Along with Idi Amin, Pol Pot is one of the most brutal and hated leaders of modern history. His Khmer Rouge party was responsible for the death of between 1 and 4 million people through disease, starvation and execution. Cambodia's ruthless dictator cheated justice, died before he could answer for the atrocities committed during his unrelenting quest to create a rural Utopia. Barely 500 m inside Cambodia from Thailand, a frail, 73-year-old former dictator--known by his nom de guerre, Pol Pot--was cremated on April 17, 1998 under a pile of rubbish and rubber tires. He had died two days earlier in a two-room hut, held prisoner by former colleagues who had accused him of betraying the revolutionary movement he had once led. It was an ignominious end for a man who inscribed a merciless agenda on the psyche of two generations of Cambodians. Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot presided over a communist regime known as Democratic Kampuchea. His harsh, utopian policies, derived in part from Maoist China, drove an estimated 1.5 million Cambodians--or one in five--to their deaths from malnutrition, illness or overwork. At least 200,000 more were executed as enemies of the state. The ratio of deaths to population made the Cambodian revolution the most murderous in a century of revolutions.

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Pol Pot

Pol Pot (1925-1998) the Cambodian political leader, whose radical Khmer Rouge movement controlled the government of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Under Pol Pot’s totalitarian regime, about 1.7 million Cambodians were killed and Cambodia fell into economic ruin. Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in Kompong Thom Province. At that time Cambodia was a Buddhist kingdom under French control. His parents had royal connections: his cousin was one of King Sisovath Monivong’s wives, his sister was a consort, and his brother Loth Suong made a career in the palace. Sar had a strict, sheltered childhood. In 1934 he joined his brother at the palace compound in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, and spent a year in a royal monastery followed by six years in an elite Catholic school. In 1948 Sar went to study radio electricity in Paris, where he joined the French Communist Party. He kept company with Khieu Ponnary, the first Khmer (ethnic Cambodian) woman to receive a bachelor’s degree, and they were married in 1956. Sar’s student friends included Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, and Son Sen. Each person in the group adopted a pseudonym. Sar chose “Khmaer Da’em,” meaning “Original Cambodian,” while the others chose more modern code names such as “Free Khmer” and “Khmer Worker.” Later, in the mid-1970s, Sar adopted the pseudonym he is most widely known by: Pol Pot (which has no particular meaning).

Killing Fields

Pol Pot failed his courses in Paris and returned to Cambodia in 1953. A movement for independence from France had been gaining strength since the end of World War II (1939-1945), and Pol Pot joined the Cambodian and Vietnamese Communists who were fighting the French in a common cause. The Vietnamese taught Pol Pot how to organize peasants for resistance, but he felt that this assignment was a patronizing slight for someone raised in the palace. His resentment of the Vietnamese was exacerbated when they failed to quickly promote him to a leadership position despite his overseas experience. France granted Cambodia independence in 1953, and the government of King Norodom Sihanouk was recognized as the country’s sole legitimate authority at the Geneva Conference the next year. Pol Pot and other radicals who had fought the French alongside Vietnamese Communists went underground. Pol Pot moved to Phnom Penh and resumed working to establish a Communist government in Cambodia. Pol Pot rose in the ranks of the Workers Party of Kâmpŭchéa (later renamed the Communist Party of Kâmpŭchéa, or CPK). In February 1963 he became the CPK’s secretary general, or top leader, after his predecessor, a former Buddhist monk, mysteriously disappeared. In July 1963 Pol Pot left Phnom Penh to establish a rebel base in the mountains of northeastern Cambodia. Under his leadership, the CPK began to wage guerrilla attacks against the government in 1967. It was during this time that the Khmer Rouge — the name given to CPK members by Sihanouk—emerged as a major force. Once rural, Buddhist, moderate, and pro-Vietnamese, the Communist leadership became became urban, French-educated, radical, and anti-Vietnamese under Pol Pot’s influence.

