Ethnicity:
Pol Pot was born into a family of mixed Chinese and ethnic Khmer descent.
Saloth Sar, better known by his nom de guerre Pol Pot, was born in 1925 in the small village of Prek Sbauv, located about 100 miles north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, to the family of Loth Sar and Sok Nem. His family was relatively affluent and owned some 50 acres of rice paddy, or roughly 10 times the national average.
Saloth Sar was sent at age 5 or 6 to live with an older brother in Phnom Penh, where he was educated at École Miche, a Roman Catholic primary school. A mediocre student, he failed the entrance examinations for high school and so instead studied carpentry for a year at a technical school in Phnom Penh.
At the age of twenty, Pol Pot received a scholarship to study radio electronics in France. During his time there, he became active in the Communist Party. He also met his future wife, Khieu Ponnary, who was the first Cambodian woman to earn a college degree. Some sources say that Pol Pot left France without earning a degree because he failed to pass his final examinations three times in a row. These sources claim that Pol Pot later formed a deep hatred for intellectuals because of his own academic failures. But in one of his rare interviews, Pol Pot claimed that he did not complete his education because he concentrated on political activities instead. "As I spent most of my time in radical activities, I did not attend many classes," he admitted. "The state cut short my scholarship, and I was forced to return home."
Pol Pot taught at a private school in Phnom Penh from 1956 to 1963, when he left the capital because his communist ties were suspected by the police. By 1963 he had adopted his revolutionary pseudonym, Pol Pot. Pol Pot drifted into the Vietnamese-influenced "United Khmer Issarak (Freedom) Front" of Cambodian Communists. The Front was one of many Cambodian groups that opposed French control of Cambodia as well as the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. After Cambodia won its independence from the French in 1954 Pol Pot became involved with the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), the first Cambodian Communist party. His hatred for intellectuals and politicians grew during this time. He was influenced by Tou Samouth, a former Front president who was interested in making the KPRP a genuinely Cambodian organization that could rally members of different groups against Sihanouk. The KPRP had conflicts with the Vietnamese, who wanted to control the anti-Sihanouk Cambodian resistance.
In September 1960 Pol Pot and a handful of followers met secretly at the Phnom Penh railroad station to found the "Workers Party of Kampuchéa" (WPK). Samouth was named a General Secretary. By 1963 Pol Pot had replaced Samouth as party secretary, and Samouth later disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
In 1965, Pol Pot was hoping to get support from either Vietnam or China for his revolution. Since the Communist North Vietnamese regime was the most likely source of support for the Khmer Rouge at the time, Pol Pot went to Hanoi to ask for aid.
In response to his request, the North Vietnamese criticized Pol Pot for having a nationalist agenda. Since, at this time, Prince Sihanouk was letting the North Vietnamese use Cambodian territory in their struggle against South Vietnam and the United States, the Vietnamese believed the time was not right for an armed struggle in Cambodia. It did not matter to the Vietnamese that the time might have felt right for the Cambodian people.
Pol Pot next visited the Communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) and fell under the influence of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which emphasized revolutionary enthusiasm and sacrifice. It accomplished this in part by encouraging people to destroy any vestiges of traditional Chinese civilization. China would not openly support the Khmer Rouge, but it gave Pol Pot some ideas for his own revolution. In 1965, Pol Pot was hoping to get support from either Vietnam or China for his revolution. Since the Communist North Vietnamese regime was the most likely source of support for the Khmer Rouge at the time, Pol Pot went to Hanoi to ask for aid.
In response to his request, the North Vietnamese criticized Pol Pot for having a nationalist agenda. Since, at this time, Prince Sihanouk was letting the North Vietnamese use Cambodian territory in their struggle against South Vietnam and the United States, the Vietnamese believed the time was not right for an armed struggle in Cambodia. It did not matter to the Vietnamese that the time might have felt right for the Cambodian people.
Pol Pot next visited the Communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) and fell under the influence of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which emphasized revolutionary enthusiasm and sacrifice. It accomplished this in part by encouraging people to destroy any vestiges of traditional Chinese civilization. China would not openly support the Khmer Rouge, but it gave Pol Pot some ideas for his own revolution.
The CPK led many demonstrations against the Sihanouk administration, which caused Sihanouk to order the execution of dozens of CPK members, whom he referred to as the Khmer Rouge ("Red Khmers"). In December 1969 and January 1970 Pol Pot and other CPK leaders prepared to take down Sihanouk. But the military in Phnom Penh beat them to it, overthrowing Sihanouk in March 1970 and bringing Lon Nol to the Cambodian presidency. In 1971 Pol Pot was reelected as CPK General Secretary and as commander of its "Revolutionary Army." The Vietnamese became angry when the CPK refused their request to begin talks with Lon Nol and the United States as Vietnamese-United States discussions took place in Paris. By terms of the Paris Accords, the Vietnamese pulled some of their troops out of Cambodia in early 1973. CPK "Revolutionary Army" units quickly took their place, and clashes between Lon Nol's and Pol Pot's forces continued.
