Pol Pot (In power: 1975 – 1979)
Like Amin, this infamous ruler used fear to maintain his rule and control of the population. Starvation, forced labor, torture, and executions were the methods used by Pol Pot and his followers during the Cambodian Genocide. They were dramatized in the 1984 film The Killing Fields which told the story of an American journalist and his Cambodian assistant who survived the genocide. The estimates vary widely but it is believed that about 1.5 million Cambodians perished. Pol Pot was never charged nor brought to trial for any crimes committed during his reign. He died in April 1998 just before he was to be turned over to an international tribunal.
Pol Pot (Saloth Sar at birth) was born in 1928. Growing up, he was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to Paris to study there. It was here that he was first exposed to Marxist ideology which would have an influence on this personal philosophy. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he briefly joined the Viet Minh and learned about guerilla tactics. In 1955, he helped form a new political party that would eventually be called the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), or more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge. In the late 1960s, the Khmer Rouge began an armed struggle to overthrow the government. It took several years but they were ultimately successful in April 1975. When in power, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge began a ruthless campaign to remake Cambodian society.
Following their strict ideology, religion was banned, ethnic groups could not speak their languages, and even family groups were broken apart as everyone was directed to support the state. The year that the Khmer Rouge took power was referred to as “Year Zero” which meant that not only was this the start of a new calendar but that Cambodian society would begin anew. Cities were emptied as citizens were forced into the forests to begin mass agricultural projects. The breakdown of society’s infrastructure that resulted had a negative effect on the population as malnutrition and starvation spread. Only those who were in high levels of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy were able to enjoy any semblance of a normal life. While others who were deemed enemies, or fell from favor were executed or sent to prisons, such as the infamous Tuol Sleng (S-21) where it was “the place where people go in but never come out.” This reign of terror was finally stopped when the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia in 1978 and drove out the Khmer Rouge, installing a new government in January 1979.