Pol Pot - The evil Cambodian dictator

[KTMphil]

The infamous, totalitarian, Khmer Rouge leader, left wing dictator's, cremation spot is easily found in Cambodia, near the Thai border.


_DSC1574 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr



Brief summary of Pol Pot's rise to fame


Born 1925 - died 1998

Led the Khmer Rouge Cambodian Revolutionary Party from 1963-1981

Became the totalitarian dictator of Cambodia in 1975-1979 when the Khmer Rouge Party took over Cambodia

Responsible for the deaths of 25% of the Cambodian population (maybe as many as 3 million) during his rule through murder, torture & malnutrition

1979-1997 worked from the jungles of SW Cambodia, still as the rebel leader of the Khmer Rouge

1998 died under house arrest (by a splinter group of the Khmer Rouge) at the Thai /Cambodia border

Cremation spot at the Thai /Cambodian border


It has a strange feel about the place. For such an evil leader, its surprising how there is no real security surrounding the cremation spot, just a small ticket hut.

_DSC1573 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr

 

[KTMphil]

[h=3]Early life[/h]

​

Saloth Sar was born on 19 May 1925, the eighth of nine children and the second of three sons to Pen Saloth and Sok Nem. His older brotherSaloth Chhay was born three years earlier. The family was living in the small fishing village of Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom Province during the French colonialism of the area.[SUP][16][/SUP] Pen Saloth was a rice farmer who owned 12 hectares of land and several buffaloes; the family was considered moderately wealthy by the standards of the day. Although Pen Saloth's family was of Sino-Khmer descent and Saloth Sar was named accordingly due to his fair complexion ("Sar" means white in Khmer),[SUP][17][/SUP][SUP][18][/SUP] the family had already assimilated themselves with mainstream Khmer society by the time Sar was born.[SUP][19][/SUP] Saloth Sar was educated in a Buddhist monastery. He would later give his Marxism a "tincture of Buddhism."[SUP][20][/SUP]
In 1935, Saloth Sar left Prek Sbauv to attend the École Miche, a Catholic school inPhnom Penh. He lived with his cousin, a woman called Meak, a member of theRoyal Ballet.[SUP][21][/SUP] In 1926, she bore King Monivong's son, HRH Prince Sisowath Kusarak.[SUP][22][/SUP] She was given the official title Khun Preah Moneang Bopha Norleak Meak. Saloth Sar stayed with Meak's household until 1942. His sister Roeung was aconcubine of King Monivong, so through the two women, he often had cause to visit the royal palace.[SUP][23][/SUP] In 1947, he gained admission to the exclusive Lycée Sisowath, but was unsuccessful in his studies.



His remains are down a dirt road with no celebratory features relating to the Khmer Rouge Party

_DSC1575 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr




In January 1962, the Cambodian government arrested most of the leadership of the far-left Pracheachon party before parliamentary elections, which were to take place that June. Their newspapers and other publications were closed. Such measures had effectively ended any legitimate political role of the socialist movement in Cambodia. In July 1962, the underground communist party secretary Tou Samouth was arrested and later killed while in custody, allowing Sar to become the acting leader. At a 1963 party meeting, attended by at most 18 people, Sar was elected secretary of the party's central committee. That March, Saloth went into hiding after his name was published in a list of leftist suspects put together by the police for Norodom Sihanouk. He fled to the Vietnamese border region and made contact with Vietnamese units fighting against South Vietnam.
In early 1964, Sar convinced the Vietnamese to help the Cambodian socialists set up their own base camp.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP] The party's central committee met later that year and issued a declaration calling for armed struggle, emphasizing "self-reliance" in accordance with extreme Cambodians. In the border camps, the ideology of the Khmer Rouge was gradually developed. The party, breaking with Marxism, declared that rural peasant farmers were the true working class proletarian and lifeblood of the revolution, the central committee members having grown up in a feudal peasant society.
After another wave of repression by Sihanouk in 1965, the Khmer Rouge movement under Saloth grew at a rapid rate. Many teachers and students left the cities for the countryside to join the movement.
In April 1965, Sar went to North Vietnam to gain approval for an uprising in Cambodia against the government. North Vietnam refused to support any uprising due to ongoing negotiation with the Cambodian government. Sihanouk promised to allow the Vietnamese to use Cambodian territory and Cambodian ports in their war against South Vietnam.
After returning to Cambodia in 1966, Sar organized a party meeting where a number of important decisions were made. The party was officially, but secretly, renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Lower ranks of the party were not informed of the decision. It was also decided to establish command zones and prepare each region for an uprising against the government.
In early 1966, fighting broke out in the countryside between peasants and the government over the price paid for rice. Sar's Khmer Rouge was caught by surprise by the uprisings and could not take any real advantage of them. But the government's refusal to find a peaceful solution to the problem created rural unrest that played into the hands of the socialist movement.
It was not until early 1967 that Sar decided to launch a national uprising, even though North Vietnam refused to assist in any meaningful way. The uprising was launched on 18 January 1968, with a raid on an army base south ofBattambang. The Battambang area had already seen two years of great peasant unrest. The attack was driven off by the army, but the Khmer Rouge had captured a number of weapons, which were then used to drive police forces out of Cambodian villages.
By the summer of 1968, Sar began transitioning from a party leader working with a collective leadership, into the absolutist leader of the Khmer Rouge movement. Where before he had shared communal quarters with other leaders, he now had his own compound with a personal staff and guards. Outsiders were no longer allowed to approach him. Rather, people were summoned into his presence by his staff.


