An
attempt by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist
peasant farming society resulted in the deaths of 25 percent
of the country's population from starvation, overwork and
executions.
Pol
Pot was born in 1925 (as Saloth Sar) into a farming family
in central Cambodia, which was then part of French Indochina.
In 1949, at age 20, he traveled to Paris on a scholarship
to study radio electronics but became absorbed in Marxism
and neglected his studies. He lost his scholarship and returned
to Cambodia in 1953 and joined the underground Communist movement.
The following year, Cambodia achieved full independence from
France and was then ruled by a royal monarchy.
By 1962, Pol Pot had become leader of the Cambodian Communist
Party and was forced to flee into the jungle to escape the
wrath of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia. In the
jungle, Pol Pot formed an armed resistance movement that became
known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) and waged a guerrilla
war against Sihanouk's government.
In
1970, Prince Sihanouk was ousted, not by Pol Pot, but due
to a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup. An embittered Sihanouk
retaliated by joining with Pol Pot, his former enemy, in opposing
Cambodia's new military government. That same year, the U.S.
invaded Cambodia to expel the North Vietnamese from their
border encampments, but instead drove them deeper into Cambodia
where they allied themselves with the Khmer Rouge.
From
1969 until 1973, the U.S. intermittently bombed North Vietnamese
sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, killing up to 150,000 Cambodian
peasants. As a result, peasants fled the countryside by the
hundreds of thousands and settled in Cambodia's capital city,
Phnom Penh.
All
of these events resulted in economic and military destabilization
in Cambodia and a surge of popular support for Pol Pot.
By
1975, the U.S. had withdrawn its troops from Vietnam. Cambodia's
government, plagued by corruption and incompetence, also lost
its American military support. Taking advantage of the opportunity,
Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant
guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17 effectively
seized control of Cambodia.
Once
in power, Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an
agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural
Revolution, which he had witnessed, first-hand during a visit
to Communist China.
Mao's
"Great Leap Forward" economic program included forced
evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class
enemies." Pol Pot would now attempt his own "Super
Great Leap Forward" in Cambodia, which he renamed the
Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.
He
began by declaring, "This is Year Zero," and that
society was about to be "purified." Capitalism,
Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences
were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant
Communism.
All
foreigners were thus expelled, embassies closed, and any foreign
economic or medical assistance was refused. The use of foreign
languages was banned. Newspapers and television stations were
shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone
usage curtailed. Money was forbidden. All businesses were
shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care
eliminated, and parental authority revoked. Thus Cambodia
was sealed off from the outside world.
All
of Cambodia's cities were then forcibly evacuated. At Phnom
Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into
the countryside at gunpoint. As many as 20,000 died along
the way.
Millions
of Cambodians accustomed to city life were now forced into
slave labor in Pol Pot's "killing fields" where
they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease,
on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every
two days.
Workdays
in the fields began around 4 a.m. and lasted until 10 p.m.,
with only two rest periods allowed during the 18 hour day,
all under the armed supervision of young Khmer Rouge soldiers
eager to kill anyone for the slightest infraction. Starving
people were forbidden to eat the fruits and rice they were
harvesting. After the rice crop was harvested, Khmer Rouge
trucks would arrive and confiscate the entire crop.
Ten
to fifteen families lived together with a chairman at the
head of each group. The armed supervisors made all work decisions
with no participation from the workers who were told, "Whether
you live or die is not of great significance." Every
tenth day was a day of rest. There were also three days off
during the Khmer New Year festival.
Throughout
Cambodia, deadly purges were conducted to eliminate remnants
of the "old society" - the educated, the wealthy,
Buddhist monks, police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and former
government officials. Ex-soldiers were killed along with their
wives and children. Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol
Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot
or bludgeoned with an ax. "What is rotten must be removed,"
a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.
In
the villages, unsupervised gatherings of more than two persons
were forbidden. Young people were taken from their parents
and placed in communals. They were later married in collective
ceremonies involving hundreds of often-unwilling couples.
Up
to 20,000 persons were tortured into giving false confessions
at Tuol Sleng, a school in Phnom Penh, which had been converted
into a jail. Elsewhere, suspects were often shot on the spot
before any questioning.
Ethnic
groups were attacked including the three largest minorities;
the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cham Muslims, along with twenty
other smaller groups. Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000
Chinese living in Cambodia in 1975 perished. Khmer Rouge also
forced Muslims to eat pork and shot those who refused.
On
December 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion
of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On
January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed.
The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting
of Khmer Rouge defectors.
Pol
Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer
Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession
of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years. After
a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, he finally
lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old
Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest,
before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal
for the events of 1975-79.
