Paul Pot. Maniac, hero of Kampuchea or scapegoat? A Brief But Instructive History of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge

“You talk about me like that, as if I were some kind of Pol Pot,” the heroine of Lyudmila Gurchenko said offendedly in one popular Russian comedy. 1970s. However, this name in those years thundered all over the world. In a little less than 4 years of his reign, more than 3,370,000 people were exterminated in Cambodia.

Common noun

In just a few years, the leader of the Khmer Rouge movement has become on a par with the bloodiest dictators in human history, earning the title of "Asiatic Hitler".

Little is known about the childhood of the Cambodian dictator, primarily because Pol Pot himself tried not to make this information public. Even the date of his birth is different. According to one version, he was born on May 19, 1925 in the village of Preksbauw, into a peasant family. The eighth child of the peasant Pek Salot and his wife Sok Nem was born Salot Sar.

The Pol Pot family, although they were peasants, did not live in poverty. Cousin the future dictator served at the royal court and was even the concubine of the crown prince. Pol Pot's older brother served at the royal court, and his sister danced in the royal ballet.

Salot Sarah himself was sent at the age of nine to relatives in Phnom Penh. After several months spent in a Buddhist monastery as an acolyte, the boy entered the Catholic primary school, after which he continued his studies at the College of Norodom Sihanouk, and then at the Technical School of Phnom Penh.

To Marxists by royal grant

In 1949, Salot Sar received a government scholarship for higher education in France and went to Paris, where he began to study radio electronics.

The post-war period was marked by the rapid growth in the popularity of left-wing parties and national liberation movements. In Paris, Cambodian students created a Marxist circle, of which Saloth Sar became a member.

In 1952, Saloth Sar, under the pseudonym Khmer Daom, published his first political article, "Monarchy or Democracy?", in a journal of Cambodian students in France. At the same time, the student joined the French Communist Party.

Passion for politics relegated his studies to the background, and in the same year Salot Sarah was expelled from the university, after which he returned to his homeland.

In Cambodia, he settled with his older brother, began to seek connections with representatives of the Communist Party of Indochina, and soon attracted the attention of one of its coordinators in Cambodia, Pham Van Ba. Salot Sarah was recruited for party work.

"The Politics of the Possible"

Pham Van Ba ​​quite clearly described the new comrade-in-arms: "a young man of average ability, but with ambition and a thirst for power." The ambitions and love of power of Salot Sara turned out to be much greater than his comrades in the fight had expected.

Saloth Sar took on a new pseudonym - Pol Pot, which is an abbreviation for the French "politique potentielle" - "the politics of the possible." Under this pseudonym, he was destined to go down in world history.

Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953. The ruler of the kingdom was Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was very popular and oriented towards China. In the war that broke out in Vietnam, Cambodia formally adhered to neutrality, but the units of North Vietnam and South Vietnamese partisans quite actively used the territory of the kingdom to locate their bases and warehouses. The Cambodian authorities preferred to turn a blind eye to this.

During this period, the Cambodian communists acted quite freely in the country, and by 1963 Saloth Sar had gone from a novice to the party's general secretary.

By that time, there was a serious split in the communist movement in Asia, associated with a sharp deterioration in relations between the USSR and China. The Communist Party of Cambodia made a bet on Beijing, focusing on the policy of Comrade Mao Zedong.

Leader of the Khmer Rouge

Prince Norodom Sihanouk saw the growing influence of the Cambodian communists as a threat to his own power and began to change politics, shifting from China to the United States.

In 1967, a peasant uprising broke out in the Cambodian province of Battambang, which was brutally suppressed by government troops and mobilized citizens.

After that, the Cambodian communists launch a guerrilla war against the Sihanouk government. The detachments of the so-called "Khmer Rouge" were formed for the most part from illiterate and illiterate young peasants, whom Pol Pot made his main support.

Very quickly, the ideology of Pol Pot began to move away not only from Marxism-Leninism, but even from Maoism. Himself a native of a peasant family, the leader of the Khmer Rouge formulated for his illiterate supporters much more a simple program- way to happy life lies through the rejection of modern Western values, through the destruction of cities that are carriers of a pernicious infection, and the "re-education of their inhabitants."

Even Pol Pot's associates had no idea where such a program would lead their leader...

In 1970, the Americans contributed to the strengthening of the positions of the Khmer Rouge. Considering that Prince Sihanouk, who had reoriented himself to the United States, was an insufficiently reliable ally in the fight against the Vietnamese communists, Washington organized a coup, as a result of which Prime Minister Lon Nol came to power with firm pro-American views.

Lon Nol demanded that North Vietnam curtail all military activities in Cambodia, threatening to use force otherwise. The North Vietnamese in response hit first, so much so that they almost occupied Phnom Penh. To save his protege, US President Richard Nixon sent American units to Cambodia. The Lon Nol regime eventually held out, but an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism arose in the country, and the ranks of the Khmer Rouge began to grow by leaps and bounds.

The victory of the guerrilla army

The civil war in Cambodia flared up with renewed vigor. The Lon Nol regime was not popular and was kept only on American bayonets, Prince Sihanouk was deprived of real power and was in exile, and Pol Pot continued to gain strength.

By 1973, when the United States, having decided to put an end to the Vietnam War, refused to continue to provide military support to the Lon Nol regime, the Khmer Rouge already controlled most of the country's territory. Pol Pot managed already without comrades-in-arms in the Communist Party, relegated to the background. It was much easier for him not with educated experts on Marxism, but with illiterate fighters who believed only in Pol Pot and the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

In January 1975, the Khmer Rouge launched a decisive offensive against Phnom Penh. The troops loyal to Lon Nol could not withstand the blow of the 70,000-strong partisan army. In early April, US Marines began evacuating US citizens, as well as high-ranking representatives of the pro-American regime, from the country. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh.

"The city is the abode of vice"

Cambodia was renamed Kampuchea, but this was the most harmless of Pol Pot's reforms. “The city is the abode of vice; You can change people, but not cities. Working hard to uproot the jungle and grow rice, a person will finally understand the true meaning of life, ”such was the main thesis of the Khmer Rouge leader who came to power.

The city of Phnom Penh, with a population of two and a half million people, was decided to be evicted to for three days. All its inhabitants, young and old, were sent to be peasants. No complaints about health, lack of skills, and the like were accepted. Following Phnom Penh, the same fate befell other cities of Kampuchea.

Only about 20 thousand people remained in the capital - the military, the administrative apparatus, as well as representatives of the punitive bodies, who undertook to identify and eliminate the dissatisfied.

It was supposed to re-educate not only the inhabitants of the cities, but also those peasants who had been under the rule of Lon Nol for too long. It was decided to simply get rid of those who served the former regime in the army and other state structures.

Pol Pot launched a policy of isolating the country, and Moscow, Washington, and even Beijing, which was Pol Pot's closest ally, had a very vague idea of ​​what was really happening in it. They simply refused to believe in the leaking information about hundreds of thousands of people shot, who died during the resettlement from cities and from excessive forced labor.

At the pinnacle of power

During this period, an extremely confused political situation developed in Southeast Asia. The United States, having ended the Vietnam War, set out to improve relations with China, taking advantage of the extremely strained relations between Beijing and Moscow. China, which supported the communists of North and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, became extremely hostile towards them, because they were guided by Moscow. Pol Pot, who was guided by China, took up arms against Vietnam, despite the fact that until recently the Khmer Rouge considered the Vietnamese as allies in a common struggle.

Pol Pot, abandoning internationalism, relied on nationalism, which was widespread among the Cambodian peasantry. The brutal persecution of ethnic minorities, primarily the Vietnamese, resulted in armed conflict with a neighboring country.

In 1977, the Khmer Rouge began to penetrate into the adjacent regions of Vietnam, carrying out massacres against local population. In April 1978, the Khmer Rouge occupied the Vietnamese village of Batyuk, destroying all its inhabitants, young and old. 3,000 people became victims of the massacre.

Pol Pot sold out in earnest. Feeling the support of Beijing behind his back, he not only threatened to defeat Vietnam, but also threatened the entire Warsaw Pact, that is, the Warsaw Treaty Organization headed by the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, his policy forced former comrades-in-arms and previously loyal military units to rebel, considering what was happening in no way justified by bloody madness. The rebellions were crushed ruthlessly, the rebels were executed in the most cruel ways, but their number continued to grow.

Three million victims in less than four years

In December 1978, Vietnam decided that it had had enough. Parts of the Vietnamese army invaded Kampuchea with the aim of overthrowing the Pol Pot regime. The offensive developed rapidly, and already on January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell. Power was transferred to the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, created in December 1978.

China tried to save its ally by invading Vietnam in February 1979. A fierce but short-lived war ended in March with a tactical victory for Vietnam - the Chinese failed to return Pol Pot to power.

The Khmer Rouge, who suffered a serious defeat, retreated to the west of the country, to the Cambodian-Thai border. They were saved from complete defeat by the support of China, Thailand and the United States. Each of these countries pursued its own interests - the Americans, for example, tried to prevent the strengthening of positions in the region of pro-Soviet Vietnam, for the sake of which they preferred to turn a blind eye to the results of the activities of the Pol Pot regime.

