Pol
Pot, Brother No. 1 in the Khmer Rouge regime, is a name that sends
shivers down the spines of most Cambodians and foreigners alike. It is Pol
Pot who is most associated with the bloody madness of the regime he led between
1975 and 1979, and his policies heaped misery, suffering and death on millions
of Cambodians. Even after being overthrown in 1979 he cast a long shadow
over the Cambodian people: for many of them, just knowing he was still alive was
traumatic and unjust. He died on 15 April 1998.
Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar in a small village near Kompong Thom in 1925.
He had a relatively privileged upbringing and his education included,
ironically, some time in a wat (Buddhist temple monastery). As a young man
he won a scholarship to study in Paris and spent several years there with leng
Sary, who would later become foreign minister of Democratic Kampuchea. It
is here that he is believed to have developed his radical Marxist thought, later
to transform in to the politics of extreme Maoist agrarianism. back in
Cambodia, Saloth Sar became a school teacher, entering politics in the late
1950's. Very little is known about his early political career.
During the 1960's Sihanouk switched from friend of the left to foe and back
again, but in 1963 his repressive policies sent Saloth Sar and comrades fleeing
to the jungles of Ratannakiri. It was from this time that he began to call
himself Pol Pot, although it was not for a number of years that anyone would
make the connection between the one-time teacher and the leader of Democratic
Kampuchea. Once the Khmer Rouge was allied with Sihanouk, following his
overthrow by Lon Nol in 1970 and subsequent exile in Beijing, its support soared
and the faces of the leadership became familiar. However, Pol Pot remained
a shadowy figure in the hierarchy, leaving the public duties to Khieu Samphan
and leng Sary.
When the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, few people
could have anticipated the hell that was to come. Pol Pot, with the help
of others, was the architect of one of the most radical and brutal revolutions
in the history of mankind. Proclaimed as Year Zero, Cambodia was on a
self-destructive course to sever all ties with the past.
Pol Pot was not to emerge as the public face of the revolution until the end
of 1976, after returning from a trip to his mentors in Beijing. During his
leadership he spent much of his time living in Phnom Penh, moving from residence
to residence, paranoid about his security. He granted almost no interviews
to foreign media and was seen only on propaganda movies produced by government
television and on the occasional broadcast by Yugoslav journalists.
Curiously enough, however, those who did meet Pol Pot during this period
described him as a genial and charismatic man. Such was his aura and
reputation that by the last year of the regime a cult of personality was
developing around him and busts were produced.
He was fervently anti-Vietnamese, a sentiment fuelled by the pivotal role the
Vietnamese played in arming and advising the Khmer Rouge during its jungle
years. It was the Vietnamese that called the shots in the early days of
the guerrilla war, something that rankled a fiercely patriotic Pol Pot. He
was never to forget that the Vietnamese considered the Cambodian revolution of
secondary importance to their own. Ironically, it was the Vietnamese that
turned out to be his greatest enemy, invading Cambodia on 25 December 1978 and
overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government on 7 January 1979. Pol Pot and his
supporters were sent fleeing to the jungle near the Thai border, from where they
spent the next decade launching attacks on government positions in Cambodia.
(wife
& Daughter) Pol Pot spent much of the 1980's living in an armed compound in Thailand, and
with the connivance of both China and the West was able to rebuild his shattered
forces and once again threaten the stability of Cambodia. It is thought he
stepped down as nominal head of the Khmer Rouge in 1985, but no doubt continued
to call the shots from behind the scenes as he had done in the earliest days of
the revolution. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's his enigma increased as
the international media speculated as to the real fate of Pol Pot. His
demise was reported so often that when he finally passed away on 15 April 1998
many Cambodians refused to believe it until they had seen his body on television
or in newspapers. Even then many were skeptical.
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Pol Pot is a name known throughout the world, yet little is known about the
man himself. Even the author of his biography Brother Number One,
Cambodia expert David Chandler, could not find more than 200 pages to write
about the man. He granted an interview to journalist Nate Thanyer in 1997,
but this was far from revealing as he disclaimed all responsibility for the
excesses of his regime.
