Cambodian politician and prime minister (19769), born in Kompong Thom Province, C Cambodia. He was active in the anti-French resistance under Ho Chi-Minh, and in 1964 joined the pro-Chinese Communist Party. He then studied in Paris (194953), worked as a teacher (195463), and became leader of the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, defeating Lon Nol's military goverment in 1976. As prime minister, he set up a totalitarian regime which caused the death, imprisonment, or exile of around 2 million. Overthrown in 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, he withdrew to the mountains to lead the Khmer Rouge forces. He announced his retirement in 1985, but continued to be an influential figure within the movement. He defected from the Khmer Rouge in 1996. Later he was blamed as sole perpetrator of genocide, and in 1997 he was captured by his former comrades. After a show trial deep in the Cambodian jungle he died while still in captivity, having been condemned to life imprisonment.
|
|
|
|
In office April 17, 1975 – 1979 |
|
| Born |
May 19, 1925 Kampong Thum Province, Cambodia |
| Died |
April 16, 1998 Cambodia |
| Political party | Khmer Rouge |
| Profession | Politician |
Saloth Sar (May 19, 1925 – April 16, 1998), better known as Pol Pot, was the ruler of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia (officially Democratic Kampuchea during his rule) from 1976 to 1979, having been de facto leader since mid-1975. During his time in power Pol Pot instigated an aggressive policy of relocating people to the countryside in an attempt to purify the Cambodian people as a step toward a communist future. In 1979, he led Cambodia into a disastrous war with Vietnam which led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge government.
Biography
Early Life (1925-1961)
Pol Pot was born in Prek Sbauv in Kampong Thum Province to a rather wealthy family.
After the Soviet Union recognized the Viet Minh as the government of Vietnam in 1950, French Communists (PCF) took up the cause of Vietnam's independence. The PCF's anti-colonialism attracted many young Cambodians including Pol Pot. Within a few months, Pol Pot also joined the PCF. Historian Philip Short has said that Pol Pot's poor academic record was a considerable advantage within the anti-intellectual PCF and helped him to quickly establish a leadership role for himself among the Cercle Marxiste. He recommended the Viet Minh, and in August 1953, Pol Pot along with Rath Samoeun travelled to the Viet Minh Eastern Zone headquarters in the village of Krabao at the Kompong Cham/Prey Veng border area of Cambodia.
Pol Pot and the others found that the People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (PRPK) was little more than a Vietnamese front organization. The other group, including Pol Pot, returned to Cambodia. Pol Pot then married Khieu Ponnary, the sister of Ieng Thirith, in 1956.
After Cambodian independence following the 1954 Geneva Conference, right and left wing parties struggled against each other for power in the new government.
After his return to Phnom Penh, Pol Pot became the liaison between the above-ground parties of the left (Democrats and Pracheachon) and the underground communist movement. Pol Pot later took a job teaching French literature and history at a private school.
The Path to Rebellion (1962-1968)
In January 1962, the government of Cambodia rounded up most of the leadership of the far-left Pracheachon party ahead of parliamentary elections due in June. The arrests created a situation where Pol Pot could become the de facto deputy leader of the party. When Ton Samouth was murdered, Pol Pot became the acting leader of the communist party. In March 1963, Pol Pot went into hiding after his name was published in a list of leftist suspects put together by the police for Sihanouk.
In early 1964, Pol Pot convinced the Vietnamese to help the Cambodian Communists set up their own base camp. In the border camps, the ideology of the Khmer Rouge was gradually developed.
After another wave of repression by Sihanouk in 1965, the Khmer Rouge movement under Pol Pot rapidly grew.
In April 1965, Pol Pot went to North Vietnam in order to gain approval for a uprising in Cambodia against the government.
After returning to Cambodia in 1966, Pol Pot organized a party meeting where a number of important decisions were made. Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge was caught by surprise by the uprisings and was unable to take any real advantage of them.
In the spring of 1967, Pol Pot decided to launch a national uprising in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot decided to launch the uprising even after North Vietnam refused to assist it in any real way. The attack was driven off by the army, but the Khmer Rouge had captured a number of weapons and were able to drive the police out of surrounding villages with the weapons.
