Written by: Kanbawza Win
OpEd
Pol Pot, Kim Jong IL and Than Shwe: The common denominator of these three men is cruelty, brutality, ruthlessness, and secrecy in a tyranny which simultaneously oppressed and starved its people to an almost unique degree to sustain their regimes. All of them have directly or indirectly killed from 1.5 to 2 million of their own citizens.
Pol Pot (actual name of birth is Saloth Sa) won a scholarship in 1949 to study radio electronics in Paris and became enthralled by writings on Marxism and revolutionary socialism and forged bonds with other likeminded young Cambodians studying in the metropolis, including Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Khieu Ponnary, Khieu Thirith and Song Sen who were destined to become the notorious Khmer Rouge leaders. Returning from a secret trip to North Vietnam in 1967, Pol Pot took refuge in the northeast of Cambodia where he lived with a hill tribe and was so impressed by their simple, non-material way of life, that he imagined its to be a realisation of communist ideals.
Beginning on the day in 1975 when his guerrilla army marched silently into the capital, Pol Pot declared ‘Year Zero’ and directed a ruthless program to “purify” Cambodian society and no opposition was tolerated. Buddhist monks were defrocked and forced into labour brigades. In Phnom Penh, Pol Pot emptied the cities, pulled families apart, abolished religion and closed schools. Everyone was ordered to work, even children. The Khmer Rouge outlawed money and closed all markets. Doctors were killed, as were most people with skills and education that threatened the regime. The Khmer Rouge like the Burmese Tatmadaw (army) persecuted members of minority ethnic groups — the Chinese, Muslim Chams, Vietnamese and Thais who had lived for generations in the country, and any other foreigners — in an attempt to create a ”pure” Cambodia. Non-Cambodians were forbidden to speak their native languages or to exhibit any ”foreign” traits. The pogrom against the Cham minority was the most devastating, killing more than half of that community. The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country’s population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. As in the Ottoman Empire during the Armenian genocide, in Nazi Germany, and more recently in East Timor, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, the Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot combined extremist ideology with ethnic animosity and a diabolical disregard for human life to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale. Irrefutable evidence of “crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, homicide, torture and religious persecution.” were found by the UN. But the people of Cambodia were liberated when on 15th April 1998 in a small thatched hut in the mountains of northern Cambodia Pol Pot died at the age of 73 when the government troops were closing down on him and left the nation in trauma up to this day.
