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Pol Pot
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Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar on May 19, 1928, near Anlong Veng, Cambodia, the second son of a successful landowner. Pol Pot's father had political connections at the royal court at the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, some seventy miles from Prek Sbau, the small hamlet in Kompong Thom province where Pol Pot was born. Visits by court officials and even by Cambodian king Sisowath Monivong himself to Pol Pot's father's home appear to have been common. Pol Pot often denied that he was Saloth Sar, probably to protect his family. He adopted his new name by 1963, and even after he had become premier, people were unsure of his actual identity.
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Pol Pot (1925-98) was born Saloth Sar in circumstances of comparative obscurity in provincial Cambodia. His father was a landowning farmer in what is now Kompong Thong province. At the age of nine, Pol Pot was sent to the capital Phnom Penh ro receive education at a Buddhist temple (wat). where it was Buddhist monks which administered education for those outside the tiny privileged ruling elite. Cambodia was then governed by French colonialists and by absolute monarchy. The prospects for change for the poor seemed remote.
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Back at the UN, China and the US mounted pressure to ensure that Pol Pot would have a seat on the General Assembly. The British delegate, Lord Carrington, told the UN that Britain endorsed Pol Pot as the legitimate ruler of the Khmer people. Only the Soviet Union voiced disapproval. With a Hanoi-backed regime in Phnom Penh and the North Vietnamese army preventing Pol Pot returning from his base across the Thai border, the UN posed a total embargo on Cambodia, barring the country from all agreements on international trade and commerce. In addition, development aid was withheld and the World Health Organisation were barred from the country.
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There are no signs of foul play, but Pol Pot has a pained expression on his face, as if he did not die peacefully. One eye is shut and the other half open. Cotton balls are stuffed up his nostrils to prevent leakage of body fluids. By his body lie his rattan fan, blue-and-red peasant scarf, bamboo cane and white plastic sandals. His books and other possessions have been confiscated since he was ousted by his comrades in an internal power struggle 10 months earlier. Two vases of purple bougainvillea stand at the head of the bed.
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After returning to Cambodia in 1953, 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 (people who think, study, and understand) 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.
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The Communist Party took refuge in the bush, where in 1962 Pol Pot became the party head. In one of those odd turns of fate, Sihanouk was ousted in a coup in 1970, and took refuge with the outlawed Communist Party in areas they controlled. The Cambodian CP, which began to be known as the Khmer Rouge, grew rapidly from a few thousand in 1970 to some 30,000 by 1973 with control over about a third of the country. On April 17, 1975, the pro-U.S. government of Lon Nol collapsed and the Khmer Rouge marched into the capital, Phnom Penh, a city of 3 million. "Four to five hours after entry they told the entire population to leave, on foot, with what they could carry," Short said.
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