at the cheong ek memorial in phnom penh
cambodia you'll find a stupa
a squat tower-like structure used as a
place of prayer and meditation by
buddhists
at a distance this little building might
seem like a good photo op but if you get
closer you'll see a truly harrowing
sight
around 5 000 human skulls are stored
inside
while this is horrific in its own right
5 000 dead are the tip of the iceberg
for what lays below in a mass grave
known as the killing fields
and for this we have one man to thank
pol pot
leader of the khmer rouge an
orchestrator of the horrific cambodian
genocide
while he's rarely mentioned alongside
other vicious dictators of the 20th
century
like adolf hitler joseph stalin benito
mussolini
and chairman mao proportionally pol pot
is as bad as any of them
often credited with murdering
practically a quarter of his own country
during his four year reign from 1975 to
1979
pulpon has left the legacy of torture
brutality fear and mass killings that
left scars on the cambodian psyche even
today
over 40 years after the worst of his
terrible violence the man's cruelty and
ruthlessness in carrying out his
communist agrarian vision
was the stuff of legend and for many in
cambodia even the mere mention of his
name
is enough to send a chill down their
spine so for one of arguably the world's
most
murderous dictators responsible for the
senseless slaughter of over a million of
his own citizens
it's worth asking the following
questions who was this man
and how and why did he come to power and
what horrors did he unleash on the
citizens he should have been protecting
well first of all pol pot wasn't
actually his real name
pol pot was born in 1925 as salazar in
the small cambodian village
of preex bov in the kampung tom province
he was the eighth of nine children
the cambodia that tsar was born into was
one still under french colonial rule
which was naturally a point of
contention between the cambodian people
and the powers that be over in france
though tsar himself was unlikely to have
felt the ripples of this personally
having been born into a relatively
well-off land-owning farming family
his family owned 50 acres of rice paddy
which was over 10 times the national
average at the time
so it was fair to say that he lived a
pretty charmed life early on
so just how did this upper crust one
percenter end up murdering a quarter of
his own country
salazar would make for a terrible
student and his parents worried about
his future
while not interested in education in the
least a young tsar was immediately
attracted to the revolutionary attitudes
of cambodian communists
especially those who sought independence
from france zeloth tsar began using the
revolutionary pseudonym pol pot
short for the french phrase politique
potashia or potential politics
in politics he found what he believed to
be his true calling
so much so in fact that he decided to
invest all his time in revolutionary
activities
rather than his schooling as a result he
failed his next wave of examinations and
had his scholarship revoked by the
government
he returned to prompen in 1953 with a
head full of dangerous ambitions
though it'd be another few decades
before he could put the most nightmarish
of them into practice
the same year pot returned to his home
country cambodia finally gained
independence from french colonial rule
after the people revolted against their
european oppressors this left a kind of
power vacuum in the country that
numerous political entities
polpot and his communist allies included
would later attempt to fill
in the meantime much like his fellow
20th century asian dictator chairman mao
polpot decided to pursue teaching while
he kept his revolutionary plans on the
back burner
he taught at pranam pen private schools
between 1956 and 1963
specializing in history geography and
french literature
and marrying his first wife kiyou pinari
in the interim if polpad had decided to
settle down and invest himself fully in
his teaching career
cambodia would have been spared a lot of
bloodshed and horror but it's sadly not
how this all played out
pot spent his time helping to build up
cambodia's communist party on the side
serving as its secretary in 1960 and
converting it to his particular brand of
marxist leninism
however cambodia's new monarchical
rulers didn't take
kindly to this kind of subversive
activity and began a crackdown on
communist groups that forced pol pot and
his allies to flee phnom penh
and take refuge in the jungle there pod
encamped with the group of viet cong
before beginning his quest to reform his
scattered owned group
into the chemerous guerilla army a
revolutionary insurgency movement who
intended to pry control of the country
out of royal hands
as pot grew his forces and began
launching his revolution in 1968
it was clear that what he lacked in
academic drive he made up for in having
an almost pretty natural level of
charisma and persuasion
one kemmer rouge defector would later
say pol pot makes very powerful
impressions on those who hear him for
the first time
after that they want to come back those
who attend his seminars feel enlightened
by his teaching
his explanations and his vision he's
like a father to us
much like another one of his
contemporaries nazi leader adolf hitler
polpot ran his political movement not
unlike a cult
a group with a loose ideology congealed
around a charismatic leader
ultimately what ushered pulpat into
power were the conditions of absolute
chaos occurring in the late 60s and
early 70s
in 1970 a brutal civil war broke out
between the forces of general lon nol
and the khemar rouge general null