It would be equally misleading to put together a
portrait of the man from Khmer Rouge sources now living in Piling, as it
is all
too easy to blame a dead man for the horrors of their rule. The truth
about many episodes in his life will now never be known: he has carried his
secrets to the grave.
-Lonely planet Cambodia
Masters of the killing fields
BBC News : Friday, 24 July, 1998, 12:00 GMT
13:00 UK
The Khmer Rouge
today: Demoralized and faction-ridden
By regional analyst Joe
Havely:
Twenty-three years ago, time
began again in Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge and their
infamous leader, Pol Pot, had taken power. "Year Zero" had
begun.
Money, private property,
education and religion were abolished and Cambodia's towns and
cities were emptied as the population was forced into massive,
unworkable agricultural collectives.
This was the era of the
Killing Fields in which more than a million people would lose
their lives.
Opponents of the ultimate
aim of restoring Cambodia's medieval greatness were deemed
enemies of the state and dealt with accordingly.
Secretive organization
Workers in the infamous Killing Fields
|
The Khmer Rouge have always
been a shadowy and secretive organization.
The name itself was coined
by their enemies rather then adopted by them, and for much of
their time in power, they hid behind the name 'Angkar', or the
Organization.
Today reports on the state
of the Khmer Rouge are sketchy.
The group's mission has
never been fully explained. But they were and are a fiercely
nationalist body with a particular hatred for the Vietnamese who
they see as the oppressors of the Khmer (Cambodian) people.
Legacy lives on
Anlong Veng: The last Khmer Rouge
stronghold, which fell earlier this year
|
Almost 20 years since they were
evicted from power by the invading Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge's
legacy of death, starvation and suffering lives on across
Cambodia.
It is most visible in the
piles of skulls and bones across the country. But it can also be
seen in the countless unexploded landmines and the psychological
problems suffered by many who cannot forget whey they saw.
After years of fighting
government forces in the mountainous jungle near the Thai
border, in 1996 almost half of the Khmer Rouge forces broke from
their ruthless leadership and made a deal with the Phnom Penh
government.
1979: Pol Pot leads the Khmer Rouge back
into the jungle after the Vietnamese invasion
|
Last year a group led by
General Ta Mok, known as "the Butcher", came close to
negotiating a similar deal. But the ageing Pol Pot objected,
beginning a bloody purge of Khmer Rouge ranks.
The showdown ended up with
Pol Pot being put "on trial" in what the Khmer Rouge described
as a people's tribunal.
He was sentenced to house
arrest and his three accomplices were executed. Television
pictures of the trial were the first the outside world had seen
of Pol Pot in years.
Internal breakdown
In an October 1997 interview Pol Pot
declared: 'My conscience is clear'
|
Pol Pot himself died in April,
amidst reports that the Khmer Rouge were willing to hand him
over to an international court for trial on charges of genocide.
Many Khmer Rouge defectors
said that without him there would be no Khmer Rouge.
Over the last two years the
Khmer Rouge resistance has collapsed; not so much because of
military defeat, but as a result of internal factionalism,
frustration at poverty and ideological decay.
The group has ended up
fighting itself.
Reports say the rump Khmer
Rouge that remains, led by Ta Mok, can count on between 500 and
2,000 fighters.
Immunity from prosecution
Almost every family in Cambodia lost
relatives to the Khmer Rouge
|
Mass defections have been
encouraged by the so-called 'win-win policy' of the country's
powerful Second Prime Minister, Hun Sen that offers defectors
immunity from prosecution.
The policy has been
criticised for allowing many former Khmer Rouge commanders to
become senior officials in the Cambodian government.
After their former military
stronghold of Anlong Veng fell to government forces earlier this
year, the forces in the dense northern jungles are little more
than an irritating, although still potentially deadly, thorn in
the government's side.
As Cambodia approaches its
general election, the Khmer Rouge have vowed to disrupt polling
and a series of political murders have been blamed on them and
their desire to continue to make their presence felt.
The Khmer Rouge may be in
their death throes but, in the words of one Thai intelligence
officer, "they will fight until they die."
