Dictator
of the Month: March 2004:
Dictator
of the Month: March 2004:
Back
to English Main
|
Pol Pot
Take me to the Picture
Gallery! Fact Sheet Name: Pol Pot Score Card (click
here for the explanations) Charisma/ Popularity: 1.5
Browse Books on Pol Pot!
|
|
Summary Saloth Sar (May 19, 1925 - April 15, 1998), better known as Pol Pot, was the leader of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia (officially Democratic Kampuchea during his rule) from 1976 to 1979. During his rule up to two million Cambodians died. Early life and Revolution He was born in Prek Sbauv in what was then a part of French Indochina
but is now in the province of Kompong Thom, Cambodia. In 1949, he won a
scholarship to study radio engineering in Paris. During his study, he
became a communist, and joined an emergent Khmer communist group. This
group was called the French Communist Party. In 1953, he returned to
Cambodia. At that time, a communist-led revolt was taking place against the
French occupation of Indochina. The centre of this uprising was in
Vietnam, but it also took place in Cambodia and Laos. Saloth Sar joined
the Viet Minh, but found that they regarded only Vietnam of importance,
not Laos and Cambodia. In 1954, the French left Indochina, but the Viet
Minh also withdrew to North Vietnam, and King Norodom Sihanouk called
elections. Sihanouk abdicated, and formed a political party. Using his
popularity and some intimidation, he swept away the communist opposition
and gained all of the government seats. Pol Pot fled Sihanouk's secret police and spent twelve years in
hiding, training recruits. In the late 1960s, Sihanouk's head of
internal security, Lon Nol took brutal action against the
revolutionaries, known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Pol Pot
started an armed uprising against the government, supported by the
People's Republic of China (PRC). Prior to 1970, the Communist Party of Kampuchea was an
insignificant factor in Cambodian politics. However, in 1970
American-backed General Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk, because the latter was
seen as supporting the Viet Cong. In protest, Sihanouk threw his support to Pol Pot's side. That
same year, Richard Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia in
order to destroy Viet Cong sanctuaries bordering on South Vietnam.
Sihanouk's popularity, along with the United States invasion of
Cambodia, drove many to Pol Pot's side and soon Lon Nol's government
controlled only the cities. It has been argued that the Khmer Rouge may not have come to power
without the destabilization of the Vietnam War, particularly of the
American bombing campaigns to "clear out the Vietnamese
sanctuaries" in Cambodia. William Shawcross argued this point in
his 1979 book Sideshow. When the United States left Vietnam in 1973 the Viet Cong left
Cambodia, but the Khmer Rouge continued to fight. Unable to maintain any
sort of control over the country, Lon Nol's government soon collapsed.
On April 17, the Communist Party of Kampuchea took Phnom Penh and Lon
Nol fled to the United States of America. Less than one month later, on
May 12, 1975, Khmer Rouge naval forces operating in Cambodian
territorial waters seized the U.S. merchant ship S.S. Mayaguez, the last
American merchant ship to leave Vietnam precipitating the Mayaguez
Crisis. Norodom Sihanouk was returned to power in 1975, but soon found
himself side-lined by his more radical Communist colleagues, who had
little interest in his plans of restoring the monarchy. Democratic Kampuchea By early 1976 the Khmer Rouge hardliners grew tired of tolerating
Sihanouk's antics, and placed him under house arrest. The existing
government was quickly dismantled and Prince Sihanouk was removed as the
nation's head of state. Cambodia became a Communist republic, and Khieu
Samphan became the first president. On May 13, 1976 Pol Pot had been appointed Prime Minister of
Cambodia, and began implementing sweeping socialist reforms to the
nation. The US bombing had caused parts of the countryside to be
emptied, and the cities were overcrowded (Phnom Penh's population
increased by over 1 million immediately prior to 1976). When the Khmer Rouge gained power, they evacuated citizens from
the cities to the countryside where they were forced into communal
farms. Property became communalized, and education was done at communal
schools. Pol Pot's regime was extremely harsh on political dissent and
opposition. Thousands of politicians and bureaucrats 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. 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
(http://www.yale.edu/cgp/) 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 there were 50,000 to 100,000 executions. 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. Pol Pot, an enemy of the Soviet Union, also gained support from
Thailand and the US. In particular, the US and the PRC vetoed the
allocation of Cambodia's United Nations General Assembly seat to a
representative of Heng Samrin's government. Influenced by realpolitik
the US directly and indirectly supported Pol Pot, who espoused a
radically revised variant of Maoism adapted to Khmer nationalism.
Envisaging a perfectly egalitarian agrarianism, the Khmer Rouge favored
a direct route to communism, thus bypassing the intermediate stage of
socialism. An autonomist, Pol Pot was quite the opponent of Soviet
orthodoxy. Because he was anti-Soviet, the United States, Thailand and
People's Republic of China considered him preferable to the
pro-Vietnamese government. Aftermath At times, the United States directly and indirectly supported Pol Pot
and his hostility against the Soviet Union. The US attempted to foster
an anti-Vietnamese alliance between Pol Pot, Sihanouk and the
nationalist, Son San. In pursuit of this end, Pol Pot officially
resigned in 1985, but continued as de facto CPK leader and dominant
force within the alliance. Opponents of the CPK claimed that the CPK
were sometimes acting in an inhumane manner in areas controlled by the
alliance. In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. 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 the
demoralised troops started deserting. Several important Khmer Rouge
leaders also defected. Pol Pot ordered the execution of his life-long right hand Son Sen and 11 of his family on June 10, 1997 for wanting to make a settlement with the government (the news did not reach outside of Cambodia for three days). Pol Pot then fled his northern stronghold but was later arrested by Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok, and was sentenced to lifelong house arrest. In April of 1998, Ta Mok fled into the forest following a new government attack, and took Pol Pot with him. A few days later, on April 15, 1998, Pol Pot died, reportedly of a heart attack. This article is from www.wikipedia.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot and is subject to the GNU-FDL free documentation license List of authors at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pol_Pot&action=history
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
Cast your vote!