After eight years of guerrilla warfare, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge movement took over the Cambodian government in 1975. Declaring the state of Democratic Kâmpŭchéa (DK), Pol Pot cut Cambodia off from the world. He banned foreign and minority languages and attacked the neighboring countries of Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand in an attempt to regain ancient “lost territory.” Seeking to restore the “purity” of the Khmer race (the ethnic majority in Cambodia), Pol Pot eliminated foreign-educated people (with the exception of his Paris group) and non-Khmers living in Cambodia, especially the Vietnamese. Despite food shortages, rice was exported to China along with rare wild animals in exchange for weapons. An atheist, Pol Pot suppressed Cambodia’s Buddhist religion: monks were defrocked; temples and artifacts, including statues of Buddha, were destroyed; and people praying or expressing other religious sentiments were often killed. In an effort to rebuild the powerful, agriculture-based economy of the medieval Ângkôr kingdom, the government emptied the cities through mass evacuations and sent people to the countryside. Cambodians were overworked and underfed on collective farms, often succumbing to disease or starvation as a result. Spouses were separated and family meals prohibited in order to steer loyalties toward the state instead of the family. About 1.7 million Cambodians, or about 20 percent of the population, were worked, starved, or beaten to death under Pol Pot’s regime.

"It is of no benefit to save you, it is no loss to kill you"

- Official Motto of the Khmer Rouge

The Vietnamese army overthrew Democratic Kâmpŭchéa on January 7, 1979, in retaliation for Khmer Rouge attacks on Vietnam. Pol Pot and the remnants of his forces fled to the Thai-Cambodian border and began a long campaign to retake power. In the late 1980s Pol Pot remarried and had a daughter with his second wife. In 1996 the Khmer Rouge army began to break up when Ieng Sary, Pol Pot’s brother-in-law and the former deputy prime minister of DK, defected to the Cambodian government. In 1997 Khmer Rouge leaders detained Pol Pot, staging a show trial and placing him under house arrest. Pol Pot died in April 1998; in May the Cambodian government claimed that its troops had captured the last of the Khmer Rouge’s positions along the Thai-Cambodian border.

Killing Fields

ISBN 1-84119-793-9 Constable & Robinson Ltd.

Responsible for the Killing Fields and Year Zero Pol Pot waged a gruesome war on his own population. The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country's population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. As in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide, in Nazi Germany, and more recently in East Timor, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale. Pol Pot Could Escape Judgment Through Legal Gap says that the Cambodian Khmer Rouge ''killed people for political reasons'' and notes that a loophole in the 1948 Genocide Convention omits such killings from the definition of genocide. That definition covers only attempts to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Although the killing of economic and political ''class enemies'' does not fall within this definition, the Khmer Rouge slaughtered whole villages of the Cham ethnic minority, which practices Islam, and massacred ethnic Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese. Denounced as ''leeches and bloodsuckers,'' almost all Buddhist monks were exterminated, as were Khmer Christian clergy. All these atrocities meet the legal criteria for genocide. The exact number of people who died as a result of the Khmer Rouge's policies is debated, as is the cause of death among those who died. Access to the country during Khmer Rouge rule and during Vietnamese rule was very limited. In the early 1980s, the Vietnamese-installed regime that succeeded the Khmer Rouge conducted a national household survey, which concluded that over 4.8 million had died, but most modern historians do not consider that number to be reliable. Modern research has located thousands of mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia, containing an estimated 1.39 million bodies. Various studies have estimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000, most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest from starvation and disease. The United States Department of State-funded Yale Cambodian Genocide Project gives estimates of the total death toll as 1.2 million and 1.7 million respectively. Amnesty International estimates the total death toll as 1.4 million. R. J. Rummel, an analyst of historical political killings, gives a figure of 2 million. Former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot gave a figure of 800,000, and his deputy, Khieu Samphan, said 1 million had been killed.