By the summer of 1968, Pol Pot began to transition from a party leader working with a collective leadership into the absolutist leader of the Khmer Rouge movement. In the middle of the year Pol Pot called a party conference and decided on a change in propaganda strategy. Up to 1969, the Khmer Rouge had been very anti-Sihanouk. In November, Pol Pot went again to Hanoi to ask for direct support of the Khmer Rouge. The Vietnamese turned down both requests which created a very bad impression with Pol Pot.
The road to power for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was opened by the events of January 1970 in Cambodia.
The North Vietnamese reacted to the political changes in Cambodia by sending Premier Pham Van Dong to meet Sihanouk in China and recruit him into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was also contacted by the Vietnamese who now offered him whatever resources he wanted for his insurgency against the Cambodian government. Pol Pot and Sihanouk were actually in Beijing at the same time but the Vietnamese and Chinese leaders never informed Sihanouk of the presence of Pol Pot or allowed the two men to meet. Shortly after, Sihanouk issued an appeal by radio to the people of Cambodia to rise up against the government and support the Khmer Rouge. In May 1970, Pol Pot finally returned to Cambodia and the pace of the insurgency greatly increased. In these battles the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot played a very small role.
In October 1970, Pol Pot issued a resolution in the name of the Central Committee. This was the first statement of the anti-Vietnamese/self sufficiency at all costs ideology that would be a part of the Pol Pot regime when it took power years later.
Through 1971, the Vietnamese (North Vietnamese and Viet Cong) did most of the fighting against the Cambodian government while Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge functioned almost as auxiliaries to their forces. Pol Pot took advantage of the situation to gather in new recruits and to train them to a higher standard than previously was possible. Pol Pot also put many of the Khmer Rouge organizations resources into political education and indoctrination. While accepting anyone regardless of background into the Khmer Rouge army at this time, Pol Pot greatly increased the requirements for membership in the party. These restrictions were ironic in that most of the senior party leadership including Pol Pot came from student and middle peasant backgrounds.
In early 1972, Pol Pot toured the insurgent/Vietnamese controlled areas and Cambodia. He saw a regular Khmer Rouge army of 35,000 men taking shape supported by around 100,000 irregulars. China was supplying five million dollars a year in weapons and Pol Pot had organized an independent revenue source for the party in the form of rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia using forced labor.
After a central committee meeting in May 1972, the party under the direction of Pol Pot began to enforce new levels of discipline and conformity in areas under their control. A haphazard version of land reform was undertaken by Pol Pot.
In 1972, the Vietnamese army forces began to withdraw from the fighting against the Cambodian government. They handed over the fighting to the Khmer Rouge army they had helped to train.
Pol Pot issued a new set of decrees in May 1973 which started the process of reorganizing peasant villages into cooperatives where property was jointly owned and individual possessions banned.
The Khmer Rouge advanced during 1973. After they reached the edges of Phnom Phen, Pol Pot issued orders during the peak of the rainy season that the city be taken. The orders led to futile attacks and wasted lives among the Khmer Rouge army. By the middle of 1973, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot controlled almost two-thirds of the country and half the population. Vietnam realized that it no longer controlled the situation and began to treat Pol Pot as more of an equal leader than a junior partner.
In the fall of 1973, Pol Pot made strategic decisions about the future of the war. The second decision was to enforce tight command on people trying to leave the city through the Khmer Rouge lines. The city people were considered almost a disease that needed to be contained so that it not infect the areas run by the Khmer Rouge. A set of new prisons was also constructed in Khmer Rouge run areas. While the uprising was quickly crushed, Pol Pot ordered that harsh physical torture be used against most of those involved in the revolt. As previously, Pol Pot tested out harsh new policies against the Cham minority before extending them to the general population of the country.
The Khmer Rouge had also created a policy of evacuating urban areas to the countryside. When the Khmer Rouge took the town Kratie in 1971, Pol Pot and other members of the party were shocked at how fast the liberated urban areas shook off socialism and went back to the old ways. In 1973, out of total frustration, Pol Pot decided that the only solution was to send the entire population of the town to the fields in the countryside. Shortly after, Pol Pot ordered the evacuation of the 15,000 people of Kompong Cham for the same reasons. The Khmer Rouge then moved on in 1974 to evacuate the larger city of Oudong.
Internationally, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were able to gain the recognition of 63 countries as the true government of Cambodia. A move was made at the United Nations to give the seat for Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge.
