Historical figure
Pol Pot
Leader of the Khmer Rouge and prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea, 1976 to 1979.
Pol Pot (1925 to 1998), born Saloth Sar, was the leader of the Khmer Rouge. He was General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea, the state the Khmer Rouge ruled from 1975 to 1979.[1][2] The New York Times called his regime "one of the 20th century's most brutal and radical".[2]
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the court set up to try Khmer Rouge leaders, made findings about his role in its trials of others. He was never charged before it, and the court states that its findings cannot be taken as findings of his guilt. It also warns that some of its information on him comes from confessions obtained under torture.[1]
Early life
The ECCC gives his birth date as May 19, 1925.[1] The New York Times wrote that he was born Saloth Sar in a village near Kampong Thom, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Phnom Penh. It added that the name Pol Pot, taken as a revolutionary, has no particular meaning.[2] Among the many names the court records for him are Brother Number One, Pol and Grand Uncle.[1]
He went to Sisowath High School in Phnom Penh, where he met Ieng Sary. From 1950 to 1953 he studied in France, where he belonged to a Marxist circle of Khmer students with Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Son Sen.[1]
Party leader
The ECCC Trial Chamber found that in 1959 Tou Samouth, Pol Pot and Nuon Chea began to build a new Cambodian communist party, free of Vietnamese influence.[3] At the party's Second Congress in February 1963 he was named party secretary. The Trial Chamber dates this to after Tou Samouth's disappearance, and the court's profile to after his death.[3][1]
Democratic Kampuchea
On the morning of April 17, 1975, the party's forces entered Phnom Penh and began ordering its people to leave at once, the start of the Democratic Kampuchea era.[3] The ECCC found that Pol Pot planned the evacuation of the cities to the countryside.[1] The New York Times wrote that he and his followers emptied the cities and towns so that life could begin again at "Year Zero", with the people as workers and peasants in the fields.[2]
He became prime minister in April 1976. From September 1976 to September 1977 he took a formal leave, and Nuon Chea stood in for him.[1][3] The Trial Chamber found that within the party's Standing Committee, Nuon Chea and Pol Pot held the final power of decision.[3] On September 27, 1977, at a mass rally, he announced publicly that the Communist Party of Kampuchea existed.[1]
The court's findings, as its profile lists them, include that he ordered purges in the East Zone and the attack on Vietnam in 1977. They also include that he set out the party's "one against 30" policy, under which every Cambodian was to kill at least 30 Vietnamese.[1]
The New York Times wrote that the Khmer Rouge government ruled by terror, and that by the most widely accepted estimates more than 1.7 million people died under it.[2]
After 1979
After the regime fell in January 1979, he met Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan in Pursat province to direct the war against the Vietnamese.[1] In August 1979 the People's Revolutionary Tribunal in Phnom Penh tried him and Ieng Sary in their absence and sentenced them to death.[1]
The New York Times wrote that no charge was brought against him until July 1997, when former Khmer Rouge allies turned on him. Pol Pot had blamed Son Sen for his loss of power and ordered the killing of Son Sen and more than a dozen of his relatives. His former followers then denounced him in what the paper called a carefully scripted show trial, and placed him under house arrest for life.[2]
He died on April 15, 1998, in a Khmer Rouge camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. The ECCC gives the cause as heart failure. The New York Times reported the same cause from his jailers.[1][2]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Khmer Rouge profile: Pol Pot (undated)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 The New York Times, Seth Mydans, Pol Pot, brutal dictator who forced Cambodians to killing fields, dies at 73 (April 17, 1998)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Trial Chamber, Summary of judgement, Case 002/02 (November 16, 2018)