The Pol Pot regime had a disastrous impact on the environment of Cambodia. Extensive logging has cleared away rainforest that acted as a sponge for monsoonal rain, resulting in extensive flooding and failed crops. As Cambodia relies largely on agriculture, this has had a great impact on Cambodia's economy. As a result of the Pol Pot years, Cambodia is now one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking in the UN development index of 1998 as 140th out of 174 nations surveyed. It has a per capita income of only US$250. Over 90% of arable land in Cambodia is used in rice production- however, the destruction of infrastructure during the Pol Pot years and the fact that 35% of this land is rendered useless by land mines means that rice yields remain extremely low. This failing agriculture has a great impact on the Cambodian people, as 77% of them are employed in subsistence farming. Because of the fanatic emphasis on agriculture during Pol Pot's regime, attempts to diversify Cambodia's economy have failed. This leaves it very open to a catastrophe if something were to affect Cambodia's agriculture. The Pol Pot years have also had a great impact on the mental wellbeing of the Cambodian people. There is a high rate of depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Cambodian refugees in America have, on average, experienced 14 or 15 major "trauma events" in their lives, ranging from beatings to starvation to witnesses the execution or rape of a family member. Because of their war experiences, Cambodians tend to age prematurely, and often develop ailments like diabetes ten years younger than most people. There is division over whether the best way into the future is to confront their past, or to "dig a hole and bury the past" as Prime Minister Hun Sen has suggested. There is also widespread fear at the possible return of the Khmer Rouge.

Pol Pot's regime has had a lasting impact on Cambodia. The after-effects of the "Killing Fields" of 1975-1978 will most likely last well into the 21st Century, and Cambodia may well never fully recover from the wounds they sustained during this time.

He combined the austerity of Buddha, the extremism of Robespierre and the leadership doctrine of Stalin. Follow the brutal reign of Pol Pot, the Communist dictator who ruled Cambodia in the mid-1970s, and trace the violent, bizarre development of his supposed agrarian utopia. From the at-gunpoint evacuation of the country's cities to the abolition of modern technology, art and religion to the extermination of nearly one-third of the nation's population, no one was safe under Pot's rule. The Killing Fields is known literally as the killing fields because the soldiers would lead groups of people away from the camp to a secluded spot, sometimes a field or a clearing in the forest, and then the soldiers would kill the people. The soldiers either used bullets or clubs and bash the skull in to kill the people. Some off Pol Pot's family members have died in the killing fields too. Saloth Nhep, his brother said "We simply loved each other." He didn't know that most of the world viewed his brother as a monster(Pol Pot' relatives). The Killing Fields were the crimes took place were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the totalitarian communist Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979 (see Cambodian genocide). At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge (while estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million). In 1979 Vietnam invaded and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime, which was officially called Democratic Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge judicial process, for minor or political crimes, began with a warning from the Angkar, the government of Cambodia under the regime. People receiving more than two warnings were sent for "re-education", which meant near-certain death. People were often encouraged to confess to Angkar their "pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes" (which usually included some kind of free-market activity, or having had contact with a foreign source, such as a US missionary, or international relief or government agency, or contact with any foreigner or with the outside world at all), being told that Angkar would forgive them and "wipe the slate clean". This meant being taken away to a place such as Tuol Sleng or Choeung Ek for torture and/or execution. The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families. The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals. Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Thai, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Chams (Muslim Cambodians), Cambodian Christians, and the Buddhist monkhood were the demographic targets of persecution.

