24. The Genocidiere
Cambodian communist revolutionary Saloth Sar, better known to history as Pol Pot (1925 – 1998), was a monster who hid beneath a charismatic façade. When he led the Khmer Rouge into seizing power in 1975, there was this little in his background that would have hinted at the horrors he was about to unleash. The country, which was renamed Democratic Kampuchea, was transformed into a nightmarish ideological tyranny, masterfully depicted in the 1984 movie, The Killing Field.
During the Khmer Rouge’s years in power, about a quarter of Cambodia’s population was killed in a horrific genocide carried out by Pol Pot and his followers, which was made even worse by its irrationality. In an attempt at social engineering, Cambodian cities were evacuated, and the urban masses were forcibly converted into peasants toiling on poorly run collective farms. Roughly three million were murdered or starved to death before the nightmare ended when the Khmer Rouge were driven from power in 1979.