It was so flooded, the entrance to the cremation spot was inaccessible, luckily a local lady showed me a secret way in for $2

_DSC1576 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr


_DSC1577 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr



Around the corner and there it was


_DSC1578 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr




The Khmer Rouge advanced during 1973. After they reached the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Sar issued orders during the peak of the rainy season that the city be taken. The orders led to futile attacks and wasted lives within the Khmer Rouge army. By the middle of 1973, the Khmer Rouge under Sar controlled almost two-thirds of the country and half the population. North Vietnam realized that it no longer controlled the situation and it began to treat Sar as more of an equal leader than as a junior partner.
In late 1973, Sar made strategic decisions that determined the future of the war. First, he decided to cut the capital off from contact with outside sources of supplies, putting the city under siege. Second, he enforced tight control over people trying to leave the city through Khmer Rouge lines. He also ordered a series of general purges of former government officials, and anyone with an education. A set of new prisons was also constructed in Khmer Rouge run areas. The Cham minority attempted an uprising in order to stop the destruction of their culture. The uprising was quickly crushed: Sar ordered that harsh physical torture be used against most of those involved in the revolt. As previously, Sar tested out harsh new policies against the Cham minority, before extending them to the general population of the country.
The Khmer Rouge also had a policy of evacuating urban areas and forcibly relocating their residents to the countryside. When the Khmer Rouge took the town of Kratie in 1971, Sar and other members of the party were shocked at how fast the "liberated" urban areas shook off socialism and went back to the old ways. Various ideas were tried in order to re-create the town in the image of the party, but nothing worked. In 1973, out of total frustration, Sar decided that the only solution was to send the entire population of the town to the fields in the countryside. He wrote at the time "if the result of so many sacrifices was that the capitalists remain in control, what was the point of the revolution?". Shortly after, Sar ordered the evacuation of the 15,000 people of Kompong Cham for the same reasons. The Khmer Rouge then moved on in 1974 to evacuate the larger city of Oudong.
Internationally, Sar and the Khmer Rouge gained the recognition of 63 countries as the true government of Cambodia. A move was made at the UN to give the seat for Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge; they prevailed by three votes.
In September 1974, Sar gathered the central committee of the party together. As the military campaign was moving toward a conclusion, Sar decided to move the party toward implementing a socialist transformation of the country in the form of a series of decisions, the first being to evacuate the main cities, moving the population to the countryside. The second dictated that they would cease putting money into circulation and quickly phase it out. The final decision was that the party would accept Sar's first major purge. In 1974, Sar had purged a top party official named Prasith. Prasith was taken out into a forest and shot without being given any chance to defend himself. His death was followed by a purge of cadres who, like Prasith, were ethnically Thai. Sar's explanation was that the class strugglehad become acute, requiring a strong stand against party enemies.
The Khmer Rouge were positioned for a final offensive against the government in January 1975. Simultaneously, at a press event in Beijing, Sihanouk proudly announced Sar's "death list" of enemies who were to be killed after victory. The list, which originally contained seven names, was expanded to 23, and it included the names of all senior government leaders along with the names of all officials who were in positions of leadership within the police and military. The rivalry between Vietnam and Cambodia also came out into the open. North Vietnam, as the rival socialist country in Indochina, was determined to take Saigon before the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. Shipments of weapons from China were delayed, and in one instance the Cambodians were forced to sign a humiliating document thanking (North) Vietnam for shipments of Chinese weapons.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]
In April 1975, the government formed a Supreme National Council with new leadership, with the aim of negotiating a surrender to the Khmer Rouge. It was headed by Sak Sutsakhan who had studied in France with Sar, and was a cousin of the Khmer Rouge Deputy Secretary Nuon Chea. Sar reacted to this by adding the names of everyone involved in the Supreme National Council onto his post-victory death list. Government resistance finally collapsed on 17 April 1975.



