Khmer Rouge leader died on April 15 in 1998, leaving behind a legacy of brutality and impoverishment
Amir Latif
ANKARA
Some Cambodians still regard Pol Pot as a revolutionary and powerful figure to be worshipped.
For them, he was the one who strived for transforming the jungle-clad Southeast Asian country into a peasant utopia, but for many others, he was simply a “genocidal” dictator who presided over one of the “darkest chapters” of the 20th century.
Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge (radical communist regime) leader breathed his last in a remote jungle hideout along the Cambodia-Thailand border on April 15, 1998, leaving behind a legacy of brutality and impoverishment.
He is blamed for the deaths of over 1.5 million people who died under his four-year blood-stained ultra-Maoist reign, but he never saw justice.
The victims – men, women, and children – are said to be tortured and executed, while others died of starvation, overwork, or disease in the sprawling rural labor camps of “Year Zero,” beginning of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975 characterized by only work and death.
Pol Pot, however, always denied the allegations, describing them as “propaganda by the West and Vietnamese.”
From teacher to guerilla commander
Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, was born in a farming family on May 19, 1925, in Cambodia’s Kompong Thom province.
After attending a French primarily school in the capital Phnom Penh, he went to a technical college to learn carpentry in 1949 and was awarded a scholarship to study as a radio engineer in Paris, where he became involved in political struggle.
Pol Pot returned to Cambodia in January 1953, when the region was revolting against French colonial rule. Cambodia gained its independence from France in the same year.
From 1956 to 1964, he taught at a private school while simultaneously plotting a revolution.
He adopted his revolutionary pseudonym, Pol Pot, in 1963, and spent the next 12 years building up the Communist Party of Cambodia, which was established in 1960 and served as its secretary.
He was a staunch opponent of the subsequent governments of Norodom Sihanouk and the military ruler Gen. Lon Nol.
In 1975, he led the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces to overthrow Lon Nol’s regime and became the prime minister of the new government from 1976 until he was overthrown by the invading Vietnam forces and their Cambodian supporters in January 1979.
Only work and death
During Pol Pot’s four-year stint, it is alleged more than 1.5 million people died of starvation, forced labor, disease, torture, or execution while carrying out a program of radical social and agricultural reforms.
He dreamt of turning the poor Southeast Asian nation into agrarian heaven, but ultimately descended into a nightmare of “killing fields.”
Following the Vietnamese invasion, Pol Pot set up bases on the Thailand-Cambodia border to fight against the new Vietnam-backed government in Phnom Penh.
The new administration refused to consider peace negotiations until Pol Pot was removed from party leadership.
In 1985, Pol Pot officially retired but remained a guiding force in the organization, whose low-intensity guerrilla activities continued.
In 1997, however, he was forcibly deposed due to an internal power struggle, arrested, placed under house arrest, and convicted of treason.
Cambodia’s new government, meanwhile, shattered in July when Hun Sen led a coup against his co-premier, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, destroying negotiations the latter had held with the guerrillas about possibly turning Pol Pot over to an international tribunal.
Pol Pot died on April 15, 1998. The cause of death was attributed to cardiac arrest, but rumors circulated that he had committed suicide.
An autopsy was never performed to medically verify the cause of death.
‘Production of war’
Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, said Pol Pot’s legacy is one of the most difficult chapters in Cambodia’s history.
“He emerged in the middle of a war; at the right time and the right moment. It was the war that made him what he is for us today,” Chhang told Anadolu.
The West, especially the media, painted him as “evil and completely dark,” which is not completely true.
“He was not a philosopher or a thinker. He was the production of a war, which always brings miseries and disasters,” he said.
Chhang said the abolition of the free market economy was the biggest blunder that caused a huge blow to Cambodia on the economic front, and subsequently Pol Pot himself.
“He had a suspicious mentality (paranoia) that made him believe that most of the people around him were his enemies, whether civilians or soldiers. This (behavior) caused many executions and arrests, which subsequently weakened files and ranks of Khmer Rouge,” he said.
“In the end, he died in isolation.”
“We cannot remove the legacy of Pol Pot from Cambodia’s history. We can’t simply skip that. But much time has passed. The Cambodians should learn a lesson, turn a new page, leave the negativity behind, and move forward with positivity,” Chhang argued.
‘My conscience is clear’
After 25 years of his death, Cambodia remains one of Asia’s poorest countries, far away from what was dreamed by the late leader.
In an interview with the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine in 1998, Pol Pot refused to apologize for his actions.
He acknowledged some “mistakes” but rebutted the “skull mountains” accusations that have come to symbolize the brutality of his regime. He said it were the Vietnamese who planted the bones in Cambodia’s notorious “killing fields.”
“My conscience is clear,” he said.
In the end, he got what he allegedly denied so many Cambodians – a peaceful death. “In Khmer, we have a saying,” Pol Pot said. “When one is both quite sick and old, there remains only one thing: that you die.”
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Aamir Latif is a senior journalist and represents Anadolu, a Turkish news agency
Courtesy: Anadolu Agency (Posted on 14.04.2023)