In April 1975 Phnom Penh fell to several Communist Cambodian and pro-Sihanouk groups. For nearly a year Pol Pot and other Cambodian Communists, as well as Sihanouk, struggled for power in the new state of "Democratic Kampuchéa." Another CPK party congress in January 1976 led to Pol Pot's reelection as a General Secretary but also revealed differences of opinion between Pol Pot and other members of the party. Relations with Vietnam also continued to worsen. In April 1976, after the decision by Sihanouk to step down as head of state, a new Democratic Kampuchéa (DK) government was proclaimed, and Pol Pot became premier. However, his authority was challenged by Vietnam-influenced party leaders. Beginning in November 1976 Pol Pot began to remove many of his rivals, including cabinet ministers and other top party leaders.
Meanwhile, Pol Pot's reform policies drove many people from major cities and forced tens of thousands into labor. The Cambodians were denied food and medical care, and mass killings of all suspected opponents - especially intellectuals or those with political experience - took place. Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of over one million Cambodians - nearly 20 percent of the country's total population. Although opposition to Pol Pot was growing among party members, his visits to China and North Korea in September and October 1977 increased his standing among other Asian Communist leaders, even as fighting with Vietnamese border forces grew worse.
Continued Vietnamese attacks on DK territory left Pol Pot with a shaky hold on power, and finally, he and other DK leaders were forced to flee Phnom Penh in January 1979. They regrouped and established an underground government in western Cambodia and in the Cardamom mountain range. In July 1979 Pol Pot was sentenced to death in absentia (without him being present) for the murder of his own people. The sentence was issued by the new government of the "People's Republic of Kampuchéa," installed with the help of Vietnamese forces. With world attention focused on Cambodia, Pol Pot stepped down as DK prime minister in December 1979. However, he remained as party a General Secretary and as head of the CPK's military commission, making him the overall commander of the DK's thirty-thousand-man force battling the Vietnamese in Cambodia.
Little was known of Pol Pot's activities after that. In September 1985 the DK announced that Pol Pot had retired as commander of the DK's "National Army" and had been appointed to be "Director of the Higher Institute for National Defense."
Following the Vietnamese invasion of his country, Pol Pot withdrew to bases in Thailand to lead the Khmer Rouge forces against the new Hanoi-supported government in Phnom Penh, which refused to consider peace negotiations as long as he remained at the head of the party. Although ostensibly removed from the military and political leadership of the Khmer Rouge in 1985, he remained a guiding force in the organization, which continued its guerrilla campaign into the 1990s, though with diminishing intensity. By 1997 the Khmer Rouge were in deep decline, their ranks riddled by desertions and factionalism. In June of that year, Pol Pot was forcibly ousted from the organization’s leadership and placed under house arrest by his colleagues, and in July he was convicted of treason. Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1998.
As the head of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot began to implement the ‘Year Zero’ concept, which ordained drastic de-industrialization and initiated a new revolutionary culture within the society. Driven by communist ideas, he tried to turn Cambodia into an agrarian utopia. Pol Pot is notorious for his long, oppressive reign and for his attempt to exterminate all religious and ethnic minorities in Cambodia. The Cambodian genocide - responsible for the deaths of at least 1.5 million people - resulted in several Khmer Rouge leaders being convicted of crimes against humanity. Pol Pot ranks with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as one of the greatest mass murderers in modern history.
Like all Communists, Pol Pot was an atheist so religion was banned. People caught practicing Buddhism were executed and Buddhist temples were desecrated.
Ideologically, Pol Pot considered himself to be a Marxist-Leninist. This means that he believed in a collectivist state in which the means of production were owned by the government for the benefit of the entire society. In principle, these ideas were supposed to be based on the ideas of Karl Marx and the ideology of Vladimir Lenin in the Russian Revolution.
The Khmer Rouge was one of the most brutal regimes of the 20th century. After taking control of Cambodia, Pol Pot declared the Year Zero. This meant much more than restarting the calendar; it was a means of emphasizing that all that was familiar in the lives of Cambodians were to be destroyed. Pol Pot had been influenced and impressed by China’s Cultural Revolution under Mao Tse-tung, thus following that country’s lead in evacuating cities and forcing people into a rural, farming life. More than two million people were evacuated from Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge took power. The evacuation process itself was ruthless, as even children, elderly people and those who were hospitalized were forced to move. Thousands died in just the first few weeks of the Khmer Rouge’s reign.
Until 1979, the Khmer Rouge executed those they believed represented the "old society." That included intellectuals, merchants, Buddhist monks, former government officials, and former soldiers. In addition, they targeted members of Cambodia’s ethnic minorities. Half of the Chinese living in Cambodia at the time were killed, as were about 90,000 Muslims of the Cham culture. Vietnamese residents were either expelled or murdered.