Very no-nonsense, non-descriptive cremation spot


_DSC1579 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr

 

[KTMphil]

The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. As the leader of the Communist Party, Saloth Sar became the de-facto leader of the country. He adopted the title "brother number one" and used the nom de guerre "Pol Pot". Philip Shortoffered an explanation for the origin of Pol Pot's name, stating that Saloth Sar announced that he was adopting the name in July 1970. Short suspects that it derives from pol: "the Pols were royal slaves, an aboriginal people", and that "Pot" was simply a "euphonic monosyllable" that he liked.[SUP][29][/SUP] This Khmer word pol, however, is derived from Sanskrit bala ‘army, guard’ and the Khmer spelling differs from the spelling of Pol Pot's name.[SUP][30][/SUP] The name has no particular meaning in Khmer.[SUP][31][/SUP]
Cambodia adopted a new constitution on 5 January 1976, officially changing the country's name to "Democratic Kampuchea". The newly established Representative Assembly held its first plenary session from 11 to 13 April, electing a new government with Pol Pot as prime minister. His predecessor, Khieu Samphan, became head of state as President of the State Presidium. Prince Sihanoukreceived no role in the government and was placed in detention. The Khmer Rouge rėgime saw agriculture as the key to nation-building and to national defense.[SUP][32][/SUP] Pol Pot's goal for the country was to have 70-80% of the farm mechanization completed within 5 to 10 years, to build a modern industrial base on the farm mechanization within 15 to 20 years, and to become a self-sufficient state.[SUP][32][/SUP] He wanted to take the economy and make it the primary source of goods for the nation, sever foreign relationships, and radically reconstruct the society to maximize the production of agriculture.[SUP][33][/SUP]To avoid foreign domination of industries, Pol Pot refused to purchase goods from other countries.[SUP][34][/SUP]
Immediately after the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge began to implement their concept of Year Zero and ordered the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh and all other recently captured major towns and cities. Those leaving were told that the evacuation was due to the threat of severe American bombing and it would last for no more than a few days. Western media depicted the events as a "death march", with American sources predicting that the Khmer Rouge policy of forced evacuation would result in famine and the mass death of hundreds of thousands.[SUP][35][/SUP][SUP][36][/SUP]
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been evacuating captured urban areas for many years, but the evacuation of Phnom Penh was unique in its scale. Pol Pot stated that "...the first step in progress [was] deliberately designed to exterminate an entire class".[SUP][37][/SUP] The first operations to evacuate urban areas occurred in 1968, in the Ratanakiri area and aimed at moving people deeper into Khmer Rouge territory to control them more easily. From 1971–1973, the motivation changed. Pol Pot and the other senior leaders were frustrated that urban Cambodians retained old capitalist habits of trade and business. When all other methods had failed, the government adopted the policy of evacuation to the countryside in order to solve the "problem".
In 1976, Pol Pot's régime reclassified Kampucheans into three groupings: as full-rights (base) people, as candidates and as depositees, so-called because they included most of the new people who had been deposited from the cities into the communes.[SUP][38][/SUP] Depositees were marked for destruction. Their rations were reduced to two bowls of rice soup or p'baw per day, leading to widespread starvation. "New people" were allegedly given no place in the elections taking place on 20 March 1976, despite the fact that the constitution established universal suffrage for all Cambodians over the age of 18.
The Khmer Rouge leadership boasted over the state-controlled radio that only one or two million people were needed to build the new agrarian socialist utopia. As for the others, as their proverb put it, "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss."[SUP][39][/SUP]
Hundreds of thousands of the new people, and later the depositees, were taken out in shackles to dig their own mass graves. Then the Khmer Rouge soldiers buried them alive. A Khmer Rouge extermination prison directive ordered "Bullets are not to be wasted." Such mass graves are often referred to as "the Killing Fields".



