Pol Pot
Pol Pot (1925- ). Cambodian communist leader, whose rule (1975-79) led to the deaths of over a million people from executions, forced labour, and ill-treatment. Born into a peasant family, he spent part of his youth in a Buddhist monastery. He later became a prominent communist organizer While working as a school-teacher; from 1963 he devoted himself to a guerrilla struggle against successive Cambodian governments. In 1975 Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge guerrillas took over the government in Phnom Penh and renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea. The new government then at-tempted to transform the country into a ‘pure’ peas-ant state by forcing millions of urban Cambodians to work in labour camps in the countryside, where many perished. Large sections of the middle class were deliberately exterminated. The scale of this brutality was first revealed to the world following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1978-79, which forced Pol Pot and his adherents to withdraw to Thailand. Although he officially resigned from the Khmer Rouge leadership in 1985, he appears to remain in control of the movement’s political and guerrilla activities. Continuing instability in Cambodia has led to fears that he could even now return to power.
