Before delving into the horrifying details, let's find out who Pol Pot was. Pol Pot's real name was Saloth Sar. He was born in 1925 in a small village in the Kampong Thom province of Cambodia. It was a peaceful rural area with vast rice fields, winding rivers, and the measured life of Cambodian farmers. Saloth Sar's family was not as poor as many think.
Saloth Sar's family came from a prosperous peasant class, owned land, and even had distant connections to the Cambodian royal family. Saloth Sar's brother worked in the royal palace, and his cousin was a dancer in the royal dance troupe. It was hardly a background of a poor man turned bandit. Saloth Sar grew up in a large family with nine siblings. He was a quiet, calm, unremarkable boy. People who knew him at the time described him as polite, even shy.
No one thought that this boy would become a figure who would shock the entire world. But there was one special thing; this family had the means to invest in and educate their children, a luxury in Cambodia at that time. Saloth Sar was sent to prestigious schools in Phnom Penh, including schools for the elite. After that, he studied at a famous Catholic school, where he was exposed to Western values. Nevertheless, Saloth Sar was not an outstanding student. He studied enough, not too noticeable and not too bad.
The most significant event of this period was receiving a scholarship to study in Paris, France, in 1949. This became a turning point that defined Saloth Sar's fate, as well as the place where Pol Pot's radical ideas were born. Here, Saloth Sar participated in activist movements, and he was heavily influenced by Mao Zedong, who believed that the revolution should start with the peasants, not the working class. Thus, Saloth Sar began to dream of a pure Cambodia, free from injustice, capitalism, and Western influence. He believed that the only way to achieve this was to destroy the entire existing society: from cities and schools to religion.
But did you know?
Saloth Sar was not a complex student. He performed continuously, lost his scholarships, and was forced to leave Paris in 1953. When he returned to Cambodia, he did not obtain a degree but brought back a more dangerous thing, extremist revolutionary thought. This seed led to later catastrophe. Upon returning home, he did a very normal thing, becoming a history and geography teacher at a private school in Fomene. If you met him at that time, you would likely see a slender man wearing glasses, with a gentle speech and very popular among students. But behind this appearance, Saloth Sar was working in secret. He wanted a pure revolutionary movement in Cambodia.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Cambodia was experiencing turmoil. The head of state, Norodom Sihanouk, an influential but authoritarian figure, tried to maintain Cambodia's neutrality amid the Cold War. But his policies were not to everyone's liking. Peasants were dissatisfied with land inequality, the intelligentsia with political control, and the youth were drawn to revolutionary ideas. In 1963, Saloth Sar officially adopted the pseudonym Pol Pot, the origin of which remains unclear.
Pol Pot fled to the jungles, established a base in northeastern Cambodia, and began to create a guerrilla movement that would later become known as the "Khmer Rouge." At that time, the Khmer Rouge was a small group, but they attracted poor peasants, discontented youth, and those captivated by revolutionary ideology. Pol Pot wanted not only to overthrow the government but also to destroy the entire existing society to build a utopian Cambodia. In 1970, a significant turning point occurred. Norodom Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup led by Lon Nol, a general supported by the United States. Lon's government was weak, corrupt, and unpopular.
Meanwhile, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge were strengthening with the support of China, which supplied them with weapons and money. After five years of fierce guerrilla warfare, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh. People flooded the streets, rejoicing, thinking that the war was over and peace would come. But they did not know that this was the beginning of a terrible nightmare. Pol Pot declared this the zero year, a new beginning for Cambodia, or rather, democratic Cambodia. He wanted to erase all traces of the old society. No cities, no currency, no schools, no hospitals, no religion, no intelligentsia.
His goal was to turn Cambodia into a self-sufficient agrarian society where everyone would be equal, working in the fields and living like true peasants of ancient Angkor. It sounded idealistic, but Pol Pot realized this dream with unimaginable cruelty. Immediately after capturing Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge ordered the evacuation of the entire city. Millions of people—children, the elderly, and hospital patients—were forced to leave their homes, taking with them whatever they could carry, and head to the countryside. Pol Pot claimed this was done to avoid the Americans or to build a new society, but in reality, he wanted to destroy the very concept of a city, which he saw as the source of corrupt capitalism and Western influence.