Flooded entrance to Pol Pot's cremation place

DSC_0455 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr




The Khmer Rouge also classified people by religious and ethnic background. They banned all religion and dispersed minority groups, forbidding them to speak their languages or to practice their customs.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP] They especially targetedBuddhist monks, Muslims, Christians, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who had contact with Western countries or with Vietnam, disabled people, and the ethnic Chinese, Laotians, and Vietnamese. Some were put in the S-21 camp for interrogation involving torture in cases where a confession was useful to the government. Many others were summarily executed.
According to François Ponchaud's book Cambodia: Year Zero: "Ever since 1972, the guerrilla fighters had been sending all the inhabitants of the villages and towns they occupied into the forest to live and often burning their homes, so that they would have nothing to come back to." The Khmer Rouge systematically destroyed food sources that could not be easily subjected to centralized storage and control, cut down fruit trees, forbade fishing, outlawed the planting or harvest of mountain leap rice, abolished medicine and hospitals, forced people to march long distances without access to water, exported food, and refused offers of humanitarian aid. As a result, a humanitarian catastrophe unfolded: hundreds of thousands died of starvation and brutal government-inflicted overwork in the countryside. To the Khmer Rouge, outside aid went against their principle of national self-reliance. According to Solomon Bashi, the Khmer Rouge exported 150,000 tons of rice in 1976 alone. In addition:

Coop chiefs often reported better yields to their supervisors than they had actually achieved. The coop was then taxed on the rice it reportedly produced. Rice was taken out of the people's mouths and given to the Center to make up for these inflated numbers....'There were piles of rice as big as a house, but they took it away in trucks. We raised chicken and ducks and vegetables and fruit, but they took it all. You'd be killed if you tried to take anything for yourself.'[SUP][40][/SUP]
​

According to Henri Locard, "the reputation of KR leaders for Spartan austerity is somewhat overdone. After all, they had the entire property of all expelled town dwellers at their full disposal, and they never suffered from malnutrition."[SUP][10][/SUP]
Property became collective, and education was dispensed at communal schools. Children were raised on a communal basis. Even meals were prepared and eaten communally. Pol Pot's regime was extremely paranoid.Political dissent and opposition was not permitted. People were treated as opponents based on their appearance or background. Torture was widespread, thousands of politicians and bureaucrats accused of association with previous governments were executed. The régime turned Phnom Penh into a ghost city, while people in the countryside died of starvation or illnesses, or were simply killed.
Modern research has located 20,000 mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia. Various studies have estimated the death toll at between 740,000 and 3,000,000 - most commonly arriving at figures between 1.7 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest attributable to starvation and to disease.[SUP][7][/SUP] Demographic analysis by Patrick Heuveline suggests that between 1.17 and 3.42 million Cambodians were killed.[SUP][11][/SUP] Demographer Marek Sliwinski concluded that at least 1.8 million were killed from 1975 to 1979 on the basis of the total population decline.[SUP][41][/SUP] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests a death toll of between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution".[SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][42][/SUP] A U.N. investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed.[SUP][43][/SUP] The Khmer Rouge themselves stated that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.[SUP][44][/SUP] By late 1979, U.N. and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians could die of starvation due to "the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot",[SUP][45][/SUP] most of whom were saved by international aid after the Vietnamese invasion.[SUP][46][/SUP] An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.[SUP][47][/SUP]
Pol Pot aligned the country diplomatically with the People's Republic of China and adopted an anti-Soviet line. This alignment was more political and practical than ideological. Vietnam was aligned with the Soviet Union, so Cambodia aligned with the Asian rival of the Soviet Union and of Vietnam (China had supplied the Khmer Rouge with weapons for years before they took power).
In December 1976 Pol Pot issued directives to the senior Khmer Rouge leadership to the effect that Vietnam was now an enemy. Defenses along the border were strengthened and unreliable deportees were moved deeper into Cambodia. Pol Pot's actions came in response to the Vietnamese Communist Party's fourth Congress (14 to 20 December 1976), which approved a resolution describing Vietnam's special relationship with Laos and Cambodia. It also talked of how Vietnam would forever be associated with the building and defense of the other two countries.
Unlike many communist leaders, Pol Pot never became the object of a personality cult. Even in power, the CPK maintained the secrecy it had kept up during its years in the battlefield. For over two years after taking power, the party only referred to itself as "Angkar" ("the Organization"). It was not until a speech on 15 April 1977 that Pol Pot revealed the CPK's existence. At that time international observers confirmed the identification of "Pol Pot" as Saloth Sar.



