Pol Pot - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Pol Pot

Pol Pot in 1978

General Secretary of the Central Committee of

the Communist Party of Kampuchea

In office

February 1963 1981

Vice Secretary Nuon Chea

Preceded by Tou Samouth

Succeeded by None (party dissolved)

Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea

In office

25 October 1976 7 January 1979

President Khieu Samphan

Deputy Ieng Sary

Son Sen

Preceded by Nuon Chea

Succeeded by Pen Sovan

In office

17 April 1975 27 September 1976

President Norodom Sihanouk

Khieu Samphan

Preceded by Khieu Samphan (acting)

Pol PotFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pol Pot (/pl pt/; Khmer: ; 19 May 1925 15

April 1998),[1][2] born Saloth Sar (Khmer: ), was

a Cambodian revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge[4]

from 1963 until 1997. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the

General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.[5]

As such, he became the leader of Cambodia on 17 April1975, when his forces captured Phnom Penh. From 1976 to1979, he also served as the prime minister of DemocraticKampuchea.

He presided over a totalitarian dictatorship,[6] in which hisgovernment made urban dwellers move to the countryside towork in collective farms and on forced labour projects. Thecombined effects of executions, strenuous workingconditions, malnutrition and poor medical care caused thedeaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian

population.[7][8][9][10] In all, an estimated 1 to 3 millionpeople (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died

due to the policies of his four-year premiership.[11][12][13]

In 1979, after the CambodianVietnamese War, Pol Potrelocated to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the

Khmer Rouge government collapsed.[14] From 1979 to 1997,he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near theborder of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung topower, with nominal United Nations recognition as therightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot died in 1998,while under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the KhmerRouge. Since his death, rumours that he committed suicide or

was poisoned have persisted.[15]

Contents

1 Biography1.1 Early life

1.1.1 Paris1.1.2 Return

1.2 Rebellion2 Leadership

2.1 Control of the countryside3 Leader of Kampuchea4 Conflict with Vietnam

Pol Pot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

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Succeeded by Nuon Chea

Personal details

Born Saloth Sar

19 May 1925[1][2]

Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom,

French Indochina

Died 15 April 1998 (aged 72)

Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey,

Cambodia

Resting place Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey

Political party Communist Party

Spouse(s) Khieu Ponnary

(m. 19561979)

Mea Son

(m. 19871998)

Children Sar Patchata[3]

Alma mater French School of Electronics and

Computer Science

Military service

Allegiance Democratic Kampuchea

Service/branch National Army of

Democratic Kampuchea

Years of service 19631997

Rank General

Prek Sbauv, birthplace of Pol Pot.

5 Death6 Works7 See also8 References9 Further reading10 External links

Biography

Early life

Saloth Sar was born on 19 May 1925, the eighth of ninechildren and the second of three sons to Pen Saloth and SokNem. His older brother Saloth Chhay was born three yearsearlier. The family was living in the small fishing village ofPrek Sbauv, Kampong Thom Province during the French

colonialism of the area.[16] Pen Saloth was a rice farmer whoowned 12 hectares of land and several buffaloes; the familywas considered moderately wealthy by the day's standards.Although Pen Saloth's family was of Sino-Khmer descentand Saloth Sar was named accordingly due to his fair

complexion ("Sar" means white in Khmer),[17][18] the familyhad already assimilated themselves with mainstream Khmer

society by the time Sar was born.[19]

In 1935, Saloth Sar left Prek Sbauv to attend the coleMiche, a Catholic school in Phnom Penh. He lived with hiscousin, a woman called Meak, a member of the Royal

Ballet.[20] In 1926, she bore King Monivong's son, HRH

Prince Sisowath Kusarak.[21] She was given the official title Khun PreahMoneang Bopha Norleak Meak. Saloth Sar stayed with Meak'shousehold until 1942. His sister Roeung was a concubine of KingMonivong, so through the two women, he often had cause to visit the

royal palace.[22] In 1947, he gained admission to the exclusive LyceSisowath, but was unsuccessful in his studies.

Paris

After switching to a technical school at Russey Keo, north of PhnomPenh, Saloth Sar qualified for a scholarship for technical studies inFrance. He studied radio electronics at the EFR in Paris from 1949 to 1953. He also participated in aninternational labour brigade building roads in Zagreb in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1950. After theSoviet Union recognized the Viet Minh as the government of Vietnam in 1950, French Communists (PCF) tookup the cause of Vietnam's independence. The PCF's anti-colonialism views attracted many young Cambodians,including Sar.


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In 1951, he joined a communist cell in a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste ("Marxist circle"),which had taken control of the Khmer Student's Association (AER) that same year. Within a few months, Sarjoined the PCF.

Return

Due to failing his exams in three successive years, Sar was forced to return to Cambodia in January 1953. Hewas the first member of the Cercle Marxiste to return to Cambodia. He was given the task of evaluating thevarious groups rebelling against the government. He recommended the Khmer Viet Minh, and in August 1954,Sar, along with Rath Samoeun, travelled to the Viet Minh Eastern Zone headquarters in the village of Krabao inthe Kampong Cham Province/Prey Veng Province near the border of Cambodia.

Saloth learned that the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) was little more than a Vietnamese frontorganization. Due to the 1954 Geneva peace accord requiring all Viet Minh forces and insurgents be expelled, agroup of Cambodians followed the Vietnamese back to Vietnam where they were later used as cadres to liberateCambodia. The rest, including Sar, returned to Cambodia.

After Cambodian independence following the 1954 Geneva Conference, both left and right wing partiesstruggled for power in the new government. Khmer King Norodom Sihanouk pitted the parties against eachother while using the police and army to suppress extreme political groups. Corrupt elections in 1955 led manyleftists in Cambodia to abandon hope of taking power by legal means. The socialist movement, whileideologically committed to guerrilla warfare in such circumstances, did not launch a rebellion due to the party'sweakness.

