Pol Pot

Saloth Sar (May 19, 1925 – April 15, 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.

Democratic Kampuchea

Immediately after the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge began to implement radical communist reforms, and Sihanouk was placed in a purely figurehead role. The Khmer Rouge ordered the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh and all other major towns and cities. Those leaving were told that the evacuation was due to the threat of American bombing, but the Khmer Rouge performed many such evacuations on a much smaller scale before coming to power. According to Ponchaud's book Cambodia: Year Zero, "ever since 1972 the guerrilla fighters had been sending all the inhabitants of the villages and towns they occupied into the forest to live, often burning their homes so that they would have nothing to come back to." The Khmer Rouge refused offers of humanitarian aid, setting out to make the Cambodian populace self-sufficient by growing their own food in rural communes. The results proved to be a humanitarian catastrophe, as millions died of starvation and overwork in the countryside.

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Property became communal, and education was done at communal schools. Pol Pot's regime was extremely harsh on political dissent and opposition. Thousands of politicians and bureaucrats accused of association with previous governments were killed, while Phnom Penh was turned into a ghost city with many dying of starvation, illnesses, or execution. Landmines, which Pol Pot praised as his "perfect soldiers," were widely distributed around the countryside. The casualty list from the civil war, Pol Pot's consolidation of power, and the invasion by Vietnam is disputed. Credible Western and Eastern sources http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Cambodia put the death toll of the Khmer Rouge at 1.6 million. A specific source, such as a figure of three million deaths between 1975 and 1979 was given by the Vietnamese-sponsored Phnom Penh regime, the PRK. Father Ponchaud suggested 2.3 million—although this includes hundreds of thousands who died prior to the CPK takeover; the Yale Cambodian Genocide Project estimates 1.7 million; Amnesty International estimated 1.4 million; and the United States Department of State, 1.2 million. Khieu Samphan and Pol Pot, who could be expected to give underestimations, cited figures of 1 million and 800,000, respectively. The CIA estimated that there were 50,000 to 100,000 executions.

Related Topics:
Political dissent - Bureaucrats - Starvation - Landmine - Civil war - Yale - Amnesty International - United States Department of State - CIA

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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.

Related Topics:
1976 - Khieu Samphan

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In late 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. The Cambodian army was easily defeated, and Pol Pot fled to the Thai border. In January 1979, Vietnam installed a puppet government under Heng Samrin, composed of Khmer Rouge who had fled to Vietnam to avoid the purges. This was followed by widespread defections to the Vietnamese by Khmer Rouge officials in Eastern Cambodia, largely motivated by the fear that they would be accused of collaboration even if they did not defect. Pol Pot retained a sufficient following to keep fighting in a small area in the west of the country. At this point the PRC, which had earlier supported Pol Pot, attacked, creating a brief Sino-Vietnam War.

Related Topics:
1978 - Thai - 1979 - Sino-Vietnam War

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Pol Pot espoused a radically revised variant of Maoism, the so-called "Anka" Doctrine, adapted to Khmer nationalism. Envisaging a perfectly egalitarian agrarianism, the Khmer Rouge favored a completely agrarian society to the point that all modern technological contrivances were banned. Pol Pot was quite the opponent of Soviet orthodoxy. Because he was anti-Soviet, the People's Republic of China considered him preferable to the pro-Vietnamese (therefore pro-Moscow) government. The Western powers took more or less the same line, offering diplomatic support to the Khmer Rouge in the period after the Vietnamese invasion.

Related Topics:
Maoism - Anka - Agrarianism - Agrarian society - People's Republic of China

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