And the results were truly impressive. For 3 years 8 months and 20 days, the Khmer Rouge plunged the country into a medieval state. The protocol of the Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Pol Pot Regime of July 25, 1983 stated that between 1975 and 1978, 2,746,105 people died, of which 1,927,061 peasants, 305,417 workers, employees and representatives of other professions, 48,359 representatives national minorities, 25,168 monks, about 100 writers and journalists, and a few foreigners. Another 568,663 people are missing and either died in the jungle or buried in mass graves. The total number of victims is estimated at 3,374,768 people.

In July 1979, the People's Revolutionary Tribunal was organized in Phnom Penh, which tried Khmer Rouge leaders in absentia. On August 19, 1979, the tribunal found Pol Pot and his closest associate Ieng Sari guilty of genocide and sentenced them in absentia to death penalty with the confiscation of all property.

The Leader's Last Secrets

For Pol Pot himself, however, this sentence meant nothing. He continued his guerrilla war against the new Kampuchean government by hiding in the jungle. Little was known about the leader of the Khmer Rouge, and many believed that the man whose name had become a household name had long since died.

When processes of national reconciliation began in Kampuchea-Cambodia aimed at ending years of civil war, a new generation of Khmer Rouge leaders tried to push their odious "guru" into the background. There was a split in the movement, and Pol Pot, trying to maintain leadership, again decided to use terror to suppress disloyal elements.

In July 1997, on the orders of Pol Pot, his longtime colleague was killed, former minister Defense of Kampuchea Son Sen. Together with him, 13 members of his family were killed, including young children.

However, this time Pol Pot overestimated his influence. Companions declared him a traitor and held his own trial, sentencing him to life in prison.

The trial of the Khmer Rouge over their own leader caused the last surge of interest in Pol Pot. In 1998, prominent leaders of the movement agreed to lay down their arms and surrender to the new Cambodian authorities.

But Pol Pot was not among them. He died on April 15, 1998. Representatives of the Khmer Rouge stated that former leader let down the heart. There is, however, a version that he was poisoned.

The Cambodian authorities sought the release of the body from the Khmer Rouge in order to make sure that Pol Pot was really dead and to establish all the circumstances of his death, but the corpse was hastily cremated.

The leader of the Khmer Rouge took his last secrets with him ...

Childhood and youth

Village of Prexbauw. Birthplace of Pol Pot

The biography of Pol Pot is still covered with white spots, since he himself hid the details of his life. It is known that Salot Sar was born, as is commonly believed, in 1925 in the village of Preksbauw (English) Russian into a Khmer peasant family, Pek Salota and Sok Nem, and was the eighth of nine children. His cousin Meak held the status of khun preab me neang(literally "lady in charge of women") and was the concubine of Crown Prince Sisowath Monivong (English) Russian , from whom she gave birth to a son, Kossarak; one of Salot Sarah's older brothers, Lot Suong, worked as a servant in the palace, and their sister Salot Royong danced in the royal ballet and also became the concubine of King Monivong.

At the age of nine, he was sent to Phnom Penh to live with relatives. After moving, he spent several months as an acolyte at the Buddhist monastery Wat Botum Waddey, where he studied the Khmer language and the basics of Buddhism. In 1937, Sar entered the École Miche, a Catholic elementary school, where he received the basics of a classical education. After graduating in 1942, Sar continued his studies at Norodom Sihanouk College in Kampong Cham. Sara's attempt in 1948 to continue his education at the prestigious Sisowath Lyceum ended in failure, he failed to pass the exams and was forced to continue his studies at the Technical School in Phnom Penh. In 1949, Salot Sar received a government scholarship to pursue higher education in France. He was expected to continue his studies at a professional school in Limoges or Toulon.

Years of study in France

Arriving in France, Sar went to Paris, where he began to study radio electronics. Reminiscing about his first year as a student at the University of Paris, Sar later remarked that he worked hard and was a good student. In the summer of 1950, along with other students, Sar went to work in Yugoslavia, where he worked in Zagreb for about a month. At the end of that year he arrived in Paris old friend Sara - Ieng Sari. Ieng Sari introduced Salot Sar to Keng Vannsak, a patriotic nationalist with whom he studied at the Sisowat Lyceum. It was at the apartment of Keng Vannsak that the Marxist circle began to work, the initiators of which were Ieng Sary and Rat Samoyon. Among the works discussed within the framework of the circle are "Capital" by Marx.

The pseudonym "Pol Pot" is an abbreviation for the French "politique potentielle" - "the politics of the possible". Saloth Sar began to resort to the pseudonym "Pol" back in the 1950s, he began using the pseudonym "Pol Pot" in 1976.

guerrilla war

At the head of the state

Migration of people from cities to villages

The population of Phnom Penh came out to greet the "liberators" who overthrew the Lonnol regime, but no one suspected that the new government would begin to "cleanse" the cities. Almost immediately after the capture of the capital, all the inhabitants of the 2.5 millionth Phnom Penh were evicted from the capital within 72 hours. The question of the eviction of people from the city to the countryside was raised as early as the summer of 1971 at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but was not then approved. However, in February 1975, a few months before the capture of the capital, at a closed meeting of the second national congress of NEFC, the plan to evict people from Phnom Penh was approved, and he did not meet with any opposition from the Khmer Rouge leadership, with the exception of the protests of Hu Yong. When discussing this event, Salot Sar appealed to the fact that

According to him, "the existence of cities creates inequality between residents." The people were told that “the city is the abode of vice; You can change people, but not cities. Working in the sweat of uprooting the jungle and growing rice, a person will finally understand the true meaning of life. He needs to remember that he came from a rice seed. All Cambodians must become peasants". There were those among the people who tried to explain the actions of the Khmer Rouge by saying that throughout history the Khmer changed their capital four times, and “Pol Pot, due to extraordinary circumstances, only followed historical traditions”. According to another version, which is referred to in their works by J. Hildenbrand and G. Porter, the campaign was carried out without any killings or repressions, and people, on the contrary, were saved from possible epidemics and famine.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of people, including the elderly, the disabled and pregnant women, were forced to walk on a long journey in the hottest tropical season. Tens of thousands were shot on the road. Many died from loss of strength, sunburn and hunger. The rest, having arrived at their destination, died a slow death. Sometimes in the crush and confusion, family members lost each other. According to a survey conducted in 1979, out of one group of 100 families evacuated from the capital, only 41% survived. Together with thousands of Phnom Penh residents, Salot Sara's relatives, who had not known anything about him since the early 1960s, also left the capital. His older brother Salot Chhai, like many other exiles, died on the way, and another brother Lot Suong and his wife Chea Sami reached their native province of Kompong Thom, where they began to engage in peasantry. Them The only son, Salot Sara's nephew, Ban Thuol died of starvation and abuse in Battambang. Of the 3 million population of Phnom Penh, only 20 thousand people remained in the city, mostly soldiers, officers, and the administrative apparatus. On April 18, the population left Riem, on April 24 - Poipet, on April 26-28, Paylin, etc. . At the same time, rural residents were resettled from the eastern part of the country to the western and residents of the western zone - to the east. On April 23, Salot Sar secretly entered the depopulated capital and set up his first headquarters near railway station, surrounding it around the perimeter with a double ring of defense.

Democratic Kampuchea: building a new society

On April 25-27, 1975, an Extraordinary National Congress was held in Phnom Penh, at which it was announced that the new authorities intended to build in Cambodia "a national community of consent, which will be based on equality and democracy, the absence of exploiters and exploited, rich and poor, where everyone will work". Having come to power, the Pol Pot government set three tasks that needed to be addressed immediately:

1. Stop the policy of ruining the peasantry - the foundation of Cambodian society, put an end to corruption and usury;
2. Eliminate the eternal dependence of Kampuchea on foreign countries;
3. To restore order in a country that is sinking deeper into anarchy, for which, first of all, it is necessary to establish a rigid political regime.

The entire population of the country, by decision of the people's power, was divided into three main categories. The first - "the main people" - included the inhabitants of the regions. The second part - " new people or "People April 17". These are the inhabitants of cities and villages that were long time in territory temporarily occupied by the Americans or under the control of the puppet forces of Lon Nol. This part of the population had to undergo serious re-education. The third part is the intelligentsia, reactionary clergy, persons who served in the state apparatus of the previous regimes, officers and sergeants of the Lonnol army, revisionists who were trained in Hanoi. This category of the population had to be subjected to a large-scale purge.

The position of ethnic minorities. Religion

More than 20 ethnic groups live in Cambodia, the largest of which are the Khmers. The peoples of Cambodia actively participated in the civil war and contributed to the victory over the Lonnol government. According to Kerman, ethnic minorities "made up more than 15% of the [pre-revolutionary] Cambodian population." It is noteworthy that many of Pol Pot's bodyguards came from ethnic groups. As Taing Kim Men noted, Pol Pot's bodyguards were “people from minorities. When they spoke Khmer, I couldn't make out a single word.". For example, in 1967-1975. Pol Pot's bodyguard - Phi Fuon was an ethnic Jaraian, there is also a report of bodyguards from the Tapuon tribe (English) Russian . However, during the Khmer Rouge period, the country's ethnic minorities were subjected to mass extermination. The Angka directive to the provincial authorities stated:

The Cambodian revolution is one whole. The Cambodian nation is also one whole. The only language is Khmer. From now on, there are no longer any nationalities in Kampuchea ... Therefore, the inhabitants should replace their names with names characteristic of the Khmer race. Languages, ethnicity, clothing, habits and religion former nationalities must be decisively eradicated. Persons disobeying orders will bear the entire full responsibility for that .