After his return to Phnom Penh, Sar became the liaison between the above-ground leftist parties (Democrats andPracheachon) and the underground socialist movement. He married Khieu Ponnary on 14 July 1956. Shereturned to Lyce Sisowath, becoming a teacher, while Sar taught French literature and history at Chamraon

Vichea, a newly established private college.[23]

Rebellion

In January 1962, the Cambodian government arrested most of the leadership of the far-left Pracheachon partybefore parliamentary elections, which were to take place that June. Their newspapers and other publicationswere closed. Such measures had effectively ended any legitimate political role of the socialist movement inCambodia. In July 1962, the underground communist party secretary Tou Samouth was arrested and later killedwhile in custody, allowing Sar to become the acting leader. At a 1963 party meeting, attended by at most 18people, Sar was elected secretary of the party's central committee. That March, Saloth went into hiding after hisname was published in a list of leftist suspects put together by the police for Norodom Sihanouk. He fled to theVietnamese border region and made contact with Vietnamese units fighting against South Vietnam.

In early 1964, Sar convinced the Vietnamese to help the Cambodian socialists set up their own base camp. Theparty's central committee met later that year and issued a declaration calling for armed struggle, emphasizing"self-reliance" in accordance with extreme Cambodians. In the border camps, the ideology of the Khmer Rougewas gradually developed. The party, breaking with Marxism, declared that rural peasant farmers were the trueworking class proletarian and lifeblood of the revolution, the central committee members having grown up in afeudal peasant society.

After another wave of repression by Sihanouk in 1965, the Khmer Rouge movement under Saloth grew at arapid rate. Many teachers and students left the cities for the countryside to join the movement.


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In April 1965, Sar went to North Vietnam to gain approval for an uprising in Cambodia against the government.North Vietnam refused to support any uprising due to ongoing negotiation with the Cambodian government.Sihanouk promised to allow the Vietnamese to use Cambodian territory and Cambodian ports in their waragainst South Vietnam.

After returning to Cambodia in 1966, Sar organized a party meeting where a number of important decisionswere made. The party was officially, but secretly, renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Lowerranks of the party were not informed of the decision. It was also decided to establish command zones andprepare each region for an uprising against the government.

In early 1966, fighting broke out in the countryside between peasants and the government over the price paidfor rice. Sar's Khmer Rouge was caught by surprise by the uprisings and could not take any real advantage ofthem. But the government's refusal to find a peaceful solution to the problem created rural unrest that playedinto the hands of the socialist movement.

It was not until early 1967 that Sar decided to launch a national uprising, even though North Vietnam refused toassist in any meaningful way. The uprising was launched on 18 January 1968, with a raid on an army base southof Battambang. The Battambang area had already seen two years of great peasant unrest. The attack was drivenoff by the army, but the Khmer Rouge had captured a number of weapons, which were then used to drive policeforces out of Cambodian villages.

By the summer of 1968, Sar began transitioning from a party leader working with a collective leadership, intothe absolutist leader of the Khmer Rouge movement. Where before he had shared communal quarters with otherleaders, he now had his own compound with a personal staff and guards. Outsiders were no longer allowed toapproach him. Rather, people were summoned into his presence by his staff.

Leadership

The movement was estimated to consist of no more than 200 regular members, but the core of the movementwas supported by a number of villages many times that size. While weapons were in short supply, theinsurgency still operated in twelve out of nineteen districts of Cambodia. In 1969, Sar called a party conferenceand decided to change the party's propaganda strategy. Before 1969, opposition to Sihanouk was the main focusof its propaganda. However, in 1969, the party decided to shift the focus of its propaganda in order to opposethe right-wing parties of Cambodia and their alleged pro-American attitudes. While the party ceased makinganti-Sihanouk statements in public, in private the party had not changed its view of him.

The road to power for Sar and the Khmer Rouge was opened by the events of January 1970, in Cambodia.While he was out of the country, Sihanouk ordered the government to stage anti-Vietnamese protests in thecapital. The protests quickly spilled out of control and the embassies of both North and South Vietnam werewrecked . Sihanouk, who had ordered the protests, then denounced them from Paris and blamed unnamedindividuals in Cambodia for inciting them. These actions, along with clandestine operations by Sihanouk'sfollowers in Cambodia, convinced the government that he should be removed as head of state. The NationalAssembly voted to remove Sihanouk from office and closed Cambodia's ports to North Vietnamese weaponstraffic, demanding that the North Vietnamese leave Cambodia.

The North Vietnamese reacted to the political changes in Cambodia by sending Premier Phm Vn ng tomeet Sihanouk in China and recruit him into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge. Sar was also contacted by theNorth Vietnamese, who reversed their position, offering him whatever resources he wanted for his insurgencyagainst the Cambodian government. Sar and Sihanouk were actually in Beijing at the same time, but theVietnamese and Chinese leaders never informed Sihanouk of the presence of Saloth or allowed the two men to


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meet. Shortly afterward, Sihanouk issued an appeal by radio to the people of Cambodia asking them to rise upagainst the government and to support the Khmer Rouge. In May 1970, Saloth finally returned to Cambodia andthe insurgency gained traction.

Earlier, on 29 March 1970, the North Vietnamese had taken matters into their own hands and launched anoffensive against the Cambodian army. A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of easternCambodia reaching to within 25 km (15 mi) of Phnom Penh before being pushed back. In these battles, theKhmer Rouge and Sar played a very small role.

In October 1970, Sar issued a resolution in the name of the Central Committee. The resolution stated the

principle of independence-mastery (aekdreach machaskar),[24][25] which was a call for Cambodia to decide itsown future independent of the influence of any other country. The resolution also included statementsdescribing the betrayal of the Cambodian Socialist movement in the 1950s by the Viet Minh. This was the firststatement of the anti-Vietnamese policy that would be a major part of the Pol Pot regime when it took poweryears later.