In September 1974, Pol Pot gathered the central committee of the party together. As the military campaign was moving toward a conclusion, Pol Pot decided to move the party toward implementing a socialist transformation of the country in the form of a series of decisions. The final decision was the party's acceptance of Pol Pot's first major purge. In 1974, Pol Pot had purged a top party official named Prasith. Pol Pot offered as explanation that the class struggle had become acute and that a strong stand had to be made against the enemies of the party.
The Khmer Rouge were positioned for a final offensive against the government in January 1975. At the same time, Sihanouk in Beijing proudly announced, at a press event, Pol Pot's "death list" of enemies to be killed after victory. North Vietnam, as the rival socialist country in Indochina, was determined to take Saigon before the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh.
In April 1975, the government formed a Supreme National Council with new leadership, with the aim of negotiating a surrender to the Khmer Rouge. It was headed by Sak Sutsakhan who had studied in France with Pol Pot and was cousin to the Khmer Rouge Deputy Secretary Nuon Chea. Pol Pot's reaction to this was to add the names of everyone involved to his post-victory death list.
Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979)
The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. Pol Pot also drew up death lists of former government officials who were to be executed on sight.
Out of a population of approximately 8 million, Pol Pot's regime exterminated one quarter, or almost 2 million people. The Khmer Rouge targeted Buddhist monks, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who had contact with Western countries, people who appeared to be intelligent (for example, individuals with glasses), the crippled and lame, and ethnic minorities like ethnic Laotians and Vietnamese.
Immediately after the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge began to implement radical reforms following their own ideology and placed the former king, Norodom Sihanouk, in a purely figurehead role. The Khmer Rouge ordered the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh and all other recently captured major towns and cities.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been evacuating captured urban areas for many years. Those operations were aimed at moving people deeper into Khmer Rouge territory to better control them. Pol Pot and the other senior leaders were frustrated that urban Cambodians were retaining old habits like trade and business.
The ideological basis of the evacuations was largely unique to Cambodia and the evolution of the ideology of the Khmer Rouge. To solve this ideological problem, Pol Pot and the rest of the leadership adopted the non-Marxist idea that peasants were the true working class. This, combined with the fact that Pol Pot and most of the other senior party members themselves had no working class experience (unlike Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh) led to an idealisation of peasant life in Cambodian Communism.
In 1976, people were reclassified as full-rights (base) people, candidates and depositees - so called because they included most of the new people who had been deposited from the cities into the communes.
The Khmer Rouge leadership boasted over the state-controlled radio that only one or two million people were needed to build the new agrarian communist utopia. Then the Khmer Rouge soldiers beat them to death with iron bars and hoes or buried them alive. A Khmer Rouge extermination prison directive ordered, "Bullets are not to be wasted."
The Khmer Rouge also classified by religion and ethnic group. These policies had been implemented in less severe forms for many years previous to the Khmer Rouge taking power. The Khmer Rouge refused offers of humanitarian aid, a decision which proved to be a humanitarian catastrophe: millions 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. Pol Pot's regime was extremely paranoid.
The casualty list from the civil war, Pol Pot's consolidation of power, and the later intervention by Vietnam is disputed. Credible Western and Eastern sources put the death toll of the Khmer Rouge at 1.6 million. Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot, who could be expected to give underestimations, cited figures of 1 million and 800,000, respectively. The CIA estimate was not a comprehensive estimate of deaths in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
Pol Pot espoused a mixture of radical ideologies, the so-called "Anka" Doctrine, adapted to Khmer nationalism. Envisaging a primitive egalitarian agrarianism, the Khmer Rouge favored a temporary return to a completely agrarian society to the point that all modern technological contrivances were banned except when approved by the inner party leadership. Pol Pot aligned the country politically with the People's Republic of China and adopted an anti-Soviet line. China had been supplying the Khmer Rouge with weapons for years before they took power.
In 1976, Sihanouk was placed under house arrest and Pol Pot became Prime Minister and the official Cambodian head of state, with colleague Khieu Samphan as President.
In December 1976, Pol Pot issued directives to the senior leadership to the effect that Vietnam was now an enemy. Pol Pot's actions were in response to the Vietnamese Communist Party's fourth Congress which approved a resolution describing Vietnam's special relationship with Laos and Cambodia.
