Before delving into the horrific details, we need to know who Pol Pot is. Pol Pot's real name is Saloth Sâr, born in 1925 in a small village in Kampong Thom province, Cambodia. This is a peaceful countryside with sprawling rice fields, winding rivers, and the slow-paced life of Cambodian farmers. Saloth Sâr's family was not as poor as many people think.
Saloth Sâr's home belonged to a relatively prosperous peasant class, owning land and even having distant connections to the Cambodian royal family. His brother worked in the royal palace, and his cousin was a dancer in the royal dance troupe. Generally, this is not the background of a destitute bandit. Saloth Sâr grew up in a large family with nine siblings. He was a quiet, reserved boy with nothing remarkable about him. Those who knew him at the time described him as polite, even somewhat shy.
No one thought that this boy would become a figure that would send shivers down the spine of the world. But there was something special; this family was able to invest in and educate their children, a luxury in Cambodia at that time. Saloth Sâr was sent to study at prestigious schools in Phnom Penh, including schools for the elite. He later attended a famous Catholic school, where he was exposed to Western values. However, Saloth Sâr was not an outstanding student. He just managed to pass, not particularly remarkable nor particularly poor.
The biggest highlight during this period was when he received a scholarship to study abroad in Paris, France, in 1949. This was a turning point that would shape Saloth Sâr's path and also the place where the seeds of Pol Pot's extremist ideas were sown later. Here, Saloth Sâr participated in activist movements and was deeply influenced by Mao Zedong, who believed that the revolution must start from the peasants, not from the working class. Thus, Saloth Sâr began to dream of a pure Cambodia, a place without injustice, without capitalism, and without Western influence. He thought that the only way to achieve this was to eliminate the entire current society, from cities, schools to religion.
But did you know?
Saloth Sâr was not a diligent student. He continuously failed, lost his scholarship, and was forced to leave Paris in 1953. When he returned to Cambodia, he did not bring back a diploma but carried something more dangerous, the ideology of revolutionary extremism. This was the seed that would lead to the later disaster. Back home, he did a very ordinary job, becoming a history and geography teacher at a private school in Phnom Penh. If you had met him at that time, you might have seen a slender man, wearing glasses, speaking softly, and very much loved by his students. But behind that appearance, Saloth Sâr was secretly active. He wanted a purely Cambodian revolutionary movement.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Cambodia fell into instability. Head of state Norodom Sihanouk, a powerful but authoritarian figure, tried to keep Cambodia neutral amid the Cold War. However, his policies did not satisfy everyone. Farmers were dissatisfied due to land inequality, intellectuals were upset by political control, and the youth were drawn into revolutionary ideas. In 1963, Saloth Sâr officially took the alias Pol Pot, a name whose origin remains unclear.
Pol Pot fled to the jungle, established a base in northeastern Cambodia, and began to build a guerrilla force, later known as the Khmer Rouge. At this time, the Khmer Rouge was just a small group, but they attracted poor farmers, discontented youth, and those swept up by revolutionary ideas. Pol Pot not only wanted to overthrow the government but also aimed to destroy the entire current society to build an ideal Cambodia. In 1970, a major turning point occurred. Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown by a coup led by Lon Nol, a general backed by the United States. The Lon Nol government was weak, corrupt, and unpopular.
Meanwhile, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge grew stronger thanks to support from China, which provided weapons and money. After five years of fierce guerrilla warfare, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh. The people poured into the streets, cheering, thinking that the war was over and peace would come. But they did not know that this was the beginning of a horrific nightmare. Pol Pot declared this year as Year Zero, a new beginning for Cambodia, or more precisely, Democratic Cambodia. He wanted to erase all traces of the old society. No cities, no currency, no schools, no hospitals, no religion, no intellectuals.
His goal was to turn Cambodia into a self-sufficient agricultural society, where everyone was equal, working in the fields and living like the pure farmers of the ancient Angkor period. It sounds idealistic, but the way Pol Pot implemented it was unimaginably brutal. Immediately after capturing Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge ordered the evacuation of the entire city. Millions of people, including children, the elderly, and patients in hospitals, were forced to leave their homes, taking whatever they could carry to go to the countryside. Pol Pot claimed this was to avoid American bombing or to build a new society, but in reality, he wanted to destroy the concept of the city, which he saw as the source of corrupt capitalism and Western influence.