Kaing Guek Eav has claimed that US support for the Lon Nol coup contributed to the Khmer Rouge's rise to

power.[26] However, diplomat Timothy M. Carney disagreed, asserting that Pol Pot won the war due to supportfrom Sihanouk, massive supplies of military aid from North Vietnam, government corruption, the cut-off of

U.S. air support after Watergate, and the determination of the Cambodian Socialists.[27]

Throughout 1971, the Vietnamese (North Vietnamese and Viet Cong) did most of the fighting against theCambodian government while Sar and the Khmer Rouge functioned almost as auxiliaries to their forces. Sartook advantage of the situation in order to gather in new recruits and to train them according to a higherstandard than was previously possible. Sar also put the resources of all Khmer Rouge organizations intopolitical education and indoctrination. While accepting anyone regardless of background into the Khmer Rougearmy at this time, Saloth greatly increased the requirements for membership in the party. Students and so-called"middle peasants" were now rejected by the party. Those with clear peasant backgrounds were the preferredrecruits for party membership. These restrictions were ironic in that most of the senior party leadershipincluding Saloth came from student and middle peasant backgrounds. They also created an intellectual splitbetween the educated old guard party members and the uneducated peasant new party members.

In early 1972, Sar toured the insurgent/North Vietnamese controlled areas in Cambodia. He saw a regularKhmer Rouge army of 35,000 men taking shape supported by around 100,000 irregulars. China was supplyingfive million dollars a year in weapons and Sar had organized an independent revenue source for the party in theform of rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia using forced labour.

After a central committee meeting in May 1972, the party under the direction of Sar began to enforce new levelsof discipline and conformity in areas under their control. Minorities such as the Chams were forced to conformto Cambodian styles of dress and appearance. These policies, such as forbidding the Chams from wearingjewelry, were soon extended to the whole population. A haphazard version of land reform was undertaken bySaloth. Its basis was that all land holdings should be of uniform size. The party also confiscated all privatemeans of transportation. The 1972 policies were aimed at reducing the peoples of the liberated areas to a sort offeudal peasant equality. These policies were generally favourable at the time to poor peasants and wereextremely unfavourable to refugees from towns, who had fled to the countryside.

In 1972, the North Vietnamese army's forces began to withdraw from the fighting against the Cambodiangovernment. Sar then issued a new set of decrees in May 1973 that started the process of reorganizing peasantvillages into cooperatives where property was jointly owned and where individual possessions were banned.


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Control of the countryside

The Khmer Rouge advanced during 1973. After they reached the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Sar issued ordersduring the peak of the rainy season that the city be taken. The orders led to futile attacks and wasted lives withinthe Khmer Rouge army. By the middle of 1973, the Khmer Rouge under Sar controlled almost two-thirds of thecountry and half the population. North Vietnam realized that it no longer controlled the situation and it began totreat Sar as more of an equal leader than as a junior partner.

In late 1973, Sar made strategic decisions that determined the future of the war. First, he decided to cut thecapital off from contact with outside sources of supplies, putting the city under siege. Second, he enforced tightcontrol over people trying to leave the city through Khmer Rouge lines. He also ordered a series of generalpurges of former government officials, and anyone with an education. A set of new prisons was also constructedin Khmer Rouge run areas. The Cham minority attempted an uprising in order to stop the destruction of theirculture. The uprising was quickly crushed, Saloth ordered that harsh physical torture be used against most ofthose involved in the revolt. As previously, Saloth tested out harsh new policies against the Cham minority,before extending them to the general population of the country.

The Khmer Rouge also had a policy of evacuating urban areas and forcibly relocating their residents to thecountryside. When the Khmer Rouge took the town of Kratie in 1971, Sar and other members of the party wereshocked at how fast the "liberated" urban areas shook off socialism and went back to the old ways. Variousideas were tried in order to re-create the town in the image of the party, but nothing worked. In 1973, out oftotal frustration, Sar decided that the only solution was to send the entire population of the town to the fields inthe countryside. He wrote at the time "if the result of so many sacrifices was that the capitalists remain incontrol, what was the point of the revolution?". Shortly after, Sar ordered the evacuation of the 15,000 people ofKompong Cham for the same reasons. The Khmer Rouge then moved on in 1974 to evacuate the larger city ofOudong.

Internationally, Sar and the Khmer Rouge gained the recognition of 63 countries as the true government ofCambodia. A move was made at the UN to give the seat for Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge; they prevailed bythree votes.

In September 1974, Sar gathered the central committee of the party together. As the military campaign wasmoving toward a conclusion, Sar decided to move the party toward implementing a socialist transformation ofthe country in the form of a series of decisions, the first being to evacuate the main cities, moving thepopulation to the countryside. The second dictated that they would cease putting money into circulation andquickly phase it out. The final decision was that the party would accept Sar's first major purge. In 1974, Sar hadpurged a top party official named Prasith. Prasith was taken out into a forest and shot without being given anychance to defend himself. His death was followed by a purge of cadres who, like Prasith, were ethnically Thai.Sar's explanation was that the class struggle had become acute, requiring a strong stand against party enemies.

The Khmer Rouge were positioned for a final offensive against the government in January 1975.Simultaneously, at a press event in Beijing, Sihanouk proudly announced Sar's "death list" of enemies who wereto be killed after victory. The list, which originally contained seven names, was expanded to 23, and it includedthe names of all senior government leaders along with the names of all officials who were in positions ofleadership within the police and military. The rivalry between Vietnam and Cambodia also came out into theopen. North Vietnam, as the rival socialist country in Indochina, was determined to take Saigon before theKhmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. Shipments of weapons from China were delayed, in one instance theCambodians were forced to sign a humiliating document thanking (North) Vietnam for shipments of Chineseweapons.


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Skulls of Khmer Rouge victims

Mass grave in Choeung Ek

In April 1975, the government formed a Supreme National Council with new leadership, with the aim ofnegotiating a surrender to the Khmer Rouge. It was headed by Sak Sutsakhan who had studied in France withSar, and was a cousin of the Khmer Rouge Deputy Secretary Nuon Chea. Sar reacted to this by adding thenames of everyone involved in the Supreme National Council onto his post-victory death list. Governmentresistance finally collapsed on 17 April 1975.

