Pol Pot (redirected from Saloth Sar)

Pol Pot, 1925–98, Cambodian political leader, originally named Saloth Sar. Paris-educated, and a Khmer Communist leader from 1960, he led Khmer Rouge guerrillas against the government of Lon Nol after 1970. In 1975 he proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea and served as its premier (1976–79). The systematic murder of members of various groups; the complete destruction of individual rights; forced labor, disease, and starvation in Cambodia's "killing fields"; the transformation of a developing country into a xenophobic agrarian society; and other horrors that can be ascribed to the cruelty or ineptitude of Pol Pot made him one of the most infamous leaders in modern history. Some 1.5 million out of a total population of about 7 million died during his rule, which ended with an invasion by the Vietnamese in late 1979. Although he retired officially in 1985, Pol Pot continued to control his guerrillas, the strongest antigovernment force, in western jungle areas of Cambodia until factional collapse shortly before his death.

Bibliography

See biographies by D. Chandler (1992, rev. ed. 1999) and P. Short (2005); study by B. Kiernan (2d ed. 2002).

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Pol Pot

 orig. Saloth Sar

(born May 19, 1925/28, Kompong Thom province, Cambodia—died April 15, 1998, near Anlong Veng) Prime minister of Cambodia. He joined the anti-French resistance under Ho Chi Minh in the 1940s and became a member of the Cambodian Communist Party in 1946. After studying radio technology in Paris, he returned to Cambodia in 1953 and taught French until he fell under police suspicion in 1963. For the next 12 years he built up the Communist Party. U.S. anticommunist activity in Cambodia in the early 1970s, including helping to depose Norodom Sihanouk and a bombing campaign in the countryside, drove many to join him. In 1975 his Khmer Rouge forces captured Phnom Penh, which he ordered entirely evacuated. Even the sick were wheeled out in hospital beds, and in the first weeks it is estimated that tens of thousands died. The ruthlessness with which he pursued his intention to return to “year zero” and create an ethnically pure, agrarian, communist state resulted in the deaths of one to two million people. Overthrown by the Vietnamese in 1979, he led an anti-Vietnamese guerrilla war until he was repudiated by the Khmer Rouge and sentenced to life imprisonment (1997); he died the next year.

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Pol Pot

original name Kompong Thom. 1925--98, Cambodian Communist statesman; prime minister of Kampuchea (1976; 1977--79); his policies led to the deaths of thousands in labour camps before he was overthrown by Vietnamese forces; in 1997 his former supporters in the Khmer Rouge captured him and claimed to have tried and sentenced him to life imprisonment