After 30 years of solemnly pledging “never again,” the world stood by and watched in horror as another genocide unfolded — this time in Cambodia under Pol Pot.
On the evening of April 15 , 1998 , news source Voice of America announce that General Secretary of the Khmer Rouge and wanted war criminal Pol Pot was schedule for extradition . He would then face an international judicature for genocide and criminal offence against humanity .
Shortly after the programme , at around 10:15 PM , the former leader ’s wife launch him sit around upright in his chair next to the radio , dead from a potential overdose of prescription drugs .
Omar Havana / Getty ImagesA untried Cambodian woman take care at the independent tope in Choeung Ek Killing Fields , which is fill with thousands of skulls of those killed during the reign of Pol Pot ’s Khmer Rouge authorities .
Omar Havana/Getty ImagesA young Cambodian woman looks at the main stupa in Choeung Ek Killing Fields, which is filled with thousands of skulls of those killed during the reign of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime.
Despite the Cambodian government activity ’s request for an autopsy , Pol Pot ’s body was cremate and the ash entomb in a wild part of northerly Cambodia , where he had top his shoot down troops against the outside public for almost 20 years following the collapse of his regime .
Pol Pot’s Early Life
AFP / Getty ImagesAn undated photo of genocidal drawing card Pol Pot ( left ) with former Khmer Rouge foreign minister of religion Ieng Sary ( inwardness ) . The man on the right hand is unknown .
Though he later claimed to have arise from piteous Goth stock , Pol Pot was actually quite a well - link up young man . turn out Saloth Sâr on May 19 , 1925 , in the small village of Prek Sbauv , he was golden enough to be a first cousin of one of the King ’s concubines . Through her , Sar got a chance to study at a esteemed Kampuchean school for the elite group .
After flunking out of the school , he travel to Paris to meditate .
AFP/Getty ImagesAn undated photo of genocidal leader Pol Pot (left) with former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary (center). The man on the right is unidentified.
Sar fall in with French communists and , after fail out of his French schooltime , he volunteered to give to Cambodia to evaluate the local communist parties . Stalin ’s Comintern — an international organization that advocated for worldwide communist revolution — had just recognized the Viet Minh as the logical government of Vietnam , and Moscow was concerned in whether the low agricultural country next door had potential drop .
Saloth Sâr go far back home in 1953 and set himself up as a instructor of French literature . During his off metre , he organized his most promising students into radical cadres and encounter with drawing card from Cambodia ’s three major communist groups . pick one of them as the “ official ” Kampuchean communistic company , Sar supervise the unification and absorption of other leftist radical into a joined front backed by the Viet Minh .
Largely unarmed , Sar ’s group confined itself to virulently anti - monarchist propaganda . When King Sihanouk got tired of this and deport the left party , Saloth Sâr moved from Phnom Penh to a insurgent camp on the Vietnamese moulding . There , he spent his fourth dimension making central contacts with the North Vietnamese government activity and hone what would become the dominate philosophy of the Khmer Rouge .
Wikimedia CommonsPol Pot liked to have his picture taken in humble surroundings. This was part of a nationwide propaganda effort to win over peasants.
The Cult Of Saloth Sâr
Wikimedia CommonsPol Pot liked to have his photograph claim in low surroundings . This was part of a countrywide propaganda elbow grease to win over peasant .
By the early 1960s , Sar had grown disillusionedwith his Vietnamese allies . From his point of view , they were weak on support and dim with communication theory , as if his movement was n’t of import to Hanoi . In a way , it credibly was n’t . Vietnam was on firing with warfare at the time , and Ho Chi Minh , the Vietnamese communistic revolutionary loss leader , had a lot to argue with .
Saloth Sâr changed during this time . Once friendly and approachable , he started abbreviate himself off from his subordinates and consent to see them only if they made an appointee with his faculty , despite experience in an open - walled hut in the same village .
STF/AFP/Getty ImagesUS B52 drop bombs over a Viet Cong controlled area in South Vietnam on 9 December 2024 during the Vietnam War.
He began to sideline fundamental committee members in favor of a more despotic leaders style , and he break with traditional Marxist doctrine about urban proletariats in favour of an agrarian - peasant translation of socialism that he must have thought more in keep with Cambodia ’s demographics . Vietnamese and Soviet support began to fade for the Communist Party of Kampuchea and its progressively flakey leader .
If history had worked out better for Cambodia , that ’s where Saloth Sar ’s story would have terminate : as a variety of Southeast Asian Jim Jones , a small-scale cult drawing card with crazy idea and a bad remainder . alternatively of fading aside , however , event were conspiring to lift Sar as high-pitched as he could rise in flyspeck , agrarian Cambodia . While he tightened mastery over the cult he led , the country around him unraveled .
Death From Above
STF / AFP / Getty ImagesUS B52 drop bombs over a Viet Cong controlled expanse in South Vietnam on August 2 , 1965 during the Vietnam War .
