Pol Pot

 

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sar (Khmer: ប៉ុល ពត); 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998)^[1][2] was a Cambodian Communist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge^[3] from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. From 1976 to 1979, he also served as the prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, and his rule was a dictatorship.^[4] During his time in power he imposed agrarian socialism, forcing urban dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects. The combined effects of executions, forced labor, malnutrition, and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population.^[5][6][7][8] In all, an estimated 1 to 3 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died due to the policies of his three-year premiership.^[9][10][11]

In 1979, after the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed.^[12] From 1979 to 1997, he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near the border of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung to power, with nominal United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot died in 1998 while under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge. Since his death, rumours that he was poisoned have persisted.^[13]

 

 Early life (1925–61)

 

Saloth Sar was born on May 19, 1925—the eighth of nine children and the second of three sons to Pen Saloth and Sok Nem. His older brother, Saloth Chhay was born 3 years earlier. The family was living in the small fishing village of Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom Province during the French colonialism of the area.^[14] Pen Saloth was a rice farmer who owned 12 hectares of land and several buffaloes and the family was considered moderately wealthy by the day's standards. Although Pen Saloth's family was of Sino-Khmer descent and Saloth Sar was named accordingly due to his fair complexion ("Sar" means white in Khmer),^[15][16] the family had already assimilated themselves with mainstream Khmer society by the time Sar was born.^[17]

In 1935, Sar left Prek Sbauv to attend the École Miche, a Catholic school in Phnom Penh. He lived with his cousin, a woman called Meak, a member of the Royal Ballet.^[18] In 1926 she bore King Monivong's son, HRH Prince Sisowath Kusarak.^[19] She was given the official title Khun Preah Moneang Bopha Norleak Meak. Sar stayed with Meak's household until 1942. His sister Roeung was a concubine of King Monivong, so through the two women, he often had cause to visit the royal palace.^[20] In 1947, he gained admission to the exclusive Lycée Sisowath, but was unsuccessful in his studies.

 

In May 1975 a squad of Khmer Rouge soldiers raided and took Phu Quoc Island. By 1977, relations with Vietnam began to fall apart. There were small border clashes in January. Pol Pot tried to prevent border disputes by sending a team to Vietnam. The negotiations failed, which caused even more border disputes. On April 30, the Cambodian army, backed by artillery, crossed over into Vietnam. In attempting to explain Pol Pot's behavior, one region-watcher^[specify] 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, these actions 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 of Friendship on Laos that gave Vietnam almost total control over the country. 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) that were once part of Cambodia, whose people, they alleged, were struggling for independence from Vietnam. It is not clear whether these statements were the official policy of Pol Pot.

 

In September 1977, Cambodia launched division-scale raids over the border, which once again left a trail of murder and destruction in villages. The Vietnamese claimed that around 1,000 people had been killed or injured. 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. In December, after having exhausted all other options, Vietnam sent 50,000 troops into Cambodia in what amounted to a short raid. The raid was meant to be secret. The Vietnamese withdrew after declaring they had achieved their goals, and the invasion was just a warning. Upon being threatened, the Vietnamese army promised to return with support from the Soviet Union. Pol Pot's actions made the operation much more visible than 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 prepare for a full war. Vietnam also tried to pressure Cambodia through China. However, China's refusal to pressure Cambodia and the flow of weapons from China into Cambodia were both signs that China also intended to act against Vietnam.

 

When Cambodian communists rebelled in the eastern zone in May 1978 Pol Pot’s armies could not crush them quickly. On May 10 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 with Vietnamese minds’, at least 100,000 were exterminated in six months. Later that year, in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam attacked Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, which Vietnam justified on the basis of self-defense.^[38] The Cambodian army was defeated, the regime was toppled 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.

 

At different times during this period, he was located on both sides of the border. 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 rebuilt a small military force in the west of the country with the help of the People's Republic of China. The PRC also initiated the Sino-Vietnamese War around this time.

After the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by the Vietnamese in 1979, the United States and other powers^[specify] refused to allow the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government to take the seat of Cambodia at the United Nations. The seat, by default, remained in the hands of the Khmer Rouge. These countries justified that decision on the ground that recognising Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia was worse than allowing the Khmer Rouge to hold on to the seat. Also, representatives of these countries argued^{[citation needed]} that both claimants to the seat were Khmer Rouge governments, because Vietnam's Cambodian government was formed from ex-Khmer Rouge cadres.

 

Pol Pot lived in the Phnom Malai area, giving interviews in the early 1980s accusing all those who opposed him of being traitors and "puppets" of the Vietnamese until he disappeared from public view. In 1985, his "retirement" was announced, but he retained influence over the party.^[39] A cadre interviewed during this period described Pol Pot's views on the death toll under his government:

He 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.^[40]

In December 1985, the Vietnamese launched a major offensive and overran most of the Khmer Rouge and other insurgent 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.^[41]

 

Pol Pot fled to Thailand where he lived for the next six years. His headquarters were a plantation villa near Trat. He was guarded by Thai Special Unit 838.

Pol Pot officially resigned from the party in 1985 citing asthma as a contributing factor, but continued as the de facto Khmer Rouge leader and a dominant force within the anti-Vietnam alliance. He handed day to day power to 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.^[42] Shortly after, Pol Pot moved to China for medical treatment for cancer. 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 lifelong 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 June 19, 1997. Pol Pot had not been seen in public since 1980, two years after his overthrow at the hands of an invading Vietnamese army. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a Phnom Penh court soon afterward.^[43] In July he was subjected to a show trial for the death of Son Sen and sentenced to lifelong house arrest.^[44]

  Death

On the night of April 16, 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. According to his wife, he died in his bed later in the night while waiting to be moved to another location. Ta Mok claimed that his death was due to heart failure.^[45] Despite government requests to inspect the body, it was cremated a few days later at Anlong Veng in the Khmer Rouge zone,^[46] raising suspicions that he committed suicide.^[47] His ashes were scattered in a nearby forest.^{[citation needed]}

  International support

  Support from China

The People's Republic of China was regarded as the main international support for the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot. The Chinese provided financial and military support to the party;^[48] their motivation being its intense rivalry with Vietnam at the time, which coincided with Pol Pot's plans to regain the ancient lands of the kingdom, which were and remain within neighboring countries such as Vietnam. Beijing communist government did not condemn the persecution of the ethnic Chinese within Cambodia's borders.

  Support from UN

During the Khmer Rouge regime and a period of time directly after, the Khmer Rouge was recognised by UN as a legitimate government, therefore retaining a seat at the UN.^[49] While many leaders at the UN attempted to appeal this,^{[citation needed]} the majority allowed the Khmer Rouge (later titled "Democratic Republic of Kampuchea") to keep their seat for 15 years^{[citation needed]} following the genocide.