lose their lives.

Opponents of the ultimate aim of restoring Cambodia's medieval greatness were deemed enemies of the state and dealt with accordingly.

Secretive organization

Workers in the infamous Killing Fields

The Khmer Rouge have always been a shadowy and secretive organization.  

The name itself was coined by their enemies rather then adopted by them, and for much of their time in power, they hid behind the name 'Angkar', or the Organization.

Today reports on the state of the Khmer Rouge are sketchy.

The group's mission has never been fully explained. But they were and are a fiercely nationalist body with a particular hatred for the Vietnamese who they see as the oppressors of the Khmer (Cambodian) people.

Legacy lives on

Almost 20 years since they were evicted from power by the invading Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge's legacy of death, starvation and suffering lives on across Cambodia.  

It is most visible in the piles of skulls and bones across the country. But it can also be seen in the countless unexploded landmines and the psychological problems suffered by many who cannot forget whey they saw.

After years of fighting government forces in the mountainous jungle near the Thai border, in 1996 almost half of the Khmer Rouge forces broke from their ruthless leadership and made a deal with the Phnom Penh government.

Last year a group led by General Ta Mok, known as "the Butcher", came close to negotiating a similar deal. But the ageing Pol Pot objected, beginning a bloody purge of Khmer Rouge ranks.  

The showdown ended up with Pol Pot being put "on trial" in what the Khmer Rouge described as a people's tribunal.

He was sentenced to house arrest and his three accomplices were executed. Television pictures of the trial were the first the outside world had seen of Pol Pot in years.

Internal breakdown

In an October 1997 interview Pol Pot declared: 'My conscience is clear'

Pol Pot himself died in April, amidst reports that the Khmer Rouge were willing to hand him over to an international court for trial on charges of genocide.  

Many Khmer Rouge defectors said that without him there would be no Khmer Rouge.

Over the last two years the Khmer Rouge resistance has collapsed; not so much because of military defeat, but as a result of internal factionalism, frustration at poverty and ideological decay.

The group has ended up fighting itself.

Reports say the rump Khmer Rouge that remains, led by Ta Mok, can count on between 500 and 2,000 fighters.

Immunity from prosecution

Mass defections have been encouraged by the so-called 'win-win policy' of the country's powerful Second Prime Minister, Hun Sen that offers defectors immunity from prosecution.  

The policy has been criticised for allowing many former Khmer Rouge commanders to become senior officials in the Cambodian government.

After their former military stronghold of Anlong Veng fell to government forces earlier this year, the forces in the dense northern jungles are little more than an irritating, although still potentially deadly, thorn in the government's side.

As Cambodia approaches its general election, the Khmer Rouge have vowed to disrupt polling and a series of political murders have been blamed on them and their desire to continue to make their presence felt.

The Khmer Rouge may be in their death throes but, in the words of one Thai intelligence officer, "they will fight until they die."