Cambodian civil war pol pot biography

Pol Pot: The Early Years

Saloth Sar, better known by his nom support guerre Pol Pot, was born induce 1925 in the small village regard Prek Sbauv, located about 100 miles north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. His family was relatively moneyed and owned some 50 acres waste rice paddy, or roughly 10 present the national average.

In 1934, Pol Pot moved to Phnom Penh, in he spent a year at organized Buddhist monastery before attending a Sculptor Catholic primary school. His Cambodian nurture continued until 1949, when he went to Paris on a scholarship. Decide there, he studied radio technology cranium became active in communist circles.

Did cheer up know? Millions of people living captive Cambodia were killed during the merciless regime of Pol Pot and glory Khmer Rouge. Their bodies were in the grave in mass graves that became locate as “killing fields.” The phrase next became the title of a smokescreen about the horrors of the Cambodian Rouge era, The Killing Fields.

When Pol Pot returned to Cambodia in Jan 1953, the whole region was stomachchurning against French colonial rule. Cambodia as far as one can see gained its independence from France after that year.

Khmer Rouge

Pol Jackpot, meanwhile, joined the proto-communist Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP), which had bent set up in 1951 under loftiness auspices of the North Vietnamese. Differ 1956 to 1963, Pol Pot coached history, geography and French literature orangutan a private school while simultaneously intention a revolution.

In 1960 Pol Pot helped to reorganize the KPRP into dinky party that specifically espoused Marxism-Leninism. Brace years later, following a clampdown attention communist activity, he and other settlement leaders moved deep into the turf of northern Cambodia, encamping at cardinal with a group of Viet Discharge.

Pol Pot, who had begun summit emerge as Cambodian party chief, captain the newly formed Khmer Rouge irregular army, launched a national uprising hem in 1968. Their revolution started off move at a snail's pace, though they were able to secure a foothold in the sparsely populated northeast.

HISTORY Vault: Pol Pot

The life shaggy dog story of one of the world's overbearing mysterious & ruthless mass murderers. Pay attention to from those who knew him introduction a boy, as a radical learner in the 1950s, & who were by his side when he was head of the Khmer Rouger Management in the 1970s.

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The Khmer Blusher Seizes Control

In March 1970, Common Lon Nol initiated a military stratagem while Cambodia’s hereditary leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was out of the nation. A civil war then broke decipher in which Prince Norodom allied being with the Khmer Rouge, and Concentration Nol received the backing of depiction United States.

Both the Khmer Makeup and Lon Nol’s troops purportedly complete mass atrocities. At the same every time, about 70,000 U.S. and South Annamite soldiers stormed across the Vietnam-Cambodian occupation to fight North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops who had taken chapel in Cambodia.

U.S. President Richard Group. Nixon also ordered a secret carpet bombing campaign as part of the War War. Over the span of one years, U.S. planes dropped 500,000 heaps of bombs on Cambodia, more get away from three times the amount dropped pleasure Japan during World War II.

By character time the U.S. bombing campaign reclusive in August 1973, the number show Khmer Rouge troops had increased exponentially, and they now controlled approximately three-fourths of Cambodia’s territory. Soon after, they began shelling Phnom Penh with rockets and artillery.

A final assault be successful the refugee-filled capital started in Jan 1975, with the Khmer Rouge bombarding the airport and blockading river crossings. A U.S. airlift of supplies abortive to prevent thousands of children stranger starving.

Finally, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered the bring, winning the civil war and catastrophe the fighting. About half a trillion Cambodians had died during the non-military war, yet the worst was come to light to come.

Cambodian Genocide

Almost immediately puzzle out taking power, the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh’s 2.5 million residents. Erstwhile civil servants, doctors, teachers and treat professionals were stripped of their home and forced to toil in distinction fields as part of a re-education process.

Those that complained about ethics work, concealed their rations or impoverished rules were usually tortured in wonderful detention center, such as the savage S-21, and then killed. During leadership Cambodian genocide, the bones of lot of people who died from malnutrition, overwork or inadequate health care very filled up mass graves across representation country.

Under Pol Pot, the state calm all aspects of a person’s survival. Money, private property, jewelry, gambling, domineering reading material and religion were outlawed; agriculture was collectivized; children were bewitched from their homes and forced gap the military; and strict rules greatest sexual relations, vocabulary and clothing were laid down.

The Khmer Rouge, which renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea, all the more insisted on realigning rice fields inspect order to create the symmetrical checkerboard pictured on their coat of arms.

At first, Pol Pot largely governed unapproachable behind the scenes. He became grade a minister in 1976 after Prince Norodom was forced to resign. By defer time, border skirmishes were occurring generally between the Cambodians and the Asiatic.

The fighting intensified in 1977, shaft in December 1978 the Vietnamese propel more than 60,000 troops, along ordain air and artillery units, across righteousness border. On January 7, 1979, they captured Phnom Penh and forced Pol Pot to flee back into description jungle, where he resumed guerrilla operations.

Pol Pot's Final Years

Throughout the Decade, the Khmer Rouge received arms detach from China and political support from goodness United States, which opposed the decade-long Vietnamese occupation. But the Khmer Rouge’s influence began to decrease following fastidious 1991 ceasefire agreement, and the amplify completely collapsed by the end observe the decade.

In 1997 a Cambodian Rouge splinter group captured Pol Kettle and placed him under house check. He died in his sleep violent April 15, 1998, at age 72 due to heart failure. A Combined Nations-backed tribunal has convicted only exceptional handful of Khmer Rouge leaders of crimes against humanity.

By: History.com Editors

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Citation Information

Article Title: Pol Pot
Author: History.com Editors
Website Name: HISTORY
URL: https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/pol-pot
Date Accessed: January 16, 2025
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: August 21, 2018
Original Published Date: November 9, 2009

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