Leader of Kampuchea

The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. As the leader ofthe Communist Party, Saloth Sar became the de-facto leader of thecountry. He adopted the title "brother number one" and used the nom deguerre "Pol Pot". This derives from Politique potentielle, the Frenchequivalent of a phrase supposedly coined for him by the Chineseleadership. Philip Short offers an alternative explanation for the origin ofPol Pot's name, stating that Saloth Sar announced that he was adoptingthe name in July 1970. Short suspects that it derives from pol: "the Polswere royal slaves, an aboriginal people", and that "Pot" was simply a

"euphonic monosyllable" that he liked.[28]

Cambodia adopted a new constitution on 5 January 1976, officiallychanging the country's name to "Democratic Kampuchea". The newlyestablished Representative Assembly held its first plenary session from11 to 13 April, electing a new government with Pol Pot as primeminister. His predecessor, Khieu Samphan became head of state asPresident of the State Presidium. Prince Sihanouk received no role in thegovernment and was placed in detention. The Khmer Rouge rgime saw

agriculture as the key to nation-building and to national defense.[29] PolPot's goal for the country was to have 70-80% of the farm mechanizationcompleted within 5 to 10 years, to build a modern industrial base on thefarm mechanization within 15 to 20 years, and to become a

self-sufficient state.[29] He wanted to take the economy and make it theprimary source of goods for the nation, sever foreign relationships, and radically reconstruct the society to

maximize the production of agriculture.[30] To avoid foreign domination of industries, Pol Pot refused to

purchase goods from other countries.[31]

Immediately after the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge began to implement their concept of Year Zero andordered the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh and all other recently captured major towns and cities. Thoseleaving were told that the evacuation was due to the threat of severe American bombing and it would last for nomore than a few days.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been evacuating captured urban areas for many years, but the evacuation ofPhnom Penh was unique in its scale. Pol Pot stated that "...the first step in progress [was] deliberately designed

to exterminate an entire class".[32] The first operations to evacuate urban areas occurred in 1968, in theRatanakiri area and aimed at moving people deeper into Khmer Rouge territory to control them more easily.From 19711973, the motivation changed. Pol Pot and the other senior leaders were frustrated that urbanCambodians retained old capitalist habits of trade and business. When all other methods had failed, thegovernment adopted the policy of evacuation to the countryside in order to solve the "problem".

In 1976, Pol Pot's rgime reclassified Kampucheans into three groupings: as full-rights (base) people, as


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Photos of the victims of the Khmer

Rouge, Tuol Sleng Genocide

Museum

candidates and as depositees, so-called because they included most of the new people who had been deposited

from the cities into the communes.[33] Depositees were marked for destruction. Their rations were reduced totwo bowls of rice soup or p'baw per day leading to widespread starvation. "New people" were allegedly givenno place in the elections taking place on 20 March 1976, despite the fact that the constitution establisheduniversal suffrage for all Cambodians over the age of 18.

The Khmer Rouge leadership boasted over the state-controlled radio that only one or two million people wereneeded to build the new agrarian socialist utopia. As for the others, as their proverb put it, "To keep you is no

benefit, to destroy you is no loss."[34]

Hundreds of thousands of the new people, and later the depositees, were taken out in shackles to dig their ownmass graves. Then the Khmer Rouge soldiers buried them alive. A Khmer Rouge extermination prison directiveordered, "Bullets are not to be wasted." Such mass graves are often referred to as "the Killing Fields".

The Khmer Rouge also classified people by religious and ethnicbackground. They banned all religion and dispersed minority groups,forbidding them to speak their languages or to practice their customs.They especially targeted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christians, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who hadcontact with Western countries or with Vietnam, disabled people, and theethnic Chinese, Laotians, and Vietnamese. Some were put in the S-21camp for interrogation involving torture in cases where a confession wasuseful to the government. Many others were summarily executed.

According to Franois Ponchaud's book Cambodia: Year Zero, "Eversince 1972, the guerrilla fighters had been sending all the inhabitants ofthe villages and towns they occupied into the forest to live and oftenburning their homes, so that they would have nothing to come back to."The Khmer Rouge systematically destroyed food sources that could notbe easily subjected to centralized storage and control, cut down fruittrees, forbade fishing, outlawed the planting or harvest of mountain leap rice, abolished medicine and hospitals,forced people to march long distances without access to water, exported food, embarked on foolish economicprojects, and refused offers of humanitarian aid. As a result a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded: hundreds ofthousands died of starvation and brutal government-inflicted overwork in the countryside. To the Khmer Rouge,outside aid went against their principle of national self-reliance. According to Solomon Bashi, the KhmerRouge exported 150,000 tons of rice in 1976 alone. In addition:

Coop chiefs often reported better yields to their supervisors than they had actually achieved. Thecoop was then taxed on the rice it reportedly produced. Rice was taken out of the people's mouthsand given to the Center to make up for these inflated numbers....'There were piles of rice as big as ahouse, but they took it away in trucks. We raised chicken and ducks and vegetables and fruit, butthey took it all. You'd be killed if you tried to take anything for yourself.'

[35]

According to Henri Locard, "the reputation of KR leaders for Spartan austerity is somewhat overdone. After all,they had the entire property of all expelled town dwellers at their full disposal, and they never suffered from

malnutrition."[10]


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Property became collective, and education was dispensed at communal schools. Children were raised on acommunal basis. Even meals were prepared and eaten communally. Pol Pot's regime was extremely paranoid.Political dissent and opposition was not permitted. People were treated as opponents based on their appearanceor background. Torture was widespread, thousands of politicians and bureaucrats accused of association withprevious governments were executed. The rgime turned Phnom Penh into a ghost city, while people in thecountryside died of starvation or illnesses, or were simply killed.