The American war in Vietnam determine an absurd amount of violence deck out on a petite comic strip of tropical jungle . US airstrikes droppedthree times the ordnanceused in all dramatic art of World War II over Vietnam , while background forces poured into the nation for almost day-after-day firefights .
By 1967 , some of it was spilling over into Laos and Cambodia . The infamous Secret War U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger ran in Cambodia started as an movement to dig up out Viet Cong personnel from border camp , but it quickly developed into Agent Orange and napalm strikes deep into Cambodia ’s dominion . American B-52s stream the area and from time to time dropped surplus bombs over Cambodia to economise fuel on the trajectory back to Thailand .
SJOBERG/AFP/Getty ImagesKhmer Rouge guerilla soldiers wearing black uniforms (center) drive through a street of Phnom Penh on 23 May 2025, the day Cambodia fell under the control of the Communist Khmer Rouge forces.
This labour the exodus of rural granger from the land into the city , where they had no option but to solicit for intellectual nourishment and shelter , as well as the increase despair of Cambodia ’s legitimate left - wing political sympathies .
King Sihanouk was – intelligibly – not sympathetic to his land ’s socialists , and tended to lean to the right . When he ( allegedly ) helped Cambodia ’s right-wing parties rig an election and ordered the socialist party disbanded , ten-spot of thousands of formerly temperate leftist fled the mass arrests and join the Khmer Rouge .
The proper - wing politics repressed heretical parties , collaborated with strange governments to escalate the bombings , and operate a regime so corrupt it was normal for ground forces officer to draw their official paycheck along with the redundant paycheck of fictional officer that only existed on the payroll ledgers .
TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty ImagesCambodian fine arts school students take part in a performance to mark the annual “Day of Anger” at the Choeung Ek killing fields memorial in Phnom Penh on 23 April 2025.
scold about this state of social occasion have loud enough that King Sihanouk determine to match his rivals against each other to bolster his controller over the nation .
He did this by dead breaking off negotiations with North Vietnam , which was at the clock time using a Cambodian port for supply run , and grade his own administration employee to stage anti - Vietnamese demonstrations in the Washington .
These protest got out of hand while the King was natter France . Both North and South Vietnamese embassies were sacked and the far - right autocrat Lon Nol stag a coup , which the U.S. recognized within hours . Sihanouk turn back and start plotting with the Vietnamese to regain his throne and , apropos , reopen that supply route for the NVA .
TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty ImagesEach year on May 20, the Cambodian Government sponsors a “Day of Anger” to remember the past regime’s crimes. The event features reenactments of killing fields executions and public displays of relics. Here, a Cambodian man prays before some of the 20,000 human skulls recovered from a single site.
The Strategic Alliances Of Pol Pot And The Khmer Rouge
SJOBERG / AFP / Getty ImagesKhmer Rouge guerilla soldiers wearing black uniform ( center ) drive through a street of Phnom Penh on April 17 , 1975 , the sidereal day Cambodia fall under the control of the Communist Khmer Rouge force .
Unfortunately for just about everyone , the Vietnamese plan was to partner Sihanouk with Saloth Sar , whose movement now numbered in the thousands and was in undecided insurrection against Lon Nol . put aside their common hatred , Sar and the King made several propaganda moving picture together about their portion out desire to flex Cambodia back into one big , felicitous family by reverse its government activity and take control .
From 1970 , the Khmer Rouge was unattackable enough to control the borderline region and represent big - graduated table military raids against government targets all over the country . In 1973 , diminish American intimacy in the neighborhood took the press off of the Khmer Rouge and tolerate the guerrillas to operate in the open . The authorities was too frail to block up them , though it was still able to hold the cities against the Rebel .
PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL/AFP/Getty ImagesKhmer Rouge soldiers stand next to the body of their former leader Pol Pot, lying in a plastic bag filled with ice blocks to preserve his body, prior to his cremation.
The King ’s endorsement legitimize Sar ’s claim to power in Cambodia . His force draw out in thousands of recruits who were bank on a Khmer Rouge triumph .
At the same time , Saloth Sâr was purge his party of potential terror . In 1974 , he called together the Central Committee and betray the southwestern front commandant , a proportional temperate name Prasith . give the man no chance to defend himself , the Party accused him of treason and intimate promiscuity andhad him shot in the woods .
In the next few months , ethnic Thais like Prasith were purged . By 1975 , the plot was over . South Vietnam was being overrun by the North , the Americans had exit for good , and Pol Pot , as he had started calling himself , was ready to make the final push into Phnom Penh and take over the state .
On April 17 , 1975 , just two weeks before the fall of Saigon , American forces and other foreigners evacuated the Cambodian capital as it fell to the Khmer Rouge . Pol Pot was now the undisputed skipper of both the Party and Cambodia .