It is characteristic that in the constitution of Democratic Kampuchea adopted in 1976, nothing was said about any ethnic groups. Pol Pot's journal, published in Beijing, stated that “The people of Democratic Kampuchea are made up of Khmers (99% of the population) and numerous national minorities living together in one big family united in the defense and construction of the country" .

Cambodian Chams (Chams), 2007.

The Lao, the Kula people settled in the Pailin region, were subjected to mass destruction (English) Russian (Burmese) and others. If the Thai minority inhabiting the southwestern province of Koh Kong, at the beginning of 1975 amounted to about 20 thousand people, then after January 7, 1979, only 8 thousand Thais survived. The Vietnamese were especially persecuted, especially since Kampuchea launched a “border war” with neighboring Vietnam. Thousands of Vietnamese were killed, many expelled. According to the Australian scientist and journalist Wilfred Burchett, who spent a long time in Vietnam, “In total, from April 17, 1975 to October 20, 1978, almost 270 thousand Vietnamese crossed from Kampuchea to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, most of whom were exhausted, suffering from dystrophy people”. Slivinsky speaks of the disappearance of 37.5% of the Vietnamese and 38.4% of the Chinese. Muslims (in particular Chams (tyams) and Malays), some of whom collaborated with the Lon Nol regime, were subjected to severe persecution. Beginning in October 1975, all Chams were evicted from their places of residence in remote areas, and the names of settlements of Cham origin were changed to Khmer. Later, the Chams were settled only in the environment of the Khmers at the rate of one Cham family for 19 Khmers. They were categorically forbidden to speak their native language, forced to abandon their customs and follow their culture. Moreover, the Chams were forbidden to meet among themselves and marry in their community, and their children were given to be raised in Khmer families. B. Kiernan believes that half of the Chams died, Slivinsky gives a figure of 40.6%.

Religion has not been left out. The Constitution of Kampuchea stated: "Reactionary religions that harm Democratic Kampuchea and the Kampuchean people are strictly prohibited." The main religion - Buddhism, as well as Islam, practiced by the Chams and Malays, and Christian communities were persecuted. On April 18, 1975, the supreme leader of the Buddhist sect, the Mahannikai, was assassinated at Prang Pagoda. (English) Russian Huot Tat. One of the representatives of Angka urged the peasants:

After torture, the head of the Muslims, Imam Hari Roslos, and his assistants Haji Suleiman and Haji Mat Suleiman were brutally killed. All 114 mosques in Cambodia were destroyed and ravaged by the Pol Potavians, a number of which were blown up with dynamite, bulldozed or turned into pigsties. Quran and others holy books were burned. Chams, as a punishment, were forced to raise pigs, and those who tried to object were shot. According to Slivinsky's calculations, the number of Catholics in Cambodia (English) Russian decreased by 48.6%.

anti-government protests. Opposition

Already from the first months of the Khmer Rouge coming to power, they were faced with protests, which gradually began to acquire a wide and massive character. In September 1975, the inhabitants of the province of Siem Reap revolted. In November, the Chams raised an uprising in the village of Trea. The village was razed to the ground, and the surviving Chams were executed by crushing their heads with a blow from a hoe.

In February 1977, 600 soldiers of the 170th division, whose competence included the defense of Phnom Penh, raised a mutiny, which was crushed. Division commander Cha Krai was shot dead, and three other leaders were burned alive in the capital's stadium. In April, an uprising broke out in Chikreng, Siem Ream province, which lasted a week, but it was also brutally suppressed. Representatives of the ruling power also began to take part in the speeches. So, in 1978, in one of the military districts of the country, the uprising was led by the first deputy chairman of the State Presidium Sor Phim.

conflict with Vietnam. Overthrow

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. At the same time, North Vietnamese troops defeated the South Vietnamese during a large-scale offensive and occupied Saigon on April 30, reuniting the two parts of the country and thus ending the many years of the Vietnam War. After the victory of the Vietnamese Communists, China's policy towards its southern neighbor began to change. Armed clashes that began almost immediately between Kampuchea and Vietnam were considered among American officials in the context of the Soviet-Chinese split. On January 8, 1978, US presidential adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski called this conflict a "simulated war" ("proxy war") between the USSR and China. In addition, China was considered a foreign policy ally of Kampuchea, while Vietnam was a pro-Soviet oriented state. Vietnam's Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Khnen, in an interview with the Asahi newspaper, blamed China for the start of the Cambodian-Vietnamese conflict. Thanks to Peking assistance, Pol Pot's army grew from 50,000 men in 1975 to 70,000 in 1977.

On May 1, the Khmer Rouge invaded Vietnamese territory in various areas between the cities of Hatien (English) Russian and Teyning (English) Russian . On May 4, they landed troops on the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, and on May 10 they occupied the island of Thohoyu (English) Russian . During his visit to Vietnam in June of the same year, Pol Pot explained the landing of Cambodian troops on Phu Quoc by the commanders' ignorance of the border line during the negotiations.

In addition to the foreign policy aspect, the extreme nationalism of the Khmer Rouge, which was especially manifested in relation to both the Vietnamese community of the country, contributed to the increase in tension in Cambodian-Vietnamese relations. (English) Russian and neighboring Vietnam. Moreover, having adopted nationalist rhetoric, the country's leadership tried to solve internal problems, blaming Vietnam and the Vietnamese for everything. Pol Pot even said that Vietnam is "our enemy number one, our traditional enemy, and he must be defeated at all costs". Going further, Pol Pot in his public speeches appealed to the glorious historical past of the history of Cambodia, to the period of the existence of the Angkor Empire, covering the territory of present-day Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos. He called for the struggle for the revival of this state "within its former borders." In one of the documents of that period, the need to "organize provocations and invade Khmer Krom territory and Saigon, and then occupy these areas". Pol Pot himself stated on Phnom Penh radio that "Even in my lifetime, I hope to liberate Saigon" .

April 1977 to December 1978 practically on the entire 1100-kilometer Cambodian-Vietnamese border, a “border war” actually unfolded. The Capuche troops invaded 10 km deep into the territory of Vietnam and dealt with the inhabitants of the neighboring state with extreme cruelty. For example, after a Kampuchean raid on one of the villages located near the Vietnamese border town of Hatien, one of the huts was found dead three women and three children, and the women's bellies were ripped open. A piece of paper lying next to it read: "This is our land." Burning houses, killing people and destroying crops, the Pol Potites quickly retreated when regular units of the Vietnamese army approached the attack site. In December 1977, Vietnamese forces advanced deep into Kampuchea to the city of Svay Rieng. (English) Russian . On December 31, official Phnom Penh announced the severance of diplomatic relations with Hanoi. In parallel, active anti-Vietnamese propaganda unfolded in Kampuchea. In 1977-1978. in the army and among the population, as well as in the means mass media propagandistic slogans of an anti-Vietnamese nature were distributed: “Vietnam is enemy number one for Kampuchea!”, “We are ready to fight Vietnam for 700 years!”, “We have 800 million Chinese behind us!”, “Kampuchean, kill 30 Vietnamese, and we will win!” . One of the leaflets distributed in the border areas in the Vietnamese province of Tay Ninh read: “Remember that this is a native Cambodian territory. Kampuchea will extend to Saigon. On May 10, 1978, Phnom Penh Radio proudly announced that “So far, we have already been able to achieve the goal: “1 in 30”, i.e. 30 Vietnamese killed for one Kampuchean. It is enough for us to donate 2 million Khmers to destroy 50 million Vietnamese.” .

On December 22, 1978, the Cambodian army, with the support of tanks and artillery, attacked the Vietnamese city of Benshoi (Teinin province) in order to capture the administrative center of the province and make its way deep into the territory of Vietnam. The next day, in an interview given to Washington Post correspondent Elizabeth Becker, Pol Pot said: “We are attacking them (Vietnamese) in order to prevent them from penetrating into some areas of our territory. But if they managed to get there, it would be difficult for them to leave from there.. The Vietnamese leadership, which sees Democratic Kampuchea as a threat to its national security, began preparations for an invasion of the territory of a neighboring country. On December 25, motorized rifle and tank units of the Vietnamese People's Army crossed the Khmer border and, without encountering serious resistance, with the support of artillery and aviation, began to quickly advance through the territory of Cambodia. 14 Vietnamese divisions were involved in the massive offensive. At a meeting on December 29 with a Marxist-Leninist delegation from Canada, Pol Pot predicted the "inevitable defeat" of the Vietnamese and stated that the "Warsaw Pact" was also involved in the war.