Real nasty feel about the place

DSC_0452 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr


Bleached out memorial sign


_DSC1581_edited by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr



In May 1975, a squad of Khmer Rouge soldiers raided and took the island of Phú Quốc. By 1977, relations with Vietnam began to fall apart. There were small border clashes in January. Pol Pot tried to prevent border disputes by sending a team to Vietnam. The negotiations failed, which caused even more border disputes. On 30 April, the Cambodian army, backed by artillery, crossed over into Vietnam. In attempting to explain Pol Pot's behavior, one region-watcher[SUP][specify][/SUP] suggested that Cambodia was attempting to intimidate Vietnam, by irrational acts, into respecting or at least fearing Cambodia to the point they would leave the country alone. However, these actions only served to goad the Vietnamese people and government against the Khmer Rouge.
In May 1976, Vietnam sent its air force into Cambodia in a series of raids. In July, Vietnam forced a Treaty of Friendship on Laos that gave Vietnam almost total control over the country. In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge commanders in the Eastern Zone began to tell their men that war with Vietnam was inevitable and that once the war started their goal would be to recover parts of Vietnam (Khmer Krom) that were once part of Cambodia, whose people, they alleged, were struggling for independence from Vietnam. Whether these statements were the official policy of Pol Pot has never been confirmed.
In September 1977, Cambodia launched division-scale raids over the border, which once again left a trail of murder and destruction in villages. The Vietnamese claimed that around 1,000 people had been killed or injured. Three days after the raid, Pol Pot officially announced the existence of the formerly secret Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and finally announced to the world that the country was a Communist state. In December, after having exhausted all other options, Vietnam sent 50,000 troops into Cambodia in what amounted to a short raid. The raid was meant to be secret. The Vietnamese withdrew after declaring they had achieved their goals, and the invasion was just a warning. Upon being threatened, the Vietnamese army promised to return with support from the Soviet Union. Pol Pot's actions made the operation much more visible than the Vietnamese had intended and created a situation in which Vietnam appeared weak.
After making one final attempt to negotiate a settlement with Cambodia, Vietnam decided that it had to prepare for a full war. Vietnam also tried to pressure Cambodia through China. However, China's refusal to pressure Cambodia and the flow of weapons from China into Cambodia were both signs that China also intended to act against Vietnam.
When Cambodian socialists rebelled in the eastern zone in May 1978, Pol Pot's armies could not crush them quickly. On 10 May, his radio broadcast a call not only to "exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese" but also to "purify the masses of the people" of Cambodia. Of 1.5 million easterners, branded as "Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds", at least 100,000 were exterminated in six months. Later that year, in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam attacked Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, which Vietnam justified on the basis of self-defense.[SUP][48][/SUP] The Cambodian army was defeated, the regime was toppled and Pol Pot fled to the Thaiborder area. In January 1979, Vietnam installed a new government under Khmer Rouge defector Heng Samrin, composed of Khmer Rouge who had fled to Vietnam to avoid the purges. Pol Pot eventually regrouped with his core supporters in the Thai border area where he received shelter and assistance. At different times during this period, he was located on both sides of the border. The military government of Thailand used the Khmer Rouge as a buffer force to keep the Vietnamese away from the border. The Thai military also made money from the shipment of weapons from China to the Khmer Rouge. Eventually, Pol Pot rebuilt a small military force in the west of the country with the help of the People's Republic of China. The PRC also initiated the Sino-Vietnamese War around this time.
The People's Republic of China was the main international supporter of the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot. The Chinese provided financial and military support to the party even after their overthrow in 1979.[SUP][49][/SUP] The UN also recognized the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which included the Khmer Rouge, instead of thePeople's Republic of Kampuchea.