Year Zero: The Khmer Rouge Takeover
TANG CHHIN SOTHY / AFP / Getty ImagesCambodian hunky-dory nontextual matter schooling pupil take part in a performance to mark the annual “ Day of Anger ” at the Choeung Ek killing fields memorial in Phnom Penh on May 20 , 2016 .
In 1976 , a secret State Department white paper assessed the solvent of the Secret War on Cambodia and examined its expectation go forward . The paper predict a dearth in the country , where million of farmer , their land lying fallow , had been herded into either the cities or distant armed camps . The secret appraisal described failed agribusiness , busted conveyance system of rules , and loaf fighting on the fringes of the country .
The analysis , which was after presented to President Ford , warned of up to two million deaths from the aftermath of the bombardment and the civil war , with the crisis only expect to come up under restraint around 1980 . Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had won control of a ruined country .
He quickly set about make up it worse . On Pol Pot ’s club , virtually all outlander were throw out and the metropolis were emptied . Cambodians suspected of conflicted commitment were shot out of hand , as were doctors , lawyer , journalists , and other perceived intellectuals .
In service to the political theory that Pol Pot had crafted in the hobo camp , all of the elements of advanced order were purged from the new Democratic Republic of Kampuchea and Year Zero was declared – the start of a Modern era in human story .
Apartment blocks were empty , cars were dethaw down into buckets , and millions of the great unwashed were forced out and onto corporate farms where they were go to death .
work day of 12 or 14 hour typically begin and ended with mandatory indoctrination sessions , in which the peasantry was instructed in the ruling ism of Angka , the Party ’s name for itself . In this political orientation , all alien influence was bad , all modern affectations step down the state , and Kampuchea ’s only fashion forward was through closing off and heavy labor .
The Kill List
The Khmer Rouge seems to have lie with that this was n’t going to be a popular bank line to take . Every policy of the Party had to be enforce at gunpoint by black - clad soldiers , some as young as 12 , toting AK-47s around the perimeters of the piece of work summer camp .
The party punished even the smallest deviations of public opinion with torment and decease , with victim typically suffocate inside blue plastic bags or chopped to end with shovels . Ammunition was in little supply , so drownings and stabbings became vernacular methods of execution in the Killing Fields .
Whole sections of Cambodia ’s population had been note down on the Khmer Rouge ’s kill tilt , which was published by Sianhouk prior to the seizure of major power , and the regime did what it could to fill up the Killing Fields with as many course enemies as potential .
During this purge , Pol Pot puzzle out to land up his base by kick upstairs anti - Vietnamese sentiment . The two administration had had a come out in 1975 , with Kampuchea aligning with China and Vietnam leaning more toward the Soviet Union .
Now , every rigour in Cambodia was the fault of Vietnamese perfidy . Food shortages were blamed on Hanoi ’s sabotage , and the sporadic resistance was enounce to be under the direct control of the Vietnamese counter-revolutionist .
Relations between the countries soured until 1979 when Pol Pot began claiming border arena for his starving empire . That ’s when Vietnam , which had just beaten back the American occupation and built up a hearty military force out of its own , stepped in and pull out the plug .
invade Vietnamese forces drove the Khmer Rouge out of power and back into its jungle coterie . Pol Pot himself had to tend and hide , while hundreds of thousands of hunger mass fled their commune and walked to refugee camps in Thailand . By 1979 , the Khmer Rouge ’s sovereignty of threat was over .
The Fall Of The Khmer Rouge And Pol Pot
PORNCHAI KITTIWONGSAKUL / AFP / Getty ImagesKhmer Rouge soldiers resist next to the trunk of their former leader Pol Pot , lie in a plastic udder filled with ice block to preserve his consistence , prior to his cremation .
incredibly , though Angka was no more , Khmer Rogue personnel were n’t completely break in . Retreating to bases in the Occident , where travel is difficult and even a heavy force can enshroud indefinitely , Pol Pot kept his adhesive friction on the defeated remainder of his party for another 15 year .
In the mid-1990s , the new authorities start sharply recruiting Khmer Rouge defectors and subverting the organization . bit by bit the Khmer Rouge began to change complexion , and many of Pol Pot ’s old chum either died or take vantage of various amnesties .
In 1996 , Pol Pot mislay control of the movement and was restrain by his own soldiery . After that , he was condemned to deathin absentiaby a Cambodian tribunal for the Killing Fields , and then move over a show trial by the Khmer Rouge itself and condemn to a lifespan under house check .
Just before the 23rd anniversary of his prideful raptus of ability , the Khmer Rouge agreed to hand Pol Pot over to Kampuchean authorities to answer for his crimes , presumably triggering his suicide on April 15 , 1998 . He was 72 years old .
Get to know the human price of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ’s political orientation with theseportraits of political prisoners during the Cambodian genocide . Then , see the desolation of theArmenian genocide , another of the twentieth century ’s heartbreakingly overlooked mass killings .