"Tragic result"

On July 15, 1979, the People's Revolutionary Tribunal was organized in Phnom Penh to consider the crimes of genocide committed by the leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Two months later, on August 19, the People's Revolutionary Tribunal found Pol Pot and Ieng Sari guilty of genocide and sentenced them in absentia to death with confiscation of all property. During the process, the tribunal accused the Chinese leadership of the fact that the ruling circles of this country were the inspirers and accomplices in the policy pursued by the Khmer Rouge. Member of the Bar of the US Supreme Court H.R. Stephen said that "Chinese leaders should sit in the dock along with Pol Pot and Ieng Sari as partners in crime."

Photo of a woman with a baby, victims of Tuol Sleng prison.

It is difficult to say how many people died during the 3.5 years of Khmer Rouge rule. Many Khmer Rouge leaders denied the fact of "genocide" until the end of their lives, or did not recognize the huge number of dead people; rank-and-file members sometimes claimed to be unaware of what was going on in the country. In his last interview, given in December 1979, Pol Pot stated that "due to our mistakes in the implementation of the welfare policy, more than a few thousand Cambodians could not have died". Referring to party problems, Pol Pot subsequently blamed the Vietnamese and their agents for what happened - people with "the body of a Cambodian and the mind of a Vietnamese" who betrayed the revolution. In an official 1987 pamphlet, Khieu Samphan specified that 3,000 victims were the result of "mistakes," another 11,000 "Vietnamese agents" were executed, and 30,000 "Vietnamese agents" who had infiltrated us were killed. It also said that the Vietnamese occupiers allegedly killed "about one and a half million people" in 1979-1980. Moreover, among the surviving written materials, not a single surviving document is known that would have been personally signed by Pol Pot. In 1995, a military man present at a training meeting organized by Pol Pot, in an interview with David Ashley, said:

Former President Lon Nol stuck to the figure of "two and a half million" dead, while the former general secretary of the People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (English) Russian Pen Sovan, who served as head of the PRC government, cited the figure of 3,100,000 people as accepted by the PRC and Vietnamese propaganda. David Chandler lists 800,000 (one in ten) to one million (one in eight) men, women and children. Kiernan estimated that 1,500,000 people died. The protocol of the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes of July 25, 1983 states that for the period between 1975 and 1978. 2,746,105 people died, of which 1,927,061 peasants, 305,417 workers, employees and representatives of other professions, 48,359 representatives of national minorities, 25,168 monks, about 100 writers and journalists, as well as several foreigners. Another 568,663 people are missing and either died in the jungle or buried in mass graves. The number of those killed is estimated at 3,374,768. In addition, more than 200,000 children became orphans

And although the People's Revolutionary Tribunal issued its verdict on the Pol Pot-Ieng Sari regime back in 1979, the trial of the Khmer Rouge leaders began only in the 21st century. Tribunal was established in 2006 (English) Russian , before which the head of prison S-21 Kang Kek Yeu, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs Ieng Sari ("brother number three"), his wife, ex-minister of social protection Ieng Tirith appeared (English) Russian , ex-chairman of the presidium Khieu Samphan ("brother number four") and the main ideologist of the Khmer Rouge Nuon Chea ("brother number two").

Pro-Vietnamese regime of Heng Samrin

After the loss of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge forces retreated west to the Cambodian-Thai border. This area became their home base for the next two decades. According to the NRK Ministry of Defense, within six months of the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime during successful operations 42 thousand soldiers and officers of the former government were killed, captured, or voluntarily surrendered; was liquidated General base in Amleang, the last large Pol Pot strongholds in the province of Pursat and the remnants of the former fleet, hiding in the river arms of the province of Kah Kong, were destroyed. It seemed that the Khmer Rouge was dealt a serious blow, but under the circumstances, Pol Pot received support not only from China, but also from Thailand and the United States, which shared his hostility towards Vietnam. Fearing an invasion by Vietnamese troops, Thailand agreed with China on the condition that it provide asylum to the Khmer Rouge in exchange for the termination of Chinese assistance to the Communist Party of Thailand, waging a guerrilla war in the country. The United States, which established friendly relations with Beijing against the backdrop of the Soviet-Chinese split, did not oppose the Sino-Thai agreement, but rather even supported the presence of Pol Pot's delegation at the UN. For Pol Pot himself, the main goal now was the expulsion of Vietnamese troops from the country.

Thanks to Chinese assistance, the Khmer Rouge were able to rearm and reorganize their units. By 1983, they managed to restore 9 of their divisions and even created a special Ronsae group for operations in the deep rear.

Death

Pol Pot died on April 15, 1998 from heart failure, according to Ta Mok. Medical examination, however, later showed that death was due to poisoning. There is also a version that he died of illness in the jungle.

Notes

1. Cambodians pray at Pol Pot's cremation site decade later (unavailable link)
2. KI Media: Khmer Rouge «Butcher» buried near Pol Pot
3. , from. 26
4. , from. 27
5. Chandler David P. Brother Number One: Political biography Paul Pot. - Ekaterinburg: Ultra. Culture, 2005, p.398.
6. , from. 94
7. The bloody utopia of the leader of the Khmer Rouge
8. Pol Pot: a fighter for the happiness of the people or a bloody dictator?
9. Chandler D. The tragedy of Cambodian history. P. 171. New Haven, 1991.
10. D.V. Mosyakov Kampuchea: features of the revolutionary process and Pol Pot's "experiment". - M .: Nauka, 1986. - S. 103.
11. , from. 215
12. , from. 217-218
13. D.V. Mosyakov Kampuchea: features of the revolutionary process and Pol Pot's "experiment". - M .: Nauka, 1986. - S. 104.
14. , from. 322
15. , from. 320
16. , from. 25
17. , from. 64
18. , from. 63
19. , from. 338
20. , from. 218
21. , from. 219
22. Wu Kang Former brother of Pol Pot // Kampuchea: life after death. - M .: Politizdat, 1985. - S. 78.
23. , from. 26
24. recent history Cambodia. - M .: Nauka, 1989. - S. 138. - ISBN 5-02-016678-2
25. , from. 318
26. , from. 321
27. The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective / Ed. Roberta Gelletly (English) Russian and Ben Kiernan (English) Russian . - Cambridge University Press, 2003. - S. 313.
28. , from. 243
29. , from. 185
30. M.P. Isaev The modern revolutionary process in the countries of Indochina (the problem of the development of national liberation revolutions into socialist ones). - M .: Nauka, 1985. - S. 190.
31. N.N. Bektimirova, Yu.P. Dementiev, E.V. Kobelev Recent history of Kampuchea. - M .: Nauka, 1989. - S. 158. - ISBN 5-02-016678-2
32. , from. 70
33. , from. 71
34. D.V. Mosyakov Kampuchea: features of the revolutionary process and Pol Pot's "experiment". - M .: Nauka, 1986. - S. 137.
35. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repressions. - "Three centuries of history", 2001. - S. 550. - ISBN 5-93453-037-2, 2-221-08204-4
36. , from. 72
37. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repressions. - "Three centuries of history", 2001. - S. 552. - ISBN 5-93453-037-2, 2-221-08204-4
38. , from. 35
39. , from. 37-38
40. N.N. Bektimirova, Yu.P. Dementiev, E.V. Kobelev Recent history of Kampuchea. - M .: Nauka, 1989. - S. 159. - ISBN 5-02-016678-2
41. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repressions. - "Three centuries of history", 2001. - S. 551. - ISBN 5-93453-037-2, 2-221-08204-4
42. , from. 232
43. , from. 38
44. , from. 294
45. , from. 52
46. , from. 307
47. Kampuchea: from tragedy to rebirth. - M .: Politizdat, 1979. - S. 29.
48. , from. 83

Prince of Cambodia.

The tragedy of Cambodia is a consequence of the Vietnam War, which first broke out on the ruins of French colonialism, and then escalated into a conflict with the Americans. Fifty-three thousand Cambodians died on the battlefields.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, ruler of Cambodia and heir to its religious and cultural traditions, renounced royal title ten years before the start of the Vietnam War, but remained head of state. He tried to lead the country along the path of neutrality, balancing between warring countries and conflicting ideologies. Sihanouk became king of Cambodia, a French protectorate, back in 1941, but abdicated in 1955. However, then, after free elections, he returned to the leadership of the country as head of state.

During the escalation of the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1969, Sihanouk fell out of favor with Washington's political leadership for not taking decisive action against arms smuggling and the establishment of Vietnamese guerrilla camps in the jungles of Cambodia. However, he was also quite soft in his criticism of the US-led punitive air raids.

On March 18, 1970, while Sihanouk was in Moscow, his prime minister, General Lon Nol, with the support of the White House, staged a coup d'état, returning Cambodia to its ancient name Khmer. The United States recognized the Khmer Republic, but a month later they invaded it. Sihanouk found himself in exile in Beijing. And here the ex-king made a choice, entering into an alliance with the devil himself.

Entry into power.

