Pol Pot (Prime Minister of Cambodia, between 1975-1979)

Pol Pot, who become responsible for the deaths of over two million of his own people, was born Saloth Sar on May 19, 1928, near Anlong Veng, in a small Cambodian village about 140 kilometers north of Phnom Penh, the second son of a successful landowner. Pot's father had political connections at the royal court at the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. At age six he went to live with his brother at the Royal household in Phnom Penh. Here he learned Buddhist precepts and discipline. At age eight he went to a Catholic primary school, where he remained for six years. It was here that he picked up the basics of Western culture, as well as the French language. Pol Pot was a poor student.

In 1949, Pol Pot went to study in Paris on a government scholarship. It was here that he got his introduction to Communism, joining the French Communist Party. After four years of exposure to Stalinist Communism he returned to Cambodia in 1953. Within a month he had joined the Communist resistance, becoming a member of the Indochina Communist Party (IHC) which was dominated by the Viet Minh. After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot drifted into the Vietnamese-influenced "United Khmer Issarak (Freedom) Front" of Cambodian Communists.

The 1954 Cambodian elections saw the Communists throw in support with the Democrats. The Democrats were soundly defeated, however, by the incumbent Government of Prince Sihanouk who now held absolute power. Pol Pot now took up a post as a teacher in a private college. He also spent his time recruiting the educated classes to the Communist cause. The Government, however, began a Communist crackdown and Pol Pot was forced to flee to the Jungles near the Vietnam border to avoid arrest. For the next seven years he would spend his time in the Cambodian jungle hiding from the police.

In September 1960 Pol Pot and a handful of followers met secretly at the Phnom Penh railroad station to found the "Workers Party of Kampuchéa" (WPK). Samouth was named secretary general. By 1963 Pol Pot had replaced Samouth as party secretary, and Samouth later disappeared under mysterious circumstances. For the next thirteen years Pol Pot and other WPK members disappeared from public view and set up their party organization in a remote forest area.
In September 1960 Pol Pot and a handful of followers met secretly at the Phnom Penh railroad station to found the "Workers Party of Kampuchéa" (WPK). Samouth was named secretary general. 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 newspapers and other publications of the party were also closed. This event effectively ended any above-ground political role for the communist movement in Cambodia.

In July 1962, the underground communist party secretary Tou Samouth was arrested and later killed while in custody. The arrests created a situation where Saloth could become the de facto deputy leader of the party. When Tou Samouth was murdered, Saloth became the acting leader of the communist party. By 1963 Pol Pot had replaced Samouth as party secretary, and Samouth later disappeared under mysterious circumstances. For the next thirteen years Pol Pot and other WPK members disappeared from public view and set up their party organization in a remote forest area.

In early 1964, Saloth convinced the Vietnamese to help the Cambodian Communists set up their own base camp. The central committee of the party met later that year and issued a declaration calling for armed struggle. The declaration also emphasized the idea of "self-reliance" in the sense of extreme Cambodian nationalism. In the border camps, the ideology of the Khmer Rouge was gradually developed. The party, breaking with Marxism, declared rural peasant farmers to be the true working class proletarian and the lifeblood of the revolution.

In April 1965, Saloth went to North Vietnam to gain approval for an uprising in Cambodia against the government. North Vietnam refused to support any uprising because of agreements being negotiated with the Cambodian government. Sihanouk promised to allow the Vietnamese to use Cambodian territory and Cambodian ports in their war against South Vietnam.

In early 1966 fighting broke out in the countryside between peasants and the government over the price paid for rice. Saloth's Khmer Rouge was caught by surprise by the uprisings and was unable to take any real advantage of them. But the government's refusal to find a peaceful solution to the problem created rural unrest that played into the hands of the Communist movement.

It was not until early 1967 that Saloth decided to launch a national uprising, even after North Vietnam refused to assist it in any real way. The uprising was launched on January 18, 1968 with a raid on an army base south of Battambang. The Battambang area had already seen two years of great peasant unrest. The attack was driven off by the army, but the Khmer Rouge had captured a number of weapons, which were then used to drive police forces out of Cambodian villages.

By the summer of 1968, Saloth began the transition from a party leader working with a collective leadership into the absolutist leader of the Khmer Rouge movement. Where before he had shared communal quarters with other leaders, he now had his own compound with a personal staff and a troop of guards. Outsiders were no longer allowed to approach him. Rather, people were summoned into his presence by his staff.

In December 1969 and January 1970 Pol Pot and other CPK leaders prepared to take down Sihanouk. But the military in Phnom Penh beat them to it, overthrowing Sihanouk in March 1970 and bringing Lon Nol to the Cambodian presidency. In October 1970, Saloth issued a resolution in the name of the Central Committee. The resolution stated the principle of independence mastery which was a call for Cambodia to decide its own future independent of the influence of any other country. The resolution also included statements describing the betrayal of the Cambodian Communist movement in the 1950s by the Viet Minh. 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.

