POL POT

Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar.

Pol Pot grew up in a well off farming family in Kompong Thong province, which was then the heartland of the French protectorate.

It is said by people who knew Pol Pot as a child that he was quite and gentle. Little did anyone have any idea of what Pol Pot would do as an adult.

Pol Pot studied at a Buddhist monestry and then later at a Catholic school.

Afterwards, Pol Pot won a scholarship in 1949, to study radio electronics in Paris, France.

Instead of devoting his time to study, Pol Pot devoted his time to student politics and Marxism. Cell meetings were held in his Latin Quarter apartment in Paris. As a result of ignoring his studies, he eventually lost his scholarship.

Pol Pot was then forced to return to Phnom Penh in 1953, were he worked as a teacher.

He quickly rose through the ranks of the underground Cambodian Communist Party. Pol Pot became secretary-general in 1962.

He was forced to flee to northeastern Cambodia to avoid being arrested or even killed by the secret police of the Prince. Prince Norodom Sihanouk had used heavy handed police suppresion on the people, and in some ways, this gave way to what was to follow. It was said Pol Pot was influenced by the hill tribes who were self sufficient in a commune living. These were the original "Khemers". It was from here that Pol Pot started to wage war against the U.S. backed Cambodian government of the day.

The Nixon of the United States, broke with Sihanouk in April 1970. A CIA directed military coup installed General Lon Nol into power and sent Sihanouk into exile in Beijing. Nixon then announced the invasion of Cambodia by 20,000 US and Vietnamese troops. Cambodia was transformed into a massive battlefield. Lon Nol's troops fought the Khmer Rouge, and American and Saigon troops fought the NLF and regular North Vietnamese forces. The United States conducted the most intensive saturation bombing in world history on the people of Cambodia. Some 532,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Cambodia. By 1974, the bombing had caused, two million to be homeless. Annual rice production had plunged from 3.8 million tons to only 655,000 tons. Much of Cambodia's farmland remains even today untillable because of bomb craters and unexploded ordnance.

When the Khemer Rouge came to power in 1975, Pol Pot, started to transform the country into his vision of an agrarian utopia. The cities were emptied, money abolished, private property was not allowed, and religion banned. People thought to be an intellectual were killed. People were sometimes killed for wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language.

One doctor who fell into the hands of the Khmer Rouge was Haing Ngor. He recorded his experiences in Surviving the Killing Fields, published in 1988. He reckoned that only about 40 of the 527 graduates of his medical school survived and about 550 of the 7000 who had originally lived in his home village.

After a number of Border confrontations, in 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. It was at this time that the world first started to hear about what happened under Pol Pot. Pol Pot and the Khemer Rouge were forced to flee into the jungle.

It was at this time that the United States started strongly supporting Pol Pot. Money and Military arms were supplied by the United States to Pol Pot. In 1992, in an effort to keep Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from power, the Hun Sen government invited the United Nations to supervise general elections. But the United States insisted that the Khmer Rouge be seated in the U.N. as the "legitimate" Cambodian government.

In the 1980`s as the Khemour Rouge tried to re-invent itself, it was stated that Pol Pot had retired as leader, but this was thought to be a smokescreen. In July 1997, Pol Pot was supposedly arrested by his colleagues and charged with treason. Once again, this was probably a front more then truth.

Pol Pot died in April 1998. In an interview, just before his death, Pol Pot declared : "My conscience is clear".

Oppression Quotes
Dictatorship Quotes


World War Two

How To Write An Essay

Paralumun New Age Village