Millions of people were herded to walk tens or even hundreds of kilometers under the scorching heat of the Cambodian dry season. There was not enough food, no drinking water, no shelter. Many died on the way from exhaustion, illness, or were shot if they tried to escape. The survivors were taken to agricultural cooperatives, where they were forced to work from dawn until dusk with a daily ration of only a bowl of thin porridge. Children were separated from their parents, spouses were torn apart, and everyone was closely monitored by Khmer Rouge soldiers, often just teenagers armed with guns and blind faith in the revolution.
Pol Pot did not stop at evacuating the population; he launched a large-scale purging campaign to eliminate anyone deemed an enemy of the revolution. The list was horrifically long. First were the intellectuals, including teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and even those who wore glasses or could read and write were considered a threat. Pol Pot believed that intellectuals were products of capitalism and the West and had no place in a new society. Second were the urban dwellers, those who had lived in Phnom Penh or other cities were called new people and treated like slaves. They were distinguished from the old people, meaning the farmers who lived in the Khmer Rouge-controlled areas before 1975.
Next were those with connections to the old government, including soldiers, officials, or anyone who had worked for Lon Nol or Sihanouk, who were executed immediately. Buddhists, the main religion of Cambodia, were also wiped out. Monks were killed or forced to disrobe, temples were destroyed or turned into warehouses. The Cham Muslims and Catholics were also brutally suppressed. Then there were foreigners, including Vietnamese, Chinese, and other minority ethnic groups who were also targeted. Pol Pot nurtured extremist ideas that viewed these groups as enemies.
One of the most horrific places of that regime was S21, an old school in Phnom Penh turned into a secret prison. Here, thousands were brutally tortured to confess to counter-revolutionary crimes. They were beaten, electrocuted, had their nails pulled out, or even were waterboarded, and then most were taken to the killing fields for execution. Pol Pot wanted to turn Cambodia into an agricultural superpower, but his economic policies were a disaster. The people were forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day in the fields, but the rice production was exported in exchange for weapons from China. Meanwhile, the people were only allowed to eat a little thin porridge or a few spoonfuls of rice each day.
Famine spread, combined with disease and lack of medical care, caused hundreds of thousands to die. Children and the elderly were the most vulnerable victims. The agricultural cooperatives were organized in a military style with strict discipline. Anyone who worked slowly, complained, or stole food, even something as simple as a potato, could be killed on the spot. The Khmer Rouge also banned personal relationships; love, marriage, or even family affection were considered counter-revolutionary. Children were trained to monitor their parents, reporting any suspicious behavior. Pol Pot not only killed civilians but also purged his own comrades. He was obsessed with the thought that there were traitors within his ranks. A series of senior Khmer Rouge officials were arrested and harmed. This paranoia made the regime increasingly unstable as commanders began to suspect each other.
Pol Pot even ordered the extermination of Khmer Rouge units in eastern Cambodia, where he suspected there were ties to Vietnam. Western powers like the United States and Britain indirectly supported the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s when they were still not aligned with Vietnam. This shows the complexity of international politics during the Cold War. The Khmer Rouge regime lasted officially for four years but caused tremendous damage. It is estimated that about 2 million people, or about a quarter of Cambodia's population, died from starvation, disease, forced labor, or execution.
By 1979, Vietnam helped overthrow the Khmer Rouge after Pol Pot continuously attacked the Vietnamese border, killing civilians. Pol Pot and the entire Khmer Rouge army retreated into the jungle, continuing guerrilla warfare throughout the 1980s. They were supported by several countries, but the Khmer Rouge began to disintegrate internally. In 1997, Pol Pot was arrested by his own allies after he ordered the killing of another high-ranking leader, Tam. In 1998, Pol Pot died under mysterious circumstances, possibly by suicide or poisoning while under house arrest at a base in the jungle, and he never faced justice for his crimes.