U.S. officials publicly predicted shortly after the fall of Phnom Penh that the Khmer Rouge would kill more

than one million people;[36] President Gerald Ford had warned of "an unbelievable horror story".[37] Modernresearch has located 20,000 mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia. Various studies haveestimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000 - most commonly arriving at figures between1.7 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest attributable

to starvation and to disease.[7] Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42

million Cambodians were killed.[11] Demographer Marek Sliwinski concluded that at least 1.8 million werekilled from 1975 to 1979 on the basis of the total population decline, compared to roughly 40,000 killed by the

U.S. bombing.[38] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests a death toll ofbetween 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching some20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of

execution".[7][39] A U.N. investigation reported 23 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been

killed.[40] The Khmer Rouge themselves stated that 2 million had been killedthough they attributed those

deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.[41] By late 1979, U.N. and Red Cross officials were warning thatanother 2.25 million Cambodians could die of starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society

under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot",[42] most of whom were saved by international aid after the

Vietnamese invasion.[43] An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely

as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.[44]

Pol Pot aligned the country diplomatically with the People's Republic of China and adopted an anti-Soviet line.This alignment was more political and practical than ideological. Vietnam was aligned with the Soviet Union,so Cambodia aligned with the Asian rival of the Soviet Union and of Vietnam. (China had supplied the KhmerRouge with weapons for years before they took power.)

In December 1976 Pol Pot issued directives to the senior Khmer Rouge leadership to the effect that Vietnamwas now an enemy. Defenses along the border were strengthened and unreliable deportees were moved deeperinto Cambodia. Pol Pot's actions came in response to the Vietnamese Communist Party's fourth Congress (14 to20 December 1976), which approved a resolution describing Vietnam's special relationship with Laos andCambodia. It also talked of how Vietnam would forever be associated with the building and defense of the othertwo countries.

Unlike many communist leaders, Pol Pot never became the object of a personality cult. Even in power, the CPKmaintained the secrecy it had kept up during its years in the battlefield. For over two years after taking power,the party only referred to itself as "Angkar" ("the Organization"). It was not until a speech on 15 April 1977 thatPol Pot revealed the CPK's existence. At that time international observers confirmed the identification of "PolPot" as Saloth Sar.

Conflict with Vietnam

In May 1975, a squad of Khmer Rouge soldiers raided and took Phu Quoc Island. By 1977, relations withVietnam began to fall apart. There were small border clashes in January. Pol Pot tried to prevent border disputes


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by sending a team to Vietnam. The negotiations failed, which caused even more border disputes. On 30 April,the Cambodian army, backed by artillery, crossed over into Vietnam. In attempting to explain Pol Pot'sbehavior, one region-watcher suggested that Cambodia was attempting to intimidate Vietnam, by irrational acts,into respecting or at least fearing Cambodia to the point they would leave the country alone. However, theseactions only served to anger the Vietnamese people and government against the Khmer Rouge.

In May 1976, Vietnam sent its air force into Cambodia in a series of raids. In July, Vietnam forced a Treaty ofFriendship on Laos that gave Vietnam almost total control over the country. In Cambodia, Khmer Rougecommanders in the Eastern Zone began to tell their men that war with Vietnam was inevitable and that once thewar started their goal would be to recover parts of Vietnam (Khmer Krom) that were once part of Cambodia,whose people, they alleged, were struggling for independence from Vietnam. It is not clear whether thesestatements were the official policy of Pol Pot.

In September 1977, Cambodia launched division-scale raids over the border, which once again left a trail ofmurder and destruction in villages. The Vietnamese claimed that around 1,000 people had been killed orinjured. Three days after the raid, Pol Pot officially announced the existence of the formerly secret CommunistParty of Kampuchea (CPK) and finally announced to the world that the country was a Communist state. InDecember, after having exhausted all other options, Vietnam sent 50,000 troops into Cambodia in whatamounted to a short raid. The raid was meant to be secret. The Vietnamese withdrew after declaring they hadachieved their goals, and the invasion was just a warning. Upon being threatened, the Vietnamese armypromised to return with support from the Soviet Union. Pol Pot's actions made the operation much more visiblethan the Vietnamese had intended and created a situation in which Vietnam appeared weak.

After making one final attempt to negotiate a settlement with Cambodia, Vietnam decided that it had to preparefor a full war. Vietnam also tried to pressure Cambodia through China. However, China's refusal to pressureCambodia and the flow of weapons from China into Cambodia were both signs that China also intended to actagainst Vietnam.

When Cambodian socialists rebelled in the eastern zone in May 1978, Pol Pot's armies could not crush themquickly. On 10 May, his radio broadcast a call not only to "exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese" but also to"purify the masses of the people" of Cambodia. Of 1.5 million easterners, branded as "Khmer bodies withVietnamese minds", at least 100,000 were exterminated in six months. Later that year, in response to threats toits borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam attacked Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, which

Vietnam justified on the basis of self-defense.[45] The Cambodian army was defeated, the regime was toppledand Pol Pot fled to the Thai border area. In January 1979, Vietnam installed a new government under KhmerRouge defector Heng Samrin, composed of Khmer Rouge who had fled to Vietnam to avoid the purges. Pol Poteventually regrouped with his core supporters in the Thai border area where he received shelter and assistance.At different times during this period, he was located on both sides of the border. The military government ofThailand used the Khmer Rouge as a buffer force to keep the Vietnamese away from the border. The Thaimilitary also made money from the shipment of weapons from China to the Khmer Rouge. Eventually, Pol Potrebuilt a small military force in the west of the country with the help of the People's Republic of China. ThePRC also initiated the Sino-Vietnamese War around this time.

The People's Republic of China was the main international supporter of the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot.

The Chinese provided financial and military support to the party even after their overthrow in 1979.[46] The UNalso recognized the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which included the Khmer Rouge,instead of the People's Republic of Kampuchea.

Pol Pot lived in the Phnom Malai area, giving interviews in the early 1980s accusing all those who opposed himof being traitors and "puppets" of the Vietnamese until he disappeared from public view. In 1985, his


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Nicolae Ceauescu with Pol Pot

(1978)

"retirement" was announced, but he retained influence over the party.[47]

A cadre interviewed during this period described Pol Pot's views on thedeath toll under his government:

He said that he knows that many people in the country hate himand think he's responsible for the killings. He said that he knowsmany people died. When he said this he nearly broke down andcried. He said he must accept responsibility because the line wastoo far to the left, and because he didn't keep proper track of whatwas going on. He said he was like the master in a house he didn'tknow what the kids were up to, and that he trusted people toomuch. For example, he allowed [one person] to take care ofcentral committee business for him, [another person] to take careof intellectuals, and [a third person] to take care of politicaleducation.... These were the people to whom he felt very close, andhe trusted them completely. Then in the end ... they made a mess ofeverything.... They would tell him things that were not true, thateverything was fine, that this person or that was a traitor. In theend they were the real traitors. The major problem had beencadres formed by the Vietnamese.