Pol Pot's real name is Saloth Sar (also known as Tol South and Pol Porth). He was born in the rebellious province of Kampong Thom. Pol Pot, who grew up in a peasant family in the Cambodian province of Kampong Thom and received primary education in a Buddhist monastery, he was a monk for two years, allegedly receiving the science of tolerance and humility there. However, what was actually taught and taught in Buddhist monasteries is well known. These are the techniques of various schools of oriental martial arts, meditation, occultism, etc. Therefore, it is not difficult to guess who instructed the future Pol Pot on the "true path".

Even during the Second World War, Salot Sar joined the Communist Party of Indochina. In the fifties he studied electronics in Paris and, like many students of that time, became involved in the left movement. Here Pol Pot heard - it is still not known whether they met - about another student, Khieu Samphan, whose controversial but imaginative plans for an "agrarian revolution" fueled Pol Pot's great-power ambitions. In Paris, he joined the ranks of the French Communist Party and became close to other Cambodian students who preached Marxism in the interpretation of Maurice Teresa. Returning to his homeland in late 1953 or 1954, Salot Sar began teaching at a prestigious private lyceum in Phnom Penh. At the turn of the sixties, the communist movement in Cambodia was split into three almost unrelated factions operating in different parts of the country. The smallest, but the most active, was the third faction, which rallied on the basis of hatred for Vietnam. In 1962, with mysterious circumstances The secretary of the Cambodian Communist Party, Tu Samut, died. In 1963, Salot Sar was approved as the new party secretary. He became the leader of the Khmer Rouge, the communist guerrillas of Cambodia. Salot Sar left his job at the Lyceum and went into hiding. By the beginning of the 1970s, the Salot Sarah group had seized a number of posts in the highest party apparatus. He destroyed his opponents physically. For these purposes, a secret security department was created in the party, which was personally subordinate to Saloth Sar.

In 1975, the Lon Nol government, despite the support of the Americans, fell under the blows of the Khmer Rouge. American B-52 bombers carpet bombed this tiny country with as many tons of explosives as were dropped on Germany during the last two years of World War II. Vietnamese fighters - the Viet Cong - used the impenetrable jungle of a neighboring country to set up military camps and bases for operations against the Americans. These strongholds were bombed american planes. The Khmer Rouge not only survived, but also captured Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on April 23, 1975. By this time, the Salot Sarah group occupied strong, but not sole positions in the leadership of the party. This forced her to move. With his characteristic caution, the head of the Khmer Rouge stepped into the shadows and began to prepare the ground for the final seizure of power. To do this, he resorted to a number of hoaxes. Since April 1975, his name has disappeared from official communications. Many thought he was dead.

On April 14, 1976, the appointment of a new prime minister was announced. His name was Pol Pot. The unknown name caused surprise at home and abroad. It did not occur to anyone, except for a narrow circle of initiates, that Pol Pot was the disappeared Saloth Sar. The difficult situation in which the Pol Pat faction found itself by the autumn of 1976 was exacerbated by the death of Mao Zedong. On September 27, Pol Pot was removed from the post of prime minister, as announced, "for health reasons." Two weeks later, Pol Pot became prime minister again. New Chinese leaders helped him. The dictator and his henchmen set out to destroy everyone they considered potentially dangerous, and indeed destroyed almost all the officers, soldiers and civil servants of the old regime. Little is known about Pol Pot. This is a man with the appearance of a handsome old man and the heart of a bloody tyrant. It was with this monster that Sihanouk teamed up. Together with the leader of the Khmer Rouge, they vowed to merge their forces together for a common goal - the defeat of American troops.

The dictator outlined an audacious plan to build a new society and declared that it would take only a few days to implement it. Pol Pot announced the evacuation of all cities under the leadership of the newly minted regional and zonal leaders, ordered the closure of all markets, the destruction of churches and the dispersal of all religious communities. Having been educated abroad, he harbored a hatred for educated people and ordered the execution of all teachers, professors and even kindergarten teachers.

Wheel of death.

On April 17, 1975, Pol Pot ordered the forced assimilation of 13 national minorities living in Democratic Kampuchea. They were ordered to speak Khmer, and those who could not speak Khmer were killed. On May 25, 1975, Pol Pot's soldiers carried out a massacre of Thais in the province of Kah Kong in the southwest of the country. 20,000 Thais lived there, and after the massacre, only 8,000 remained.

Inspired by the ideas of Mao Zedong about communes, Pol Pot launched the slogan "Back to the village!". In pursuance of it, the population of large and small cities was evicted to rural and mountainous areas. On April 17, 1975, using violence combined with deceit, the Pol Potites forced more than 2 million residents of the newly liberated Phnom Penh to leave the city. All indiscriminately - the sick, the old, the pregnant, the crippled, the newborn, the dying - were sent to the countryside and assigned to communes of 10,000 people each. Residents were forced to overwork, regardless of age and health status. With primitive tools or by hand, people worked 12-16 hours a day, and sometimes longer. According to the few who managed to survive, in many areas their daily food was only one bowl of rice for 10 people. The leaders of the Pol Pot regime created a network of spies and encouraged mutual denunciations in order to paralyze the will of the people to resist. The Pol Potites tried to abolish Buddhism, a religion practiced by 85 percent of the population. Buddhist monks were forced to give up their traditional dress and forced to work in "communes". Many of them were killed. Pol Pot sought to exterminate the intelligentsia and, in general, all those who had some kind of education, technical connections and experience. Of the 643 doctors and pharmacists, only 69 survived. Pol Potov's people eliminated the education system at all levels. Schools were turned into prisons, places of torture, and manure stores. All books and documents stored in libraries, schools, universities, research centers were burned or looted.

His "killing fields" were strewn with the corpses of those who did not fit into the framework of the new world formed by him and his bloodthirsty minions. During the reign of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, about three million people died - the same number of unfortunate victims perished in the gas chambers of the Nazi death factory Auschwitz during World War II. Life under Pol Pot was unbearable, and as a result of the tragedy that took place on the land of this ancient country in South-East Asia, its long-suffering population came up with a new eerie name for Cambodia - the Land of the Walking Dead.

According to Samphan's theory, Cambodia, in order to achieve progress, had to turn back, renounce capitalist exploitation, fattening leaders fed by the French colonial rulers, abandon devalued bourgeois values ​​and ideals. Samphan's perverted theory was that people should live in the fields, and all the temptations of modern life should be destroyed. If Pol Pot, say, had been run over by a car at that time, this theory would probably have died out in coffee houses and bars without stepping over the limits of Parisian boulevards. However, she was destined to become a monstrous reality.

Pol Pot's twisted dream of turning back time and forcing his people to live in a Marxist agrarian society was helped by his deputy, Ieng Sari. In his policy of destruction, Pol Pot used the term "get out of sight". "Cleaned" - destroyed thousands and thousands of women and men, old people and babies.

Buddhist temples were desecrated or turned into soldiers' brothels, or even just slaughterhouses. As a result of the terror, out of sixty thousand monks, only three thousand returned to the destroyed temples and holy cloisters.

In the “commune” of Psot, reprisals usually took place in the following way: a person was buried up to his neck in the ground and beaten with hoes on the head. They didn’t shoot - they took care of the bullets. “Those who had reached the age of fourteen or fifteen were forcibly sent to the so-called “mobile brigades” or to the army ... Pol Potov’s men prepared killers by recruiting 14-17 year old teenagers who were told that if they did not agree to kill, then after painful torture they would be killed themselves. In addition, the selected teenagers were deliberately corrupted, accustomed to murder, drunk with a mixture of palm moonshine with human blood. They were told that they were “capable of anything”, that they became “special people” because they drank human blood.” In this cannibalism we also see traces of the ancient religion of Cambodia. The entire population of the country was divided into three categories. The first included residents of remote mountainous and forest regions of the state. The second consisted of residents of those areas that were controlled by the overthrown pro-American regime of Lon Nol. The third group consisted of former military personnel, the old administration, their families and the entire (!) population of Phnom Penh. The third category was subject to complete destruction, and the second partial.

Such was the course of the faithful Marxist Pol Pot, who well mastered the principles of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. On April 16, 1975, over two million people were evicted from Phnom Penh, and they were not allowed to take anything with them. “In accordance with the order, all residents were obliged to leave the city. It was forbidden to take food and things. Those who refused to obey the order or hesitated were killed and shot. Neither the elderly, nor the disabled, nor pregnant women, nor the sick who were in hospitals escaped this fate. People had to walk, despite the rain or the scorching sun ... During the journey they were not given any food or medicine ... Only on the banks of the Mekong, when the Phnom Penh people were transported to remote areas of the country, about five hundred thousand people died. According to another plan by Pol Pot, the villages were to be destroyed. The massacre inflicted on them defies description: “The population of the village of Sreseam was almost completely destroyed ... the soldiers drove the children, tied them in a chain, pushed them into funnels filled with water and buried them alive ... , and pushed down. When there were too many people to be eliminated, they were gathered in groups of several dozen people, entangled with steel wire, passed current from a generator installed on a bulldozer, and then they pushed the unconscious people into a pit and covered them with earth. Even his own wounded soldiers, Pol Pot ordered to be killed so as not to spend money on medicines.