Over the ensuing years the communists bided their time as they built up their strength for a take-over attempt. They were bolstered by the North Vietnamese who were waging warfare against the Cambodian Government. A major Vietnamese victory in 1971 allowed the Communists to take control of certain areas of the country. In early 1972, Saloth 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 Saloth had organised an independent revenue source for the party in the form of rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia using forced labour.

In 1973 the communists launched a major attack on the Government but this was halted by American bombing. In September 1974, Saloth gathered the central committee of the party together. As the military campaign was moving toward a conclusion, Saloth decided to move the party toward implementing a socialist transformation of the country in the form of a series of decisions. The first one was that after their victory, the main cities of the country would be evacuated with the population moved to the countryside. The second was that money would cease to be put into circulation and quickly be phased out. The final decision was the party's acceptance of Saloth's first major purge. In 1974, Saloth had purged a top party official named Prasith. Prasith was taken out into a forest and shot without any chance to defend himself. His death was followed by a purge of cadres who, like Prasith, were ethnically Thai. Saloth 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.

A final Communist assault began on January 1, 1975. This time they were victorious. On April 17, Communist forces entered Phnom Penh. Within 24 hours they had ordered the entire city evacuated. This process was repeated in other cities resulting in more than 2 million Cambodians being forced out of their homes. Many of them starved to death.

Pol Pot was now Prime Minister of Cambodia, which he promptly renamed Kampuchea. In August, 1976 he unveiled his Four Year Plan, which detailed the collectivisation of agriculture, the nationalization of industry and the financing of the economy through increased agricultural exports. This plan caused untold misery to the nation with many thousands dying in the paddy fields. Crops needed to feed the population were marked for export. Malnutrition was rampant, made worse by the Communist insistence on traditional Cambodian medicine. Pol Pot also started the infamous S-21 interrogation center where more than 20,000 men, women and children were tortured to death.

Throughout 1976 and ’77 skirmishes with Vietnam continued. In December 1977 The Vietnamese made real inroads in Kampuchea. Pol Pot, however, held on for another year. Although opposition to Pol Pot was growing among party members, his visits to China and North Korea in September and October 1977 increased his standing among other Asian Communist leaders, even as fighting with Vietnamese border forces grew worse.
In late 1978, in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam attacked Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, which Vietnam could justify on the basis of self-defense.

By January, 1979 the Vietnamese forces had actually reached Phnom Penh. They regrouped and established an underground government in western Cambodia and in the Cardamom mountain range. In July 1979 Pol Pot was sentenced to death in absentia (without him being present) for the murder of his own people. The sentence was issued by the new government of the "People's Republic of Kampuchéa," installed with the help of Vietnamese forces. With world attention focused on Cambodia, Pol Pot stepped down as DK prime minister in December 1979. However, he remained as party secretary general and as head of the CPK's military commission, making him the overall commander of the DK's thirty-thousand-man force battling the Vietnamese in Cambodia.
The Kampuchean Government fled by train while Pol Pot was taken by helicopter to Thailand. His last public appearance was an interview in December 1979.

By mid-1980s, with the cooperation of the West and China, the Khmer Rouge had grown to about 35 to 50 thousand troops and committed cadres.
Phnom Malai was the location where in 1981 Pol Pot made his famous declarations denying guilt for the brutalities of the organisation he led:

       "Pol Pot] said that he knows that many people in the country hate him and think he’s responsible for the killings. He said that he knows many people died. When he said this he nearly broke down and cried. He said he must accept responsibility because the line was too far to the left, and because he didn’t keep proper track of what was going on. He said he was like the master in a house he didn’t know what the kids were up to, and that he trusted people too much. For example, he allowed [one person] to take care of central committee business for him, [another person] to take care of intellectuals, and [a third person] to take care of political education.... These were the people to whom he felt very close, and he trusted them completely. Then in the end ... they made a mess of everything.... They would tell him things that were not true, that everything was fine, that this person or that was a traitor. In the end they were the real traitors. The major problem had been cadres formed by the Vietnamese."

Little was known of Pol Pot's activities after that. In September 1985 the DK announced that Pol Pot had retired as commander of the DK's "National Army" and had been appointed to be "Director of the Higher Institute for National Defense."

In 1986, his new wife Mea Son gave birth to a daughter, Sitha, named after an experimental form of North Vietnamese cookery. Shortly after, Pol Pot moved to China for medical treatment for cancer of the face. He remained there until 1988.

In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. 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 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. In July he was subjected to a show trial for the death of Son Sen and sentenced to lifelong house arrest

After several years of living underground, Pol Pot was finally captured in June 1997. The Khmer Rouge had suffered from internal conflicts in recent years and finally split into opposing forces, the largest of which joined with the government of Cambodia under Sihanouk and hunted down their former leader. Pol Pot was sentenced to life in prison. For the next 19 years he remained in exile in the Thai jungle. While under house arrest, he died of heart failure on April 15, 1998. According to his wife, he died in his bed later in the night while waiting to be moved to another location.