Vietnam offered Pol Pot a deal in February where it would return refugees to Cambodia but the deal was rejected. In attemping to explain Pol Pot's behavior, 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. In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge commanders in the Eastern Zone began to tell their men that war with Vietnam was inevitable and that once the war started their goal would be to recover parts of Vietnam (Khmer Krom) which had long ago been part of a Cambodian empire. It is not clear if these statements were the official policy of Pol Pot. Three days after the raid, Pol Pot officially announced the existence of the formerly secret Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and finally announced to the world that the country was a Communist state. The raid was meant to be secret, but as the Vietnamese withdrew, Pol Pot announced to the world the Vietnamese actions and claimed that the Vietnamese had been defeated and driven back. Pol Pot's actions made the operation much more visible than the Vietnamese had intended and created a situation which falsely made Vietnam look weak.
After making one final attempt to negotiate a settlement with Cambodia, Vietnam decided that it had to prepare for a full war.
In late 1978, in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge.
The Cambodian army was defeated, and Pol Pot fled to the Thai border area. In January 1979, Vietnam installed a new government under Heng Samrin, composed of Khmer Rouge who had fled to Vietnam to avoid the purges. Pol Pot eventually regrouped with his core supporters in the Thai border area where he received shelter and assistance. The military government of Thailand used the Khmer Rouge as a buffer force to keep the Vietnamese away from the border. The Thai military also made money from the shipment of weapons from China to the Khmer Rouge. Eventually Pol Pot was able to rebuild a small military force in the west of the country with the help of the People's Republic of China.
In the following years, the Vietnamese made attempts to suppress Pol Pot's remaining forces, but never sought to destroy them. Vietnam used the existence of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge forces to justify their continued military occupation of the country. They had no interest in destroying the Khmer Rouge because they were useful to Vietnam's overall plans for Cambodia.
After the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by the Vietnamese in 1979, the Western powers refused to allow Vietnam's puppet régime to take the seat of Cambodia at the United Nations. The seat, by default, remained in the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Various countries considered that however bad allowing the Khmer Rouge to hold on to the seat was, recognizing Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia was worse. Also, from a western point of view, both claimants to the seat were Khmer Rouge governments. Vietnam's Cambodian government was formed from ex-Khmer Rouge cadres. Despite this, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge remained the best-trained and most capable of the three insurgent groups who, despite sharply divergent ideologies, had formed the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) alliance three years earlier. China continued to funnel extensive military aid to the Khmer Rouge, and critics of U.S. foreign policy claimed that the U.S. was indirectly sponsoring the Khmer Rouge due to U.S. assistance given the CGDK in keeping control of the United Nations "seat" of Cambodia. The U.S. refused to recognize the Cambodian government installed by the army of Vietnam or to recognize any Cambodian government operating while Cambodia was under the military occupation of Vietnam.
In 1984, Pol Pot was diagnosed as having Hodgkin's disease in Bangkok. A 22 year old female cadre from a transport unit was selected by the Eastern Zone commander and sent to Pol Pot. In December, the Vietnamese launched a major offensive and overran most of the Khmer Rouge and other insurgent positions.
Pol Pot fled to Thailand where he lived for the next six years.
Pol Pot officially resigned from the party in 1985, but continued as de facto Khmer Rouge leader and dominant force within the anti-Vietnam alliance. Opponents of the Khmer Rouge claimed that they were sometimes acting in an inhumane manner in territory controlled by the alliance but none of the forces fighting in Cambodia could be said to have clean hands. Shortly after, Pol Pot moved to China for medical treatment for cancer. The Khmer Rouge established a new stronghold area in the west near the Thai border and Pol Pot relocated back into Cambodia from Thailand. Pol Pot refused to cooperate with the peace process, and kept fighting the new coalition government. The Khmer Rouge view was that Hun Sen had no intention of sharing power let alone giving it up. The Khmer Rouge kept the government forces 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 negotiations with the organization as a whole failed. In 1995 Pol Pot experienced a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body.
Pol Pot ordered the execution of his life-long right-hand man Son Sen on June 10, 1997 for attempting to make a settlement with the government. Eleven members of his family were killed also, although Pol Pot later denied that he had ordered this. He then fled his northern stronghold, but was later arrested by Khmer Rouge military Chief Ta Mok. On the night of April 15, 1998 the Voice of America, of which Pol Pot was a devoted listener, announced that the Khmer Rouge had agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. Despite government requests to inspect the body, it was cremated a few days later in the Khmer Rouge zone. Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare (British edition). Published in the US under the title: Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare" ^ Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls.
User Comments Add a comment…