Following the example of his teachers Stalin and Mao Zedong, Pol Pot also fought against the intelligentsia. “The intelligentsia was completely destroyed: doctors, teachers, engineers, artists, scientists, students were declared mortal enemies of the regime. At the same time, anyone who wore glasses, read books, knew a foreign language, wore decent clothes, in particular European cut, was considered an intellectual. How can one not remember the 20-30s in the USSR, when people were also fired and killed for wearing a tie, ironed clothes? When everyone was forced to walk in blouses and wrinkled trousers. “Schools were either destroyed or turned into prisons, places of torture, warehouses for grain and fertilizers. Books from libraries, institutes, research centers, museum property were destroyed, and the most valuable items ancient art were kidnapped." And again the analogy with the USSR, where the most valuable works of art were sold abroad, while others were destroyed. “The bloody experiment of Pol Pot led to the destruction of all Cambodian cities with their industry and developed infrastructure, to the physical elimination of millions of people, especially educated and specialists, to the transformation of the country into a huge concentration camp, where the Khmer Rouge ruled with impunity.

For the Pol Potites, oriented towards the values ​​of Marxist socialism, a person's life was worth nothing: in order not to waste bullets, people were killed with shovels and other improvised means, starved, not to mention sophisticated bullying. It is worth noting in this connection that the attempts of communists in a number of countries, primarily Soviet ones, to dissociate themselves from these crimes and not to see in them repressions akin to all communist dictatorships are unconvincing. Of course, the Khmer Red Terror can be perceived as a caricature, but if you look closely and compare it with what has become known about our Red Terror behind last years open publications and revelations, then there will be no doubts about kinship. The source of the Khmer Rouge's convictions, as well as their arrogance and disrespect for people's lives, is still the same - the Marxist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bdestroying hostile classes and, in general, all enemies of the revolution, which, as you know, can include anyone who does not kill with a shovel (and, on occasion, himself, too).

Pol Pot's decree effectively eradicated ethnic minorities. Use of Vietnamese, Thai and Chinese was punishable by death. A purely Khmer society was proclaimed. The forcible eradication of ethnic groups had a particularly hard effect on the Chan people. Their ancestors - people from today's Vietnam - inhabited the ancient Kingdom of Champa. The Chans migrated to Cambodia in the 18th century and were engaged in fishing along the banks of Cambodian rivers and lakes. They professed Islam and were the most significant ethnic group in modern Cambodia, preserving the purity of their language, national cuisine, clothing, hairstyles, religious and ritual traditions.

Young Khmer Rouge fanatics attacked the vats like locusts. Their settlements were burned, the inhabitants were expelled into the swamps, teeming with mosquitoes. People were forcibly forced to eat pork, which was strictly forbidden by their religion, the clergy were ruthlessly destroyed. At the slightest resistance, entire communities were exterminated, and the corpses were thrown into huge pits and covered with lime. Of the 200,000 vats, less than half survived. Those who survived the beginning of the campaign of terror later realized that instant death was better than hellish torment under the new regime.

According to Pol Pot, the older generation was corrupted by feudal and bourgeois views, infected with "sympathy" for Western democracies, which he declared alien to the national way of life. Urban population driven from their homes to labor camps, where hundreds of thousands of people were tortured to death by overwork.

People were killed even for trying to speak French - the biggest crime in the eyes of the Khmer Rouge, as it was considered a manifestation of nostalgia for the country's colonial past.

In huge camps with no amenities other than a straw mat as a bed for sleeping and a bowl of rice at the end of the working day, in conditions that even prisoners of Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War would not envy, merchants, teachers, entrepreneurs, only survivors because they managed to hide their professions, as well as thousands of other townspeople. These camps were organized in such a way as to get rid of the elderly and the sick, pregnant women and young children through "natural selection".

People died in hundreds and thousands from disease, hunger and exhaustion, under the clubs of cruel overseers. Without medical assistance, except for traditional herbal treatments, the life expectancy of the prisoners of these camps was frustratingly short. Stalin and Hitler are resting.

At dawn, people were sent in formation to the malaria swamps, where they cleared the jungle for 12 hours a day. unsuccessful attempts win new crop land from them. At sunset, again in formation, urged on by the bayonets of the guards, people returned to the camp to their bowl of rice, liquid gruel and a piece of dried fish. Then, despite the terrible fatigue, they still had to go through political classes on Marxist ideology, in which incorrigible "bourgeois elements" were identified and punished, while the rest, like parrots, kept repeating phrases about the joys of life in the new state. Every ten working days, a long-awaited day off was due, for which twelve hours of ideological studies were planned. The wives lived separately from the husbands. Their children began to work at the age of seven or were placed at the disposal of childless party functionaries, who trained them as fanatical "fighters of the revolution."

From time to time, huge bonfires made of books were made in the city squares. Crowds of unfortunate tortured people were driven to these fires, who were forced to chant memorized phrases in chorus, while the flames devoured the masterpieces of world civilization. "Lessons of hatred" were organized, when people were whipped in front of portraits of the leaders of the old regime. It was an ominous world of horror and hopelessness. In the "commune" it was strictly forbidden to read ... If they found a magazine or a book, they dealt with the whole family ...

Pol Potovtsy broke off diplomatic relations in all countries, postal and telephone communications did not work, entry into and exit from the country were prohibited. The Cambodian people found themselves isolated from the whole world.

To strengthen the fight against real and imaginary enemies, Pol Pot organized a sophisticated system of torture and executions in his prison camps. As during the Spanish Inquisition, the dictator and his henchmen proceeded from the premise that those who fell into these cursed places were guilty and they had only to admit their guilt. In order to convince its followers of the need for brutal measures to achieve the goals of "national revival", the regime gave torture a special political significance.

Documents seized after the overthrow of Pol Pot show that Khmer security officers, trained by Chinese instructors, were guided by cruel ideological principles in their activities. Interrogation Manual S-21, one of the documents later handed over to the UN, stated: "The purpose of torture is to get an adequate response from the interrogated. Torture is not used for entertainment. Pain must be inflicted in such a way as to cause a quick reaction "Another goal is the psychological breakdown and loss of will of the interrogated. During torture, one should not proceed from one's own anger or self-satisfaction. Beating the bearer should be done in such a way as to intimidate him, and not beat him to death. Before proceeding to torture, it is necessary to examine the state of health of the interrogated and examine instruments of torture.You should not try to kill the person being interrogated without fail.During interrogation, political considerations are the main thing, inflicting pain is secondary.Therefore, you should not forget that you are engaged in political work.Even during interrogations, you should constantly conduct agitation and propaganda work.At the same time, you must avoid indecision and hesitation during torture, when possible receive answers from the enemy to our questions. It must be remembered that indecision can slow down our work. In other words, in propaganda and educational work of this kind, it is necessary to show determination, perseverance, and categoricalness. We must proceed to torture without first explaining the reasons or motives. Only then will the enemy be defeated."

Among the many sophisticated torture methods used by Khmer Rouge executioners, the most favorite were the notorious Chinese water torture, crucifixion, and strangulation with a plastic bag. Site S-21, which gave the document its title, was the most infamous camp in all of Cambodia. It was located in the northeast of the country. At least thirty thousand victims of the regime were martyred here. Only seven survived, and even then only because the administrative skills of the prisoners were needed by their masters to manage this terrible institution.

But torture was not the only tool to intimidate the already frightened population of the country. There are many cases when the guards in the camps caught the prisoners, driven to despair by hunger, eating their dead comrades in misfortune. The punishment for this was a terrible death. The guilty were buried up to their necks in the ground and left to a slow death from hunger and thirst, and their still living flesh was tormented by ants and other living creatures. Then the heads of the victims were cut off and put on stakes around the settlement. A sign was hung around the neck: "I am a traitor to the revolution!"

Dit Pran, Cambodian translator for American journalist Sydney Schoenberg, lived through all the horrors of Pol Pot's rule. The inhuman ordeals he had to go through are documented in the film "Field of Death", in which the suffering of the Cambodian people first appeared before the whole world with stunning nakedness. The heartbreaking narration of Prana's journey from civilized childhood to the death camp horrified viewers. “In my prayers,” Pran said, “I asked the Almighty to save me from the unbearable torment that I had to endure. But some of my loved ones managed to flee the country and take refuge in America. For their sake, I continued to live, but it was not life but a nightmare."

The foreign policy of the Pol Pot regime was characterized by aggressiveness and disguised fear of powerful powers. After the final approval in power, Pol Pot decided to isolate himself from outside world. In response to Japan's proposal to establish diplomatic relations, the Pol Potites said that Cambodia "would not be interested in them for another 200 years." Exceptions to the general rule were only a few countries for which Pol Pot, for one reason or another, had personal sympathy. In January 1977, after almost a year of silence, shots were fired on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. Detachments of the Khmer Rouge, having crossed the Vietnamese border, killed the inhabitants of the border villages with clubs. In 1978, Vietnam signed a pact with China, Kampuchea's only ally, and launched a full-scale invasion. Dec. 1978 Vietnamese troops, who had been in conflict with the Khmer Rouge for many years over disputed border areas, entered Cambodia with the help of several motorized infantry divisions, supported by tanks. The country fell into such decline that, due to the lack of telephone communications, it was necessary to deliver combat reports on bicycles. The Chinese did not come to the aid of Pol Pot, and in January 1979 his regime fell under the onslaught of the Vietnamese troops. The fall was so rapid that the tyrant had to flee from Phnom Penh in a white Mercedes two hours before the triumphant appearance in the capital of the army of Hanoi. However, Pol Pot was not going to give up. He fortified himself in a secret base with a handful of his loyal followers and formed the National Liberation Front of the Khmer People. The Khmer Rouge retreated in an organized manner into the jungle on the border with Thailand.