[48]

In December 1985, the Vietnamese launched a major offensive and overran most of the Khmer Rouge and otherinsurgent positions. The Khmer Rouge headquarters at Phnom Malai and its base near Pailin were completely

destroyed; the Vietnamese attackers suffered substantial losses during the attack.[49]

Pol Pot fled to Thailand where he lived for the next six years. His headquarters were a plantation villa near Trat.

Pol Pot officially resigned from the party in 1985 citing asthma as a contributing factor, but continued as the defacto Khmer Rouge leader and a dominant force within the anti-Vietnam alliance. He handed day-to-day powerto Son Sen, his hand-picked successor.

In 1986, his new wife Mea Son gave birth to a daughter, Sitha, named after the heroine of the Khmer religious

epic, the Reamker.[50] Shortly after, Pol Pot moved to China for medical treatment for cancer. He remainedthere until 1988.

In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge established a new stronghold area in the westnear the Thai border and Pol Pot relocated back into Cambodia from Thailand. Pol Pot refused to cooperatewith the peace process, and kept fighting the new coalition government. The Khmer Rouge kept the governmentforces at bay until 1996, when troops started deserting. Several important Khmer Rouge leaders also defected.The government had a policy of making peace with Khmer Rouge individuals and groups after negotiationswith the organization as a whole failed. In 1995, Pol Pot experienced a stroke that paralyzed the left side of hisbody.

Pol Pot ordered the execution of his lifelong right-hand man Son Sen on 10 June 1997 for attempting to make asettlement with the government. Eleven members of his family were killed also, although Pol Pot later deniedthat he had ordered this. He then fled his northern stronghold, but was later arrested by Khmer Rouge militaryChief Ta Mok on 19 June 1997. Pol Pot had not been seen in public since 1980, two years after his overthrow at


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Grave of Pol Pot in Anlong Veng

District of Oddar Meanchey

Province.

the hands of an invading Vietnamese army. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a Phnom Penh court soon

afterward.[51] In July, he was subjected to a show trial for the death of Son Sen and sentenced to lifelong house

arrest.[52]

Death

On the night of 15 April 1998, two days before the 23rd anniversary ofthe Khmer Rouge takeover in Phnom Penh, the Voice of America, towhich Pol Pot was a devoted listener, announced that the Khmer Rougehad agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. According to hiswife, he died in his bed later in the night while waiting to be moved toanother location. Ta Mok claimed that his death was due to heart

failure.[53] Ta Mok later described the way he died: "He was sitting inhis chair waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. His wife askedhim to take a rest. He lay down on his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air.It was the sound of dying. When she touched him he had already passedaway. It was at 10:15 last night." On 17 April he commented, "Pol Pothas died like a ripe papaya. No one killed him, no one poisoned him.Now he's finished, he has no power, he has no rights, he is no more thancow shit. Cow shit is more important than him. We can use it for

fertilizer."[54]

Despite government requests to inspect the body, it was cremated a few days later at Anlong Veng in the Khmer

Rouge zone,[55] raising suspicions that he committed suicide by taking an overdose of the medication he had

been prescribed.[56][57] Journalist Nate Thayer, who was present, took the view that Pol Pot killed himself whenhe became aware of Ta Mok's plan to hand him over to America. He concluded that "Pol Pot died of a lethal

dose of a combination of Valium and chloroquine."[58] Ta Mok's assertion that "no one poisoned him"encouraged speculation that this was exactly what did happen. Thus some sources state that he was murdered by

his own colleagues.[59]

Works

Long live the 17th anniversary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea : speech (https://archive.org/details/LongLiveThe17thAnniversaryOfTheCommunistPartyOfKampucheaSpeech) New York : Group ofKampuchean Residents in America, 1977Speech made by comrade Pol Pot, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party ofKampuchea "At the banquet given in honour of the delegation of the Communist party of China and thegovernment of the People's Republic of China. Phnom Penh, November 5, 1978." (https://archive.org/details/SpeechMadeByComradePolPotSecretaryOfTheCentralCommitteeOfThe) [Phnom Penh]: Dept. ofPress and Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Kampuchea, 1978Interview to the representatives of the Hong Kong's newspapers Wen wei po and Ta kun pao, PhnomPenh, September 21, 1978 (https://archive.org/details/InterviewToTheRepresentativesOfTheHongKongsNewspapersWenWeiPoAnd) [Phnom Penh]: Dept. ofPress and Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Kampuchea, 1978Interview of Comrade Pol Pot, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party ofKampuchea, Prime Minister of the Government of Democratic Kampuchea to the delegation of Yugoslavjournalists in visit to Democratic Kampuchea, March 17, 1978 (https://archive.org/details


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/InterviewOfComradePolPotSecretaryOfTheCentralCommitteeOfThe) [Phnom Penh]: Dept. of Press andInformation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Kampuchea, 1978Talks with the delegation of the Sweden-Kampuchea Friendship Association [August 1978](https://archive.org/details/TalksWithTheDelegationOfTheSweden-kampucheaFriendshipAssociation)[Phnom Penh]: Dept. of Press and Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Kampuchea,1978Let us continue to firmly hold aloft the banner of the victory of the glorious Communist Party ofKampuchea in order to defend Democratic Kampuchea, carry on socialist revolution and build upsocialism: speech made by Comrade Pol Pot on the occasion of the 18th anniversary of the founding ofthe Communist Party of Kampuchea, Phnom Penh, September 27, 1978 [Phnom Penh]: Dept. of Pressand Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Kampuchea, 1978Talks with the delegation of the Association Belgium-Kampuchea, Phnom Penh, August 5, 1978(https://archive.org/details/TalksWithTheDelegationOfTheAssociationBelgium-kampucheaPhnomPenh)[Phnom Penh]: Dept. of Press and Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Democratic Kampuchea,1978

See also

Cambodian Civil WarEnemies of the People (film)First Indochina WarVietnam War - Second Indochina War

References

"BBC History Historic Figures: Pol Pot (19251998)" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/pot_pol.shtml). BBC. Retrieved 25 January 2011.

