Pol Pot

Pol Pot
ប៉ុល ពត
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea
In office 22 February 1963 – 6 December 1981
Deputy	Nuon Chea
Preceded by	Tou Samouth (1962)
Succeeded by	Position abolished (party dissolved)
Leader of Cambodia
De facto 17 April 1975 – 7 January 1979
President	Norodom Sihanouk Khieu Samphan
Prime Minister	Penn Nouth Himself
Preceded by	Sak Sutsakhan
Succeeded by	Pen Sovan[a] Heng Samrin[b]
Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea
In office 25 October 1976 – 7 January 1979
President	Khieu Samphan
Deputy	Ieng Sary Son Sen Vorn Vet
Preceded by	Khieu Samphan (acting)
Succeeded by	Nuon Chea (1981)
In office 14 April 1976 – 27 September 1976
President	Khieu Samphan
Deputy	Ieng Sary Son Sen Vorn Vet
Preceded by	Khieu Samphan (acting)
Succeeded by	Nuon Chea (acting)
Commander-in-chief of Kampuchea Revolutionary Army
In office 1977–1979
General Secretary of the Party of Democratic Kampuchea
In office 1981–1985
Preceded by	Himself (as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea)
Succeeded by	Khieu Samphan
Personal details
Born	Saloth Sâr (1925-05-25)25 May 1925 Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom Province, Cambodia, French Indochina
Died	15 April 1998(1998-04-15) (aged 72) Choam, Trapeang Prei [km], Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey, Cambodia 14°21′14″N 104°07′17″E / 14.353862°N 104.121282°E / 14.353862; 104.121282
Resting place	Choam, Trapeang Prei [km], Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey, Cambodia 14°20′34″N 104°03′29″E / 14.342910°N 104.057948°E / 14.342910; 104.057948
Political party	Party of Democratic Kampuchea (1981–1993) Communist Party of Kampuchea (1960–1981)
Other political affiliations	French Communist Party (1950s)
Spouses	Khieu Ponnary ​ ​ (m. 1956; div. 1979)​ Mea Son ​ (m. 1986)​
Children	Sar Patchata[1]
Education	EFREI (no degree)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	Khmer Rouge Democratic Kampuchea
Branch/service	Kampuchea Revolutionary Army
Years of service	1963–1997
Rank	General
Battles/wars	Vietnam War Cambodian Civil War Cambodian–Vietnamese War

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Pol Pot^[c] (born Saloth Sâr;^[d] 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian politician, revolutionary and dictator who ruled the communist state of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976 until his overthrow in 1979. During his reign, his administration oversaw mass atrocities and he is widely believed to be one of the most brutal despots in modern world history. Ideologically a Maoist and Khmer ethnonationalist, Pot was a leader of Cambodia's Communist movement, known as the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981, during which Cambodia was converted into a one-party state. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5–2 million people died—approximately one-quarter of the country's pre-genocide population. In December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power. Within two weeks, Vietnamese forces occupied most of the country, ending the genocide and establishing a new Cambodian government, with the Khmer Rouge restricted to the rural hinterlands in the western part of the country.

Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools. Arriving in Paris in October 1949 on an academic scholarship, he later joined the French Communist Party in 1951 while studying at École française de radioélectricité. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he involved himself in the Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Viet Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped formalise the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party, which was later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). To avoid state repression, in 1962 he relocated to a jungle encampment and in 1963 he became the CPK's leader. In 1968, he relaunched the war against Sihanouk's government. After Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk in a 1970 coup, Pol Pot's forces sided with the deposed leader against the new government, which was bolstered by the United States military. Aided by the Viet Cong militia and North Vietnamese troops, Khmer Rouge forces advanced and controlled all of Cambodia by 1975.

Pol Pot transformed Cambodia into a one-party state that he called Democratic Kampuchea, seeking to create an agrarian socialist society that he believed would evolve into a communist one. Year Zero was an idea put into practice by Pol Pot where he believed that all cultures and traditions must be completely destroyed and a new revolutionary culture must replace it starting from scratch. "Year Zero" was announced by the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975, where everything before that date must be purged. The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, frogmarched Cambodians to labor camps and relocated the urban population to collective farms, where mass executions, abuse, torture, malnutrition and disease were rampant. In the Killing Fields, more than 1.3 million people were executed and buried in mass graves. Pursuing complete egalitarianism, money, religion, and private property were abolished and all citizens were forced to wear the same black clothing. Repeated purges of the CPK generated growing discontent; by 1978, Cambodian soldiers were mounting a rebellion in the east.

After several years of Khmer Rouge incursions and massacres on Vietnamese territory, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978. By January 1979, Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been toppled. The surviving Khmer Rouge members retreated to the scattered jungles near the Thai border, from where they continued to fight and raid. Severely weakened, they were hunted down by Vietnamese soldiers until their withdrawal in 1989. In declining health, Pol Pot stepped back from many of his roles in the movement. In 1998, the Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok placed Pot under house arrest. Pol Pot died shortly afterward.

During his rise to power which occurred at the high point of the communist movement's potency across the world, Pot proved to be divisive to the international communist movement. Many claimed that he deviated from orthodox Marxism–Leninism, but China supported his government as a bulwark against Soviet influence in Southeast Asia. Regarded as a totalitarian dictator guilty of crimes against humanity, he has been widely denounced internationally for his role in the Cambodian genocide.

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