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Pol Pot, The Life and Death of a Genocidal Maniac |
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| If the truth is that psychopaths don’t look like psychopaths Pol Pot would certainly support that argument. A genial face with benevolent eyes hide much of what lurked below the skin. |
Pol Pot
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| Born on 19 May 1925 in Prek Sbauv in Kampong Thum province, north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. His father is a prosperous farmer and his family has connections to the Cambodian royal family. Despite only spending four years in world affairs he decimated a country in that short length of time. |
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There will also be difficulty in deciphering the truth about Pol Pot his propaganda machine was powerful and a separating facts from fiction becomes and impossible task, but we do know, hewon a scholarship to study electronics in Paris in the 1950’s, where he meet a left wing Cambodian student, Khieu Samphan, who studied political science. Khieu had created his own ideology in rural revolution, whereby the vestiges of colonial rule and the dangers of capitalism could be vanquished by regressing in to a peasant economy. This would encompass the removal of towns, industry, currency and inevitably education, and with past resonance’s books where to be burned. |
Khieu Samphan |
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In 1975 the communist finally over through Lon Nol, who had been responsible for setting up a republic (Khmer Republic). The communist part was know as the Khmer Rough, with Khieu Samphan as it’s figure head and Pol Pot as it Prime Minister.
Pol Pot began implementing the peasant economy with chilling brutality. The capital was emptied with nearly 3 million being stropped of all their possessions. They where then herded into villages, cities and towns where emptied, young (from the age of seven up), old, pregnant or crippled they all where forced to work the fields. Not only where cities parted from their residents families where parted from each other. |
Lon Nol |
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| 11 hour days, in a 10 day week where only one day was ‘off’ was stable working week for his people. There day of was also reserved for political indoctrination. Personal property now only existed in a sleeping mat and pair of black overalls, and since there was no property there was no trade and with no trade there was no need for currency so it was abolished also. |
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No dictatorship would be complete with it’s teeth and in this case clubbing to death for complaining or questioning the systems was used. With the severest punishment of being buried alive up to the head in the ground and left to die being reserved for particularly unacceptable crimes, such as starving peasants cannibalizing their dead co-workers.
The world remained unresponsive to the genocide, and when finally, in March 1978 Britain reported Kampuchea (now Cambodia) to the UN commission On Human Rights the Kmer Rouge’s embassy in Peking issued a hysterical response, “The British Imperialist have no right to speak of the rights of man. The world know well their barbarous and abject nature. Britain’s leaders are living in opulence on top of a pile of rotting corpses while the proletariat have only the right to be unemployed, to steal and to become prostitutes.” |
Only drop in the bucket of Pol Pot's murderous efforts |
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Military might eventually seen an end to this insanity. Vietnam signed a pact with Kampuchea’s (now Cambodia) only ally, China, and in 1978 Vietnamese forces which had been skirmishing with the Khmer Rouge for years launched a full-scale invasion. The Chinese passively sat back. The Vietnamese invaded at such speed Pol Pot had to flee from Phnom Penh in a white Mercedes limousine with only two hours between him before the first of Hanoi’s troops arrived.
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Pol Pot Dead |
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| Pol Pot continued to fight from his base among his dedicated followers in the country side. In an interview later he appeared apologetic his order after all had been ‘misunderstood’ and the massacres a ‘mistake’. |
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| On the 16th of April 1998 Pol Pot’s body was put on display in a small hut that was built for him shortly after losing power. Where he had lived protected by his army the Kmer Rouge, he was never prosecuted for his actions. |
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Where to Now? |
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