1.

Chandler, David (23 August 1999). "Pol Pot" (http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/pol_pot1.html). Time Magazine. Retrieved 4 February 2011.

2.

"Pol's Post daughter weds" (http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/pol-pot%E2%80%99s-daughter-weds). ThePhnom Penh Post. 17 March 2014. Retrieved 29 June 2014.

3.

"Red Khmer," from the French rouge "red" (longtime symbol of socialism) and Khmer, the term for ethnicCambodians.

4.

"Vietnam Since the Fall of Saigon," by William Duiker, Updated Edition, p. 133.5. Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 197579. NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

6.

Counting Hell (http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm), discusses the various estimates.7. Heuveline, Patrick (1998), "Between One and Three Million": Towards the Demographic Reconstruction of a Decadeof Cambodian History (1970-79), Population Studies, Vol. 52, Number 1: 49-65.

8.

Craig Etcheson, After the Killing Fields (Praeger, 2005), p. 119.9. Locard, Henri, State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) and Retribution (1979-2004)(http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf), European Review of History, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2005,pp. 121143.

10.

Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia." In Forced Migration andMortality, eds. Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

11.

Marek Sliwinski, Le Gnocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Dmographique (L'Harmattan, 1995).12. Banister, Judith, and Paige Johnson (1993). "After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia." In Genocide andDemocracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community, ed. Ben Kiernan.New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies.

13.


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Chandler, David (23 August 1999). "Time necropsy" (http://www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/pol_pot1.html). Time Magazine. Retrieved 27 February 2009.

14.

Horn, Robert (25 March 2002). "Putting a Permanent Lid on Pol Pot" (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,219924,00.html). Time Magazine. Retrieved 3 September 2008.

15.

Seth, Mydans (6 August 1997). "Pol Pot's Siblings Remember The Polite Boy and the Killer Page 2"(http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/06/world/pol-pot-s-siblings-remember-the-polite-boy-and-the-killer.html?pagewanted=2&src=pm). New York Times. Retrieved 16 April 2011.

16.

Short 2005, p. 1817. "Debating Genocide" (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.phnompenhpost.com/TXT/letters/l1402-2.htm).Web.archive.org. Retrieved 27 February 2009.

18.

First Chapter Pol Pot (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/books/chapters/0227-1st-short.html?pagewanted=print&position=), Philip Short, The New York Times, 27 February 2005.

19.

Chandler, David P., 1992, Brother Number One: A political biography of Pol Pot, Silkworm Books, Thailand: 820. Jeldres, Julio A., 2003, The Royal House of Cambodia, Monument Books, Phnom Penh21. Canada. "Ben Kiernan New Internationalist, 242 April 1993" (http://www.newint.org/issue242/original.htm).Newint.org. Retrieved 2014-08-08.

22.

Thet Sambath (20 October 2001). "Sister No. 1 The Story of Khieu Ponnary, Revolutionary and First Wife of PolPot" (http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/selected_features/khiev.htm). The Cambodia Daily, WEEKEND.Retrieved 15 November 2007.

23.

Hinton, Alexander Laban (2005). Why Did They Kill: Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (http://books.google.com/books?id=3fTpplDUlA4C&dq=independence+mastery+cambodia&source=gbs_navlinks_s). University ofCalifornia Press. p. 382.

24.

Lahneman, William J. (2004). Military Intervention: Cases in Context for the Twenty-First Century(http://books.google.com/books?id=7MEDymP3JNkC&dq=independence+mastery+cambodia&source=gbs_navlinks_s). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 97.

25.

Whatley, Stuart (6 April 2009). "Khmer Rouge Defendent: US Policies Enabled Cambodian Genocide"(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/06/khmer-rouge-defendent-us_n_183660.html). The Huffington Post.Retrieved 5 March 2010.

26.

http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/461/8/09_chapter3.pdf27. See Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, p. 212.28. Short 288.29. Short 290.30. Short 289.31. Quoted in Short 288.32. Jackson, Karl D. (2014). "The Ideology of Total Revolution". In Jackson, Karl D. Cambodia, 1975-1978: Rendezvouswith Death (https://books.google.com/books?id=noWXAwAAQBAJ). Princeton University Press. p. 52.ISBN 9781400851706. Retrieved 2015-04-17. "[...] the population of Democratic Kampuchea was divided into threecategories, depending upon class background and political past: individuals with full rights (penh sith), those whowere candidates for full rights (triem), and those who had no rights whatever (bannheu). [...] The lowest category, thebannheu or depositees, had no rights whatever, not even the right to food. These were former landowners, armyofficers, bureaucrats, teachers, merchants, and urban residents [...]."

33.

Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields, Worms from Our Skin. Teeda Butt Mam. Memoirs compiled by Dith Pran.1997, Yale University. ISBN 978-0-300-07873-2. Excerpts available from Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=FjEpaj1F9VoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPA13,M1).

34.

Solomon Bashi (2010), "Prosecuting Starvation at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia,"(http://works.bepress.com/solomon_bashi/1) ExpressO.

35.

Washington Post, 4 and 23 June 1975.36. "1975 interview with President Ford" (http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/bloodbath1.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved2014-08-08.

37.

Marek Sliwinski, Le Gnocide Khmer Rouge: Une Analyse Dmographique (L'Harmattan, 1995), pp. 4148, 57.38. Documentation Center of Cambodia (http://www.dccam.org/Projects/Maps/Mapping.htm)39. William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985), pp.115116.

40.

Khieu Samphan, Interview, Time, 10 March 1980.41. New York Times, 8 August 1979.42.


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William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust, and Modern Conscience (Touchstone, 1985),discusses at length the international famine relief effort.

43.

Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia 1970-1979".Forced Migration and Mortality. National Academies Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-309-07334-9.

44.

Kiernan, Ben (April 1993). "The Original Cambodian" (http://www.newint.org/features/1993/04/05/original/). 242.New Internationalist. Retrieved 16 April 2011.

45.

Carvin, Andy "KR Years: The fall of the Khmer Rouge (http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/khmeryears/fall.html)"

46.

"Kelvin Rowley, ''Second Life, Second Death: The Khmer Rouge After 1978''" (http://opus.macmillan.yale.edu/workpaper/pdfs/GS24.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved 2014-08-08.

47.

Quoted in David P. Chandler, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai,2000.

48.

"R.R.Ross, ''Current Indochinese Issues''" (http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA318310&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf) (PDF). Retrieved 2014-08-08.

49.

Short 2005, p. 42350. "Pol Pots Khmer Rouge denounces him" (http://articles.cnn.com/1997-06-21/world/9706_21_pol.pot_1_khieu-samphan-anlong-veng-fields-reign?_s=PM:WORLD). CNN. 17 June 1997.

51.

Nate Thayer, "Dying Breath The inside story of Pol Pot's last days and the disintegration of the movement hecreated," Far Eastern Economic Review, April 30, 1998 (http://www.cybercambodia.com/dachs/killing/polpot.html)

52.

Nate Thayer. "Dying Breath" Far Eastern Economic Review. 30 April 1998.53. David P. Chandler, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, Westview Press, Boulder, CO., 1999,p.186.

54.

Footage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZgk_dI4JFo) on YouTube of the body of Pol Pot.55. Gittings, John; Tran, Mark (1999-01-21). "Pol Pot 'killed himself with drugs' " (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/jan/21/cambodia). Guardian. Retrieved 2014-08-08.

56.

Chan, Sucheng (2004). Survivors: Cambodian Refugees in the United States. University of Illinois Press. ISBN978-0252071799.

57.

Teresa Poole, "Pol Pot `suicide' to avoid US trial", The Independent, London, 21 January, 1999.58. Craig A. Lockard , Southeast Asia in World History, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009, p.195.59.

Further reading

Denise Affono: To The End Of Hell: One Woman's Struggle to Survive Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. (WithIntroductions by Jon Swain and David Chandler.) ISBN 978-0-9555729-5-1Short, Philip (2005). Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare (1st American ed.). New York: Henry Holt andCompany. ISBN 0-8050-6662-4.David P. Chandler/Ben Kiernan/Chanthou Boua: Pol Pot plans the future: Confidential leadershipdocuments from Democratic Kampuchea, 19761977. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 1988.ISBN 0-938692-35-6David P. Chandler: Brother Number One: A political biography of Pol Pot. Westview Press, Boulder, Col.1992. ISBN 0-8133-3510-8Stephen Heder: Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan. Clayton, Victoria: Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1991.ISBN 0-7326-0272-6Ben Kiernan: "Social Cohesion in Revolutionary Cambodia," Australian Outlook, December 1976Ben Kiernan: "Vietnam and the Governments and People of Kampuchea", Bulletin of Concerned AsianScholars (OctoberDecember 1979)Ben Kiernan: The Pol Pot regime: Race, power and genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,197579. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press 1997. ISBN 0-300-06113-7Ben Kiernan: How Pol Pot came to power: A history of Cambodian communism, 19301975. NewHaven, Conn.: Yale University Press 2004. ISBN 0-300-10262-3Ponchaud, Franois. Cambodia: Year Zero. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978


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Wikiquote has quotations

related to: Pol Pot

Wikimedia Commons has

media related to Pol Pot.

Pescali, Piergiorgio. Indocina. Bologna: Emil, 2010Pescali, Piergiorgio. S-21 Nella prigione di Pol Pot. La Ponga Edizioni, Milan, 2015. ISBN978-8897823308

External links

A meeting with Pol Pot (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/81048.stm) Elizabeth Becker ofThe New York TimesPol Pot and the Cambodian Genocide(http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/552628)from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives(http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/552494)Cambodian Genocide (http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/cambodia.htm): material compiled by DrStuart D SteinCambodian Genocide Program, 19942008 (http://www.yale.edu/cgp/)Cambodia Tribunal Monitor (http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/)Nate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot, Part 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMyX80jCF8) onYouTubeNate Thayer's Interview with Pol Pot, Part 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMyX80jCF8) onYouTubeState Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (19751979) and Retribution (19792004)(http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf)Diary From Darkness (http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/diary.pdf)'Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge' (http://docsonline.tv/?search=Pol%20Pot%and%20the%20Khmer%Rouge&type=title&docinfo=397) a 3 part documentaryby Adrian Maben (2001)Biography of comrade Pol Pot, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party ofKampuchea. (https://archive.org/details/BiographyOfComradePolPotSecretaryOfTheCentralCommitteeOfThe) A pamphlet published byDemocratic Kampucheas foreign ministry


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Political offices

Preceded byKhieu Samphan

Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea19761980

Succeeded byKhieu Samphan

Preceded byNone

Director of the Higher Institute of NationalDefence

19851997

Succeeded byNone

Party political offices

Preceded byTou Samouth

General Secretary of the Communist Partyof Kampuchea

19631981

Succeeded byHimself

Party of Democratic Kampuchea

Preceded byHimself

Kampuchean Communist Party

General Secretary of the Party ofDemocratic Kampuchea

19811985

Succeeded byKhieu Samphan

Military offices

Preceded by?

Supreme Commander of the NationalArmy of Democratic Kampuchea

19801985

Succeeded bySon Sen

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pol_Pot&oldid=674256020"

Categories: Pol Pot 1925 births 1998 deaths Cambodian communists

Cambodian people convicted of murder Cambodian people of Chinese descent Cancer survivors

Cold War leaders Communist Party of Kampuchea politicians Communist rulers Khmer Rouge

People from Kampong Thom Province People of the Vietnam War Prime Ministers of Cambodia Rebels

Cambodian revolutionaries Politicians who committed suicide Revolutionaries who committed suicide

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