Cambodians wept in disappointment after hearing that Pol Pot had
died of heart failure Wednesday in a jungle hut on the Thai border,
even as the last diehard members of his vanquished movement were
moving toward surrendering him to an international tribunal.
"He deserved to die. I am only sorry that he died so easily
without being tried," sobbed Kim Saren, whose entire family —
mother, father and eight brothers and sisters — died under Pol
Pot's regime.
Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, killing
everyone who stood in the way of remaking the country into a
Marxist agrarian regime. One person in five died of starvation,
illness or execution.
Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk, who the Khmer Rouge deposed,
recently described Pol Pot as "one of the most powerful monsters
ever created by humanity."
The last few hundred Khmer Rouge were on the run from government
soldiers and the movement was nearing its demise at the time of his
death. He was no longer the leader, but a prisoner of his own men
who were offering to turn him over for trial in exchange for a
peace deal.
Pol Pot's wife discovered his body when she went to arrange the
mosquito netting around him for the night, said Non Nou, his Khmer
Rouge jailer.
"At 12 midnight his wife came to us" sobbing, Non Nou said.
"She learned that her husband was dead when she was tying the net
for him. He died in a hut built for him after he lost his power."
Non Nou said Pol Pot's body would be kept for one or two days
before a traditional Cambodian funeral. "Wait and see," he said
when asked if journalists or outsiders would be allowed to attend.
Thai military officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
one of their teams had crossed into Cambodia and obtained
photographs of Pol Pot's corpse. The photos were to be released to
the media Friday.
Skepticism about the news of the reclusive leader's death, often
rumored in recent years, was especially strong given the timing.
The United States sought China's aid on April 9 in bringing him to
trial for crimes against humanity, and his comrades-turned-captors
were mulling over what nation, if any, they should surrender him.
"I think we could almost have arrested him tomorrow. It was
very close," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation
Center of Cambodia, a Yale University-affiliated project gathering
evidence against top Khmer Rouge leaders in case they are ever
brought to trial.
Youk Chhang said countries like Thailand and China must be
"relieved" about the death because Pol Pot would not be able to
reveal just how much these countries had aided his movement.
To the end, Pol Pot showed no regret, or even recognition of the
misery he had caused.
His "conscience is clear," he told Western journalist Nate
Thayer in October. While he acknowledged "mistakes," he suggested
he had been the target of a plot to discredit him, perhaps by
Cambodia's traditional enemy, Vietnam.
It was a frail gray-haired man who spoke to Thayer in the first
interview he had given in 18 years. By then he had become a victim
of the movement he once headed, condemned to spend the last months
of his life under house arrest.
A "people's tribunal" held at the guerrillas' last stronghold
in northern Cambodia condemned him in July for crimes that included
the killing of the group's longtime guerrilla defense minister, Son
Sen, and his family.
The murders were committed by Pol Pot's henchmen as the group
itself was in its death throes, sent into irrevocable decline by
mass defections in 1996.
"I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my
country," Pol Pot said in his rueful final interview last fall.
Pol Pot was born into a farming family in Kompong Thom province,
80 miles north of Phnom Penh. Personal details of his life were
always hard to verify, and only in his 1997 interview did he make
public the true year of his birth, 1925.
Pol Pot went to Paris in 1949 on a government scholarship to
study electronics. Absorbed with leftist politics, he established a
communist cell with fellow Cambodian students. He failed his exams,
lost his scholarship and returned home.
In the early 1960s, Pol Pot fled into the jungle after the
government, led by then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk, savagely repressed
leftist opposition. There, he built up an armed resistance
movement, dubbed the Khmer Rouge — Red Cambodians — by Sihanouk.
In 1970, when Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup, the Khmer Rouge
numbered a few thousand. But the aggrieved prince then joined
forces with them, bringing his prestige and popular support.
Aided by China and Vietnam, the guerrillas gained control of the
countryside and forced the army of U.S.-backed Premier Lon Nol into
the towns. U.S. bombing alienated the peasantry.
On April 17, 1975, the black pajama-clad guerrillas seized Phnom
Penh, immediately expelled all foreigners and sealed off the
country.
"This is Year Zero," Pol Pot said.
Society was to be "purified," Khmer Rouge officials said. The
country began a forced march to pure agrarian communism — cities
were emptied, money was abolished, nationwide communal kitchens
introduced, schools and temples shut.
Phnom Penh was evacuated at gunpoint and its 2 million people
sent to work in the countryside.
Marked for death were educated people, religious or ethnic
minorities, Buddhist monks, and anyone suspected of ties with the
former government or who questioned the regime.
Vietnam invaded on Christmas Day 1978 and installed a new
communist government led by Khmer Rouge defectors. Pol Pot
retreated to western Cambodia and began directing his forces
against the Vietnamese.
The Khmer Rouge boycotted a U.N.-supervised election in 1991. A
decline in strength and support was capped by the 1996 defections.
In 1997, his interviewer asked Pol Pot if a daughter born to him
after a 1987 marriage would be proud of him when she grew up.
"I don't know about that," Pol Pot responded. "It's up to
history to judge."
© 1998 Associated Press