Will the Khmer Rouge get away with murder? Nearly 2 million people died in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 in a Khmer Rouge reign of terror. Not a single person has ever been brought to trial for this genocide. "I came on a journey to Cambodia to find out why there's been no public reckoning," says FRONTLINE/World reporter and Pew Fellow in International Journalism Amanda Pike. She discovers a country still haunted by the ghosts of those who died -- a country that does not know whether to confront or bury its violent past. In a village a few miles outside the capital Phnom Penh, Pike meets a woman, Samrith Phum, whose husband was taken away one night in 1977 and executed as an alleged CIA spy. Today, the man Samrith holds responsible for her husband's murder lives just down the road, where he runs a noodle shop. This is a pattern across the country: the families of genocide victims live side by side with their former executioners and tormentors. Cambodia's descent into hell began in the 1970s when the Vietnam War spilled across the border. The United States bombed Cambodia relentlessly. Out of the chaos, a small, hardcore band of Maoists, the Khmer Rouge, took control of the country. They emptied the cities, marching people off to rural work camps, and turned back the calendar to Year Zero. In an effort to create a primitive agrarian utopia, the Khmer Rouge purged the country of everything foreign or modern. They outlawed books, money and medicine. They began mass executions. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and his army were driven from power in 1979 by the Vietnamese, but retreated to the countryside and fought a civil war until 1998. As part of a peace agreement, the Khmer Rouge were granted control over Pailin, a semiautonomous zone along the border with Thailand. Pike sets out on a journey to Pailin to find and confront the highest-ranking surviving member of the Khmer Rouge, the secretive and elusive Nuon Chea, "Brother Number Two." Nuon Chea knew this day would come. As the most senior leader of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge regime still alive, he had years to prepare for his eventual arrest. Shortly after dawn on Wednesday, Sept. 19, Cambodian military police and police special forces surrounded his small wooden home on the outskirts of Pailin, in the country's northwest, where the aging revolutionary had lived in quiet retirement with his wife since surrendering to the government in 1998.

After reading an arrest warrant, taking fingerprints and conducting a quick search of his home, officers took the 82-year-old to a waiting helicopter for a flight to Phnom Penh. By late morning he was deposited at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia — the U.N.-backed tribunal established last year to prosecute those most responsible for the atrocities committed under the Khmer Rouge's ruthless leader, Pol Pot. Speaking to a reporter the previous evening, Nuon Chea said he knew his arrest was imminent and he had already packed a bag for prison: Five shirts, a few pairs of trousers and an array of medication for some nagging health problems. "I gave my shirts to be washed and ironed," he said. "I want to wear nice clothes in Phnom Penh. I don't want people to look down on me." As the helicopter ascended into the morning sky over Pailin, which remained a Khmer Rouge stronghold until the mid-1990s, groups of local villagers raised their arms to bid their former leader goodbye and to wish him good luck in his trial ahead. Once known by his revolutionary nom de guerre Brother Number Two, Nuon Chea was Pol Pot's deputy between 1975 and 1979, when an estimated 2 million people died as their regime strove to rebuild Cambodia as an ideologically pure, agrarian society. Thousands of mass graves containing the bones of those executed by the regime, and those who simply died of starvation and disease, dot the Cambodian countryside. "Today, 19 September 2007, the Co-Investigating Judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia have charged Nuon Chea for crimes against humanity and war crimes and have placed him in provisional detention," the investigating judges said in a statement on Wednesday evening. Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, the country's largest repository of information on the Khmer Rouge, says Nuon Chea's arrest was a milestone for the tribunal, which has come under criticism over the slow pace of its investigation and suspicions of government interference. "It appears that trust in the court has been restored among the public. And that is very important," Youk Chhang says. "It's a big step." Nuon Chea is only the second Khmer Rouge leader to be charged by the tribunal. On July 31, the court charged its first suspect, Kaing Guek Eav, better know as Duch, with crimes against humanity for his role as commander of S-21, a Khmer Rouge prison and torture center. During Pol Pot's rule, an estimated 14,000 people passed through S-21, where they were interrogated, tortured and later executed. Arrested in 1999, Duch alleged in an interview at that time that he had worked closely with Nuon Chea and that Brother Number Two had intimate knowledge of the successive waves of purges undertaken by the regime. In the Khmer Rouge chain of command, Duch likened his role at S-21 to a functionary that did the bidding of his masters — including Nuon Chea. "I was like a waterboy for Nuon Chea," Duch said at the time. The tribunal's judges say they have three more Khmer Rouge suspects in their sights, and a court official said that the trials of those charged could begin in early 2008. Awaiting his fate, Nuon Chea has so far remained unrepentant. He has said in the past that the mass killings were "not a policy" of the Khmer Rouge regime, and will admit only that "mistakes" were made under his former boss, Pol Pot. Revolution, he told TIME during an interview in 2004, is like childbirth: "At first there is much blood, but after there is a beautiful baby."

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do da
written by Pol Pot, August 07, 2009

wow!!!!!!!

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