In early 1979, the Vietnamese occupied Phnom Penh. A few hours earlier, Pol Pot left the deserted capital in a white armored Mercedes. The bloody dictator hurried to his Chinese masters, who provided him with shelter, but did not support him in the fight against the heavily armed Viet Cong.

When the whole world became aware of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime and the devastation that reigned in the country, aid rushed to Cambodia in a powerful stream. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis in their time, were very pedantic in recording their crimes. The investigation uncovered journals in which daily executions and torture were recorded in the most detailed way, hundreds of albums with photographs of those sentenced to death, including the wives and children of intellectuals liquidated in the initial stages of terror, detailed documentation of the notorious "killing fields". These fields, conceived as the basis of a labor utopia, a country without money and needs, in fact turned out to be mass graves of the day of burial of people crushed by the yoke of cruel tyranny. “After three years of the existence of the Pol Pot regime, Kampuchea was called nothing more than a “huge concentration camp”, a “giant prison”, a “state of barracks socialism”, where blood flows like a river and a policy of genocide against its own nation is ruthlessly and systematically carried out.” Of the country's 8 million people, 5 million survived.

After the overthrow.

On August 15-19, 1979, the People's Revolutionary Tribunal of Kampuchea tried the case on charges of genocide by the Pol Pot-Ieng Sari clique. Pol Pot and Ieng Sari were found guilty and sentenced to death in absentia. The Pol Potites left Kampuchea in a very difficult state. Despite all this, representatives of the Khmer Rouge, led by Khieu Samphan, remained in Phnom Penh for some time. The parties have been looking for ways to mutual reconciliation for a long time. The support of the United States helped the Pol Potites to feel confident. At the insistence of the superpower, the Pol Potites retained their place in the UN. But in 1993, following the Khmer Rouge's boycott of the country's first UN-monitored parliamentary elections, the movement hid entirely in the jungle. Every year contradictions grew among the leaders of the Khmer Rouge. In 1996, Ieng Sari, who was deputy prime minister in the Pol Pot government, went over to the side of the government with 10,000 fighters. In response, Pol Pot traditionally resorted to terror. He ordered the execution of Defense Minister Son Sen, his wife and nine children. The tyrant's frightened associates organized a conspiracy led by Khieu Samphan, Ta Mok, the commander of the troops, and Nuon Chea, the most influential person in the Khmer Rouge leadership at present. In June 1997, Pol Pot was placed under house arrest. He was left with his second wife, Mia Som, and daughter, Seth Seth. The dictator's family was guarded by one of Pol Pot's commanders, Nuon Nu.

In early April 1998, the United States suddenly began to demand the transfer of Pol Pot to the international tribunal, pointing out the need for "just retribution." Washington's position, which is difficult to explain in the light of his past policy of supporting the dictator, has caused a lot of controversy among the leadership of Angka. In the end, it was decided to trade Pol Pot for their own safety. The search for contacts with international organizations began, but the death of the bloody tyrant on the night of April 14-15, 1998 immediately solved all problems. By official version, Pol Pot died of a heart attack. His body was cremated, and the skull and bones left after the burning were handed over to his wife and daughter.

Pran was lucky enough to survive this bloody Asian nightmare and reunite with his family in San Francisco in 1979. But in the remote corners of a devastated country that survived a terrible tragedy, there are still mass graves of nameless victims, over which mounds of human skulls rise with mute reproach. It is unlikely that Pol Pot knew the work of the artist Vereshchagin, but he seems to have decided to recreate his painting "Apotheosis of War" in real life.

In the end, thanks to military power, and not morality and law, it was possible to stop carnage and restore on the tormented earth at least a semblance of common sense. Britain should be given credit for speaking out in 1978 against human rights violations after reports of rampant terror in Cambodia through intermediaries in Thailand, but this protest went unheeded. Britain issued a statement to the UN Commission on Human Rights, but a representative of the Khmer Rouge hysterically retorted: "British imperialists have no right to speak about human rights. The whole world is well aware of their barbaric nature. Britain's leaders are drowning in luxury, while the proletariat has the right only unemployment, sickness and prostitution."

Pol Pot, who seemed to have gone into oblivion, has recently reappeared on the political horizon as a force claiming power in this long-suffering country. Like all tyrants, he claims that his subordinates made mistakes, that he faced resistance on all fronts, and that those who died were "enemies of the state." Returning to Cambodia in 1981, at a secret meeting among his old friends near the Thai border, he stated that he was too trusting: "My policy was correct. Overzealous regional commanders and local leaders perverted my orders. Accusations of massacres- a vile lie. If we really destroyed people in such numbers, the people would have ceased to exist long ago."

A "misunderstanding" at the cost of three million lives, almost a third of the country's population, is too innocent a word to describe what was done in the name of Pol Pot and on his orders. But, following the well-known Nazi principle - the more monstrous the lie, the more people are able to believe in it - Pol Pot was still eager for power and hopes to gather forces in rural areas, which, in his opinion, are still loyal to him. He again became a major political figure and was waiting for an opportunity to reappear in the country as an angel of death, seeking revenge and completing the work he had previously begun - his "great agrarian revolution."

By the way, the United States then ensured that the Pol Potites retained a place in the UN. This is another example of American "democracy". In 1982, Pol Pot regains power, holding it until 1985, when he suddenly announces his resignation. Soon civil war breaks out again in the country, and the aged dictator again returns to political life, leading the pro-communist Khmer Rouge group. Now he is already ordering the execution of his own ministers, fearing treason on their part. The composure shown by him in the murder of his closest supporters inspires horror in his entourage. And it decides, in order to save its own life, to remove Pol Pot from power, which they managed to do in June 1997. For the next year, the dictator lived under house arrest until he died in 1998. According to beliefs, Pol Pot's body was burned at a ritual fire. By the way, before putting the body in the coffin, the nostrils of the dead man were plugged with cotton so that the spirit of the dead man would not escape the fire. Such was the people's fear of a man who is "rightly called the most terrible villain of the outgoing century."

“You talk about me like that, as if I were some kind of Pol Pot,” the heroine said offendedly. Ludmila Gurchenko in one popular Russian comedy.

"Pol Potovshchina", "Pol Potov regime" - these expressions firmly entered the lexicon of Soviet international journalists in the second half of the 1970s. However, this name in those years thundered all over the world.

In just a few years, the leader of the Khmer Rouge movement has become on a par with the bloodiest dictators in human history, earning the title of "Asiatic Hitler".

Little is known about the childhood of the Cambodian dictator, primarily because Pol Pot himself tried not to make this information public. Even the date of his birth is different. According to one version, he was born on May 19, 1925 in the village of Preksbauw, into a peasant family. Eighth child peasant Peck Salot and his wife Juice Nem given a name at birth Saloth Sar.

Village of Prexbauw. Birthplace of Pol Pot. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / Albeiro Rodas

The Pol Pot family, although they were peasants, did not live in poverty. The cousin of the future dictator served at the royal court and was even the concubine of the crown prince. Pol Pot's older brother served at the royal court, and his sister danced in the royal ballet.

Salot Sarah himself was sent at the age of nine to relatives in Phnom Penh. After a few months spent in a Buddhist monastery as an acolyte, the boy entered a Catholic elementary school, after which he continued his studies at Norodom Sihanouk College, and then at the Phnom Penh Technical School.

To Marxists by royal grant

In 1949, Salot Sar received a government scholarship for higher education in France and went to Paris, where he began to study radio electronics.

Paul Pot. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

The post-war period was marked by the rapid growth in the popularity of left-wing parties and national liberation movements. In Paris, Cambodian students created a Marxist circle, of which Saloth Sar became a member.

In 1952, Saloth Sar, under the pseudonym Khmer Daom, published his first political article, "Monarchy or Democracy?", in a journal of Cambodian students in France. At the same time, the student joined the French Communist Party.

Passion for politics relegated his studies to the background, and in the same year Salot Sarah was expelled from the university, after which he returned to his homeland.

In Cambodia, he settled with his older brother, began to look for connections with representatives of the Communist Party of Indochina and soon attracted the attention of one of its coordinators in Cambodia - Pham Wan Ba. Salot Sarah was recruited for party work.

"The Politics of the Possible"

Pham Van Ba ​​quite clearly described the new comrade-in-arms: "a young man of average ability, but with ambition and a thirst for power." The ambitions and love of power of Salot Sara turned out to be much greater than his comrades in the fight had expected.

Saloth Sar took on a new pseudonym - Pol Pot, which is an abbreviation for the French "politique potentielle" - "the politics of the possible." Under this pseudonym, he was destined to go down in world history.