Under Pol Pot, the state controlled all aspects of a person’s life. Money, private property, jewelry, gambling, most reading material, and religion were outlawed; agriculture was collectivized; children were taken from their homes and forced into the military; and strict rules governing sexual relations, vocabulary, and clothing were laid down.
The Khmer Rouge, which renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea, even insisted on realigning rice fields in order to create the symmetrical checkerboard pictured on their coat of arms.
Under Pot Pol, Khmer Rouge committed genocide of different groups, including ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, Christians, and Buddhists. Educated professionals and members of rival political parties were systematically removed from their positions and forced out of the city-centers. Many of the first deaths of the Cambodian Genocide were a result of the forced removals from the cities. For example, anyone that was unwilling to relocate was either forcibly removed or executed. Furthermore, many people died from exhaustion and starvation during the process. This worked in the benefit of the Khmer Rouge as it led to the deaths of the groups of people that the Khmer wanted to remove from the country anyways. However, anyone that survived the transportation to the countryside suffered due to the grueling work that was expected on the collective farms. In fact, the farms were little more than labor camps in which the workers experienced continual abuse, threat of death, and exhausting work. Many more died there also from starvation and exhaustion. As time progressed, the survival of a person was determined by the ability to complete work in the labor camps. As a result, many people who could not keep up with the work demands of the Khmer were killed, including young children, the elderly, and the sick. When starvation no longer resulted in the deaths of these 'undesirable' people, the Khmer Rouge resorted to a method that historians refer to as the 'Killing Fields.'
The international community was slow to learn about the genocide and crimes against humanity occurring in the country due to the Khmer Rouge expelling foreigners and reporters. Regardless, news of the genocide leaked out and most foreign countries condemned the actions of the Khmer. However, the regime also enjoyed support from several communist nations including China who is said to have supplied them with money, military supplies, and training for soldiers.
Quotations:
"Everything I did, I did for my country."
"There's what we did wrong and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people - by us and also by the enemy - but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now."
"Whoever wishes to blame or attack me is entitled to do so. I regret I didn't have enough experience to totally control the movement. On the other hand, with our constant struggle, this had to be done together with others in the communist world to stop Kampuchea becoming Vietnamese."
There are many blank spots in Pol Pot's biography to this day because he hid the details of his life. He even never explained the reason why he chose the pseudonym "Pol Pot."
Pol Pot was a charismatic leader. His charisma combined with simple taste, good education, and staunch hatred of corruption had a broad appeal to certain segments of Cambodian society, particularly the students and the peasants. "Cambodians who came into his presence found him charismatic because he embodied the ideals of conduct - self-control, …kind-heartedness - that had been drummed into them for years."
Journalist Elizabeth Becker interviewed Pol Pot at the height of his power in 1978, an experience she described in a BBC article: "He ranted and raved about the impending Vietnamese invasion - always in the quietest of tones... There was no interrupting. There were no questions about the condition of the Cambodian people, about the executions and killing fields. Pol Pot's vision had no room for anything but enemies and justification of his behavior."
Physical Characteristics: Pol Pot had insomnia and was often ill.
Quotes from others about the person
"[Pol Pot's] friendly manner and self-control earned him respect and inspired obedience. His recorded statements to small gatherings often sound more brutal than those he made to larger groups, but he never gives the impression that he is raising his voice or losing his equanimity." - David Chandler, historian
"He was always a good husband. He tried his best to educate the children not to be traitors. Since I married him in 1985, I never saw him do a bad thing ... What I would like the world to know was that he was a good man, a patriot, a good father." - Pol's second wife, Mea Son
"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." - unidentified Khmer Rouge cadre interviewed by Stephen Heder
"[Pol Pot] sacrificed his entire life … to defend national sovereignty (and) in demanding social justice. There was no policy of starving people. Nor was there any direction set out for carrying out mass killings. There was always close consideration of the people's well-being." - Khieu Samphan
In 1956, Pol Pot married Khieu Ponnary, whom he had met in Paris. The two divorced in 1979. Pol's second wife was Mea Son, whom he married in 1986, the following spring their daughter, Sar Patchata, was born.
Khieu was suffering from chronic schizophrenia. She became convinced that the Vietnamese were attempting to assassinate her and her husband Pol. Though her sister and brother-in-law became some of the most recognizable figures of the short-lived Communist government, Khieu Ponnary remained largely unknown as she was placed in a different house from Pol while her sister took care of her.
Patchata was adopted by the Khmer Rouge’s ambassador to the United Nations, Tep Khunnal, after her father’s death in 1998.
Lon Nol was a soldier and politician whose overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk (1970) involved Cambodia in the Indochina war and ended in the takeover (1975) of the country by the communist Khmer Rouge.
