Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ever secretive, the Khmer Rouge leaders, rather than expose themselves as individuals, now
hid behind a collective name, the mysterious
“Angkar”
- the central committee of the
“Organization”, as the leaders now referred to the party. This committee comprised thirteen
members (eleven men and two women), its unchallenged head being Pol Pot, as Saloth Sar
was by now known (it isn't known why he chose this pseudonym, which has no meaning in
Cambodian). He was also known as “Brother Pol” and, after his appointment as prime minister
of Democratic Kampuchea (1976), as
Brother Number One
. Other leading members of
Angkar were Pol Pot's long-standing comrade and second in command, Nuon Chea (Brother
Number Two); and Pol Pot's friends from his student days, Ieng Sary (Brother Number Three)
and Khieu Samphan, the party frontman.
Increasingly suspicious, the cadre were convinced that they were surrounded by traitors.
The party was subsequently
purged
of “enemies”, with around twenty thousand comrades
and their families interrogated and murdered at the Toul Sleng torture prison (interrogation
at Toul Sleng was reserved for those who were close to the leadership - in fact, most were
loyal party members). While it's not clear whether Pol Pot directly ordered the
interrogations and killings, it is certain that he was fully aware of, and probably supported,
them. Whether or not he ever felt remorse isn't known, but he certainly refused to
acknowledge responsibility - instead, when the atrocities were exposed by liberating
Vietnamese forces in 1979, he accused the Vietnamese of being the perpetrators. Choosing
to flee rather than face the Vietnamese army, he escaped to Thailand. He never doubted
that the path he had chosen for Cambodia was the right one, believing instead that he had
been betrayed by those whom he had trusted.
Sentenced to death by a Cambodian tribunal in absentia, Pol Pot lay low and remained at
liberty in Thailand. In the mid-1980s, Khieu Ponnery went insane; Pol Pot divorced her in
1987 and married again, fathering his only child, a daughter called Malee. At some point,
probably around 1993, Pol Pot crossed back into northern Cambodia where, surrounded by
loyal supporters in the relative security of a Khmer Rouge enclave in the vicinity of Anlong
Veng, he organized guerrilla attacks against the newly elected Cambodian government.
Meanwhile, Ieng Sary, who had been waging a disruptive guerrilla war against the
government from Pailin, defected in 1996. This must have come as a blow to Pol Pot, and
signalled the end of the Khmer Rouge. Just a year later, an increasingly paranoid Pol Pot
ordered the murder of his long-standing friend, Sun Sen and his family; for this murder, he
was tried by his own people and sentenced to life imprisonment. Eleven months later he
was dead - apparently in his sleep from natural causes - his body was cremated a few days
later on a pile of rubbish and old tyres.
Bizarrely, Pol Pot has something of a cult status among Cambodians, and the site of his
cremation near Anlong Veng is now a tourist attraction.
Meanwhile, in the northeast of the country, the CPK
(Communist Party of
Kampuchea) - or the
Khmer Rouge
, as Sihanouk dubbed them - comprising
Cambodian communists who had been sheltering in North Vietnam, began a
campaign of insurgency. Ironically, the Khmer Rouge probably owed their eventual
victory to the US, who launched a vast, covert bombing programme, code-named
Operation Menu
, over supposedly neutral Cambodia, aimed at destroying
communist bases and supply lines in the southern provinces of Cambodia along the
border with Vietnam. All in all, more than half a million tonnes of ordnance were
dropped on the country in three thousand raids between March 1969 and January
1925
1945
Felix Bardez, the French resident in Kompong
Chhnang, is beaten to death by locals
infuriated by French rule
End of World War II and Japanese surrender. The French
attempt to reimpose their rule, but agree to allow national
elections and the formation of a national assembly