undertook a military coup
while the country's ruler prince northam
sayanuk was away on business
and the prince sided with the khmer
rouge and like almost all terrible
events that occurred in the 70s
then u.s president richard nixon was
involved while a coalition of 70
000 u.s and south vietnamese troops
marched into cambodia to root out the
north vietnamese
and viet cong presence nixon was busy
dropping 500 000 tons of bombs on the
country over the next four
years it was a complete humanitarian
nightmare for all parties involved
in the meantime the violence committed
by general knoll the south vietnamese
and the united states
was radicalizing more locals into the
kenmarus cause
swelling their armies massively by the
time the us was finished brutalizing
cambodia with their bombing campaign
pol pot controlled three-quarters of
what was left and after a sustained
shelling and forced starvation campaign
over phnom penh
left the capital defenseless the kemmer
forces stormed in
and took absolute control on april 17th
1975
polpot became the de facto leader of
cambodia many thought the end of the
cambodian civil war would usher in a
period of stability for the country
little did they know that the worst was
yet to come polpant had been planning
for decades and at long last he had the
power to actualize those plans
like many infamous totalitarian
dictators he wasn't after power for its
own sake
he had a vision for his perfect country
and anyone who didn't fit into that
vision was destined to meet a grisly end
pol pot wanted to take cambodia back to
its roots as a proud nation of
grassroots farmers and laborers
under the rule of pol pot the decadent
ranks of the educated professional and
urban
were public enemy number one it was
these academics who would meet the worst
fates
one of pol pot's first insane actions
was evacuating cambodia's urban areas
including phnom penh displacing and
ruining the lives of millions
professionals like doctors lawyers and
civil servants were forced into
re-education camps
stripped of their possessions and made
to work themselves to the bone
in cambodia's fields and rice paddies if
you dared to complain about the
back-breaking work
then you'd likely find yourself in one
of the kemar rouge's infamous detention
centers
being tortured until you either complied
or died
one particular detention center the s21
a former high school turned into a
dystopian torture chamber
had only 23 survivors out of its 18 000
known prisoners the brutality in these
institutions under pol pot was so great
that they had official torture manuals
dictating methods of interrogation with
choice excerpts like
our experience in the past has been that
our interrogators for the most part
tended to fall on the torture side
however we must nevertheless strive to
do politics to get them
always and absolutely to confess to us
only once have we pressured them
politically
only when we have put them in a corner
politically and have gotten them to
confess will torture become productive
pop's minions often found that torture
was extremely
productive pot instituted a level of
totalitarian control that made the
dystopian world of george orwell's 1984
look like a daycare in comparison among
the things outlined by polls kamaru's
regime were private property jewelry
money religion
gambling and most reading material if
you defied these laws you'd once again
either be tortured
shot or both and even if you weren't
personally executed by the kemmer forces
that didn't mean you were out of the
woods
the horrific mismanagement of resources
under pol pot led to widespread famine
leading countless cambodian citizens to
die from malnutrition
their bodies were dumped into mass
graves in the same so-called killing
fields
with a body count ratcheting up to
astronomical numbers
polpot's super villain level
dictatorship antics didn't end with all
the horrific mass murder torture and
starvation
he committed many acts that were as
petty as they were strange and sadistic
the country was renamed democratic
kampuchea despite democracy playing no
real role in the government
there were strict rules imposed on
sexual relations the clothing you could
wear and even the words you could use
and what feels like almost a direct
tribute to orwell's dystopian masterwork
in one particularly insane act the
country's rice fields were forcibly
realigned in order to resemble the kama
rouge's checkerboard pattern coat of
arms
in spite of these cartoonishly weird
decisions you have to remember that pol
pot was a truly horrific monster
under his command children would be
ripped from their homes and forced into
mandatory military service by the
camarouge
creating an army of obedient soldiers
who carried out the will of their
murderous dictator on pain of death
men women and children were all
horrifically victimized under one man's
vision of a classless utopia gone awry
with anyone daring to speak out meeting
a brutal end
in 1979 a large detachment of vietnamese
troops stormed cambodia and captured
phnom penh
forcing the power mad dictator back into
the jungle with his kama rouge guerrilla
army
there with political support from the
u.s and china pol pot continued military
operations for the next 10 years
the movement would finally totally
collapse in the late 90s
following a ceasefire in 1991 and in
1997 a kamuru splinter cell would
capture pol pot
and place him under house arrest until
he died of natural causes
at age 72. ready for more on some of the
most terrifying despots
check out terrifying story of joseph
stalin's rise to power
and why mao zedong was the most brutal
tyrant