Pol Pot: Growing up
Pol Pot was born with the name Saloth Sar on May 19th, 1925. He spent the beginning of his life living in a well-off farming family in the Kampong Thom Province of Cambodia, and in 1949, earned a scholarship that took him to Paris, France to study radio electronics. There, his interests turned to student politics and Marxism (the socialism theories of Karl Marx). He later returned to Cambodia in 1953 after losing his scholarship and joined the underground Cambodian Communist Party ("Pol Pot: Life of a Tyrant").
Rising to Power
Pol Pot, with his charm and "unflinching ruthlessness", worked his way into becoming a leader in the Cambodian Communist Party ("Pol Pot: Life of a Tyrant"). To avoid the secret police of Prince Norodom Sihanouk (the ruler in Cambodia's monarchy government), Pot and other leaders in the party fled into the jungle, where he formed a resistance army called Khmer Rouge (which translates to "Red Cambodians"). The Khmer Rouge engaged in war with Cambodia's government, which at the time was backed by US military. In 1970, the US invaded Cambodia, throwing Prince Sihanouk out of power, who later joined sides with the Khmer Rouge. After periods of bombing Cambodia (which killed thousands of citizens), the US military withdrew in 1975, leaving the country in devastation and corruption. The Khmer Rouge took this as an opportunity and seized Cambodia on April 17th, 1975, putting Pol Pot into power ("Pol Pot in Cambodia 1975-1979").
The atrocities of A tyrant
With inspiration from Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in Communist China, Pol Pot had a dream for Cambodia to become an agricultural paradise filled with peasant-class citizens (simple, uneducated, but hard-working people). He announced that it would be "Year Zero" for Cambodia, renaming it the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea. His first step in devolving Cambodian society to its "pure past" was to cut off the Country from the rest of the world and undo their influences. Foreigners were expelled from the country, foreign languages were banned, and all medical and economical help from other countries was refused. Khmer Rouge had cities evacuated since they were considered a source of capitalism. Urban citizens were forced to work in fields. There, they were overworked, underfed, and constantly under surveillance by Khmer Rouge soldiers; countless Cambodians rapidly died from exhaustion, malnutrition, and disease. Pot also decided to eliminate education and ownership in order to achieve his vision. He took a devastating amount of rights away from Cambodians by banning religion, closing schools, abolishing the use of currency, ending health care, and invalidating parental authority. To further "cleanse" the population of education and the past society, he sentenced doctors, lawyers, Buddhist monks, teachers, police, former government members, veterans, and wealthy people to death. Anyone who showed disloyalty to Pol Pot (or were suspected of disloyalty) were exterminated, eventually including many Khmer Rouge leaders and past colleagues of Pot. Khmer Rouge also ran a secret prison in a closed-down school called "S-21". Anyone who was suspected of being a traitor was sent there with their families to be photographed, tortured, interrogated, and then killed. Mass graves, infamously known as the "Killing Fields" were made to hide the evidence by citizens under forced slave labour ("The Cambodian Genocide: The Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot's Regime").
the end of his reign
In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in hopes of ending border attacks from Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot and his allies fled into the jungle once more as evidence of their crimes gained international publicity. Notably, Khmer Rouge received support from the US and some other Asian countries during that time, since Vietnam was an enemy of the US as well. Pol Pot stepped down from leadership in Khmer Rouge and retired in the 1980's, but was arrested by its members in July, 1997. Charged with treason, Pot spent the rest of his life under house arrest until he died on April 15th, 1998. It is estimated that he was responsible for 2 000 000 deaths. ("Pol Pot: Life of a Tyrant")("Pol Pot in Cambodia 1975-1959").