_DSC1580_edited by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr




Pol Pot lived in the Phnom Malai area, giving interviews in the early 1980s accusing all those who opposed him of being traitors and "puppets" of the Vietnamese until he disappeared from public view. In 1985, his "retirement" was announced, but he retained influence over the party.[SUP][50][/SUP] A cadre interviewed during this period described Pol Pot's views on the death toll under his government:

He said that he knows that many people in the country hate him and think he's responsible for the killings. He said that he knows many people died. When he said this he nearly broke down and cried. He said he must accept responsibility because the line was too far to the left, and because he didn't keep proper track of what was going on. He said he was like the master in a house he didn't know what the kids were up to, and that he trusted people too much. For example, he allowed [one person] to take care of central committee business for him, [another person] to take care of intellectuals, and [a third person] to take care of political education.... These were the people to whom he felt very close, and he trusted them completely. Then in the end ... they made a mess of everything.... They would tell him things that were not true, that everything was fine, that this person or that was a traitor. In the end they were the real traitors. The major problem had been cadres formed by the Vietnamese.[SUP][51][/SUP]
​

In December 1985, the Vietnamese launched a major offensive and overran most of the Khmer Rouge and other insurgent positions. The Khmer Rouge headquarters at Phnom Malai and its base near Pailin were completely destroyed; the Vietnamese attackers suffered substantial losses during the attack.[SUP][52][/SUP]
Pol Pot fled to Thailand where he lived for the next six years. His headquarters were a plantation villa near Trat.
Pol Pot officially resigned from the party in 1985 citing asthma as a contributing factor, but continued as the de facto Khmer Rouge leader and a dominant force within the anti-Vietnam alliance. He handed day-to-day power to Son Sen, his hand-picked successor.
In 1986, his new wife Mea Son gave birth to a daughter, Sitha, named after the heroine of the Khmer religious epic, the Reamker.[SUP][53][/SUP] Shortly after, Pol Pot moved to China for medical treatment for cancer. He remained there until 1988.



There used to be a sign "No Urinating"

_DSC1582 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr




In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge established a new stronghold area in the west near the Thai border and Pol Pot relocated back into Cambodia from Thailand. Pol Pot refused to cooperate with the peace process, and kept fighting the new coalition government. The Khmer Rouge kept the government forces at bay until 1996, when troops started deserting. Several important Khmer Rouge leaders also defected. The government had a policy of making peace with Khmer Rouge individuals and groups after negotiations with the organization as a whole failed. In 1995, Pol Pot experienced a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body.
Pol Pot ordered the execution of his lifelong right-hand man Son Sen on 10 June 1997 for attempting to make a settlement with the government. Eleven members of his family were killed also, although Pol Pot later denied that he had ordered this. He then fled his northern stronghold, but was later arrested by Khmer Rouge military Chief Ta Mokon 19 June 1997. Pol Pot had not been seen in public since 1980, two years after his overthrow at the hands of an invading Vietnamese army. He was sentenced to death in absentia by a Phnom Penh court soon afterward.[SUP][54][/SUP] In July, he was subjected to a show trial for the death of Son Sen and sentenced to lifelong house arrest.[SUP][55]




Not sure how much there is in the collection box?


_DSC1583 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr



[/SUP]
Death[edit]

​

On the night of 15 April 1998, two days before the 23rd anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover in Phnom Penh, the Voice of America, of which Pol Pot was a devoted listener, announced that the Khmer Rouge had agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. According to his wife, he died in his bed later in the night while waiting to be moved to another location. Ta Mok claimed that his death was due to heart failure.[SUP][56][/SUP] Ta Mok later described the way he died: "He was sitting in his chair waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. His wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down on his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sound of dying. When she touched him he had already passed away. It was at 10:15 last night."[SUP][57][/SUP]
Despite government requests to inspect the body, it was cremated a few days later at Anlong Veng in the Khmer Rouge zone,[SUP][58][/SUP] raising suspicions that he committed suicide by taking an overdose of the medication he had been prescribed.[SUP][59][/SUP][SUP][60][/SUP] Journalist Nate Thayer, who was present, took the view that Pol Pot killed himself when he became aware of Ta Mok's plan to hand him over to America. He concluded that "Pol Pot died of a lethal dose of a combination of Valium and chloroquine."[SUP][61][/SUP] Ta Mok's assertion that "no one poisoned him" encouraged speculation that this was exactly what did happen. Thus some sources state that he was murdered by his own colleagues.[SUP][62]




_DSC1584 by Triangle Golden 007, on Flickr



Preah Vihear Temple information in the below link:

[/SUP]http://www.rideasia.net/motorcycle-forum/threads/8354-Preah-Vihear-Temple[SUP]




Text cr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot[/SUP]