Millions of people were forced to walk tens or even hundreds of kilometers in the exhausting heat of Cambodia's dry season. Food was scarce, there was no water, no shelter. Many died on the way from exhaustion, disease, or were shot while trying to escape. Those who survived were sent to agricultural cooperatives, where they were forced to work from dawn to dusk, receiving only a bowl of watery rice porridge a day. Children were separated from their parents, husbands and wives were torn apart, and people were closely monitored by Khmer Rouge soldiers, often still teenagers, armed and blindly believing in the revolution.
Pol Pot did not limit himself to the evacuation of the population but launched a massive campaign of purges, seeking to eliminate all those he considered enemies of the revolution. The list was incredibly long. The first to go were intellectuals, meaning teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers; even those who wore glasses or could read and write were considered a threat. Pol Pot viewed intellectuals as products of capitalism and believed that there was no place for the West in the new society. Next were the urban dwellers, those who lived in Phnom Penh or other cities, referred to as "new people" and treated like slaves. They were distinguished from "old people," meaning peasants who had lived in areas controlled by the Khmer Rouge before 1975.
Next were people associated with the former government, including soldiers, officials, or anyone who had ever worked under Lon Nol or Sihanouk, who would be executed immediately. Those belonging to Buddhism, the main religion of Cambodia, were also destroyed. Monks were killed or forced to be destroyed or turned into warehouses. Cham Muslims and Catholics were also brutally suppressed. Even foreigners, whether Vietnamese, Chinese, or other ethnic minorities, were targeted. Pol Pot nurtured extremist thoughts, viewing these groups as enemies.
One of the most horrific places of the regime was S21, an old school in Phnom Penh that turned into a secret prison. Here, thousands of people were brutally tortured to confess to their anti-revolutionary activities. They were beaten, electrocuted, pierced with nails, or even subjected to waterboarding, and then most were taken to the killing fields for execution. Pol Pot wanted to turn Cambodia into an agricultural power, but his economic policies were a disaster. People were forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day in the fields, but rice production was exported in exchange for weapons from China. Meanwhile, people could eat only a little thin porridge or a few tablespoons of rice a day.
Widespread hunger, combined with disease and lack of medical care, killed hundreds of thousands of people. Children and the elderly were the most vulnerable victims. Agricultural cooperatives were organized in a military style with iron discipline. Those who worked slowly, complained, or stole food, just like potatoes, could be killed on the spot. The Khmer Rouge also prohibited personal relationships, including love, marriage, or even family ties, which were considered anti-revolutionary. Children were taught to monitor their parents, reporting any doubts. Pol Pot not only killed ordinary people but also purged his comrades. He was obsessed with the idea that there were traitors within the ranks. A series of high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials were arrested and suffered. This paranoia made the regime increasingly unstable as commanders began to suspect each other.
Pol Pot even ordered the destruction of Khmer Rouge units in eastern Cambodia, suspecting they were linked to Vietnam. Western powers, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, indirectly supported the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s when they were still not on the side of Vietnam. This demonstrates the complexity of international politics during the Cold War. The Khmer Rouge regime lasted just over four years. Officially lasting four years, it caused colossal damage. It is estimated that around 2 million people, or about a quarter of Cambodia's population, died from hunger, disease, forced labor, or executions.
In 1979, Vietnam helped overthrow the Khmer Rouge regime after Pol Pot continually attacked the Vietnamese border to kill civilians. Pol Pot and the entire Khmer army retreated into the forests to continue the guerrilla war in the 1980s. They were supported by some countries, but internal strife began to spread. In 1997, Pol Pot was arrested by his own ally after he ordered the killing of another senior leader. In 1998, Pol Pot died under mysterious circumstances, possibly by suicide or poisoning, while under house arrest in a forest base, and he never faced justice for his crimes.