Norodom Sihanouk. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953. The ruler of the kingdom was Prince Norodom Sihanouk, which was very popular and focused on China. In the war that broke out in Vietnam, Cambodia formally adhered to neutrality, but the units of North Vietnam and South Vietnamese partisans quite actively used the territory of the kingdom to locate their bases and warehouses. The Cambodian authorities preferred to turn a blind eye to this.

During this period, the Cambodian communists acted quite freely in the country, and by 1963 Saloth Sar had gone from a novice to the party's general secretary.

By that time, there was a serious split in the communist movement in Asia, associated with a sharp deterioration in relations between the USSR and China. The Communist Party of Cambodia has staked on Beijing, focusing on politics Comrade Mao Zedong.

Leader of the Khmer Rouge

Prince Norodom Sihanouk saw the growing influence of the Cambodian communists as a threat to his own power and began to change politics, shifting from China to the United States.

In 1967, a peasant uprising broke out in the Cambodian province of Battambang, which was brutally suppressed by government troops and mobilized citizens.

After that, the Cambodian communists launch a guerrilla war against the Sihanouk government. The detachments of the so-called "Khmer Rouge" were formed for the most part from illiterate and illiterate young peasants, whom Pol Pot made his main support.

Very quickly, the ideology of Pol Pot began to move away not only from Marxism-Leninism, but even from Maoism. Himself a native of a peasant family, the leader of the Khmer Rouge formulated a much simpler program for his illiterate supporters - the path to a happy life lies through the rejection of modern Western values, through the destruction of cities that are carriers of a pernicious infection, and the "re-education of their inhabitants."

Even Pol Pot's associates had no idea where such a program would lead their leader...

Lon Nol. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

In 1970, the Americans contributed to the strengthening of the positions of the Khmer Rouge. Considering that Prince Sihanouk, who had reoriented himself to the United States, was not a reliable enough ally in the fight against the Vietnamese communists, Washington organized a coup, as a result of which Prime Minister Lon Nol with strong pro-American views.

Lon Nol demanded that North Vietnam curtail all military activities in Cambodia, threatening to use force otherwise. The North Vietnamese in response hit first, so much so that they almost occupied Phnom Penh. To save your henchman, US President Richard Nixon sent American units to Cambodia. The Lon Nol regime eventually held out, but an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism arose in the country, and the ranks of the Khmer Rouge began to grow by leaps and bounds.

The victory of the guerrilla army

The civil war in Cambodia flared up with renewed vigor. The Lon Nol regime was not popular and was kept only on American bayonets, Prince Sihanouk was deprived of real power and was in exile, and Pol Pot continued to gain strength.

By 1973, when the United States, having decided to put an end to the Vietnam War, refused to continue to provide military support to the Lon Nol regime, the Khmer Rouge already controlled most of the country's territory. Pol Pot managed already without comrades-in-arms in the Communist Party, relegated to the background. It was much easier for him not with educated experts on Marxism, but with illiterate fighters who believed only in Pol Pot and the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

In January 1975, the Khmer Rouge launched a decisive offensive against Phnom Penh. The troops loyal to Lon Nol could not withstand the blow of the 70,000-strong partisan army. In early April, US Marines began evacuating US citizens, as well as high-ranking representatives of the pro-American regime, from the country. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh.

"The city is the abode of vice"

Cambodia was renamed Kampuchea, but this was the most harmless of Pol Pot's reforms. “The city is the abode of vice; You can change people, but not cities. Working hard to uproot the jungle and grow rice, a person will finally understand the true meaning of life, ”such was the main thesis of the Khmer Rouge leader who came to power.

2nd General Secretary Communist Party Cambodian Pol Pot. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

The city of Phnom Penh with a population of two and a half million people was decided to be evicted within three days. All its inhabitants, young and old, were sent to be peasants. No complaints about health, lack of skills, and the like were accepted. Following Phnom Penh, the same fate befell other cities of Kampuchea.

Only about 20 thousand people remained in the capital - the military, the administrative apparatus, as well as representatives of the punitive authorities, who undertook to identify and eliminate the dissatisfied.

It was supposed to re-educate not only the inhabitants of the cities, but also those peasants who had been under the rule of Lon Nol for too long. It was decided to simply get rid of those who served the former regime in the army and other state structures.

Pol Pot launched a policy of isolating the country, and Moscow, Washington, and even Beijing, which was Pol Pot's closest ally, had a very vague idea of ​​what was really happening in it. They simply refused to believe in the leaking information about hundreds of thousands of people shot, who died during the resettlement from cities and from excessive forced labor.

At the pinnacle of power

During this period, an extremely confused political situation developed in Southeast Asia. The United States, having ended the Vietnam War, set out to improve relations with China, taking advantage of the extremely strained relations between Beijing and Moscow. China, which supported the communists of North and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, became extremely hostile towards them, because they were guided by Moscow. Pol Pot, who was guided by China, took up arms against Vietnam, despite the fact that until recently the Khmer Rouge considered the Vietnamese as allies in a common struggle.

Pol Pot, abandoning internationalism, relied on nationalism, which was widespread among the Cambodian peasantry. The brutal persecution of ethnic minorities, primarily the Vietnamese, resulted in an armed conflict with a neighboring country.

Pol Pot on a Laos postage stamp. 1977 Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

In 1977, the Khmer Rouge began to penetrate into the adjacent regions of Vietnam, carrying out massacres against the local population. In April 1978, the Khmer Rouge occupied the Vietnamese village of Batyuk, destroying all its inhabitants, young and old. 3,000 people became victims of the massacre.

Pol Pot sold out in earnest. Feeling the support of Beijing behind his back, he not only threatened to defeat Vietnam, but also threatened the entire Warsaw Pact, that is, the Warsaw Treaty Organization headed by the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, his policy forced former comrades-in-arms and previously loyal military units to rebel, considering what was happening in no way justified by bloody madness. The rebellions were crushed ruthlessly, the rebels were executed in the most cruel ways, but their number continued to grow.

Three million victims in less than four years

In December 1978, Vietnam decided that it had had enough. Parts of the Vietnamese army invaded Kampuchea with the aim of overthrowing the Pol Pot regime. The offensive developed rapidly, and already on January 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell. Power was transferred to the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, created in December 1978.

China tried to save its ally by invading Vietnam in February 1979. A fierce but short-lived war ended in March with a tactical victory for Vietnam - the Chinese failed to return Pol Pot to power.

The Khmer Rouge, who suffered a serious defeat, retreated to the west of the country, to the Cambodian-Thai border. They were saved from complete defeat by the support of China, Thailand and the United States. Each of these countries pursued its own interests - the Americans, for example, tried to prevent the strengthening of positions in the region of pro-Soviet Vietnam, for the sake of which they preferred to turn a blind eye to the results of the activities of the Pol Pot regime.

Democratic Republic of Kampuchea (Cambodia). Official visit of the party and government delegation of China (November 5-9, 1978). Meeting of Pol Pot and Wang Dongxing. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

And the results were truly impressive. For 3 years 8 months and 20 days, the Khmer Rouge plunged the country into a medieval state. The protocol of the Commission for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Pol Pot Regime of July 25, 1983 stated that between 1975 and 1978, 2,746,105 people died, of which 1,927,061 peasants, 305,417 workers, employees and representatives of other professions, 48,359 representatives national minorities, 25,168 monks, about 100 writers and journalists, and a few foreigners. Another 568,663 people are missing and either died in the jungle or buried in mass graves. The total number of victims is estimated at 3,374,768 people.

In July 1979, the People's Revolutionary Tribunal was organized in Phnom Penh, which tried Khmer Rouge leaders in absentia. On August 19, 1979, the tribunal recognized Pol Pot and his closest associate of Ieng Sari guilty of genocide and sentenced them in absentia to death with confiscation of all property.

Passport of Ieng Sari, one of the most influential figures in the Khmer Rouge regime. During the years of Pol Pot's dictatorship (1975-1979), he served as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Democratic Kampuchea. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

The Leader's Last Secrets

For Pol Pot himself, however, this sentence meant nothing. He continued his guerrilla war against the new Kampuchean government by hiding in the jungle. Little was known about the leader of the Khmer Rouge, and many believed that the man whose name had become a household name had long since died.

When processes of national reconciliation began in Kampuchea-Cambodia aimed at ending years of civil war, a new generation of Khmer Rouge leaders tried to push their odious "guru" into the background. There was a split in the movement, and Pol Pot, trying to maintain leadership, again decided to use terror to suppress disloyal elements.

In July 1997, on the orders of Pol Pot, his longtime ally, the former Minister of Defense of Kampuchea Son Sen, was killed. Together with him, 13 members of his family were killed, including young children.

However, this time Pol Pot overestimated his influence. Companions declared him a traitor and held his own trial, sentencing him to life in prison.

The trial of the Khmer Rouge over their own leader caused the last surge of interest in Pol Pot. In 1998, prominent leaders of the movement agreed to lay down their arms and surrender to the new Cambodian authorities.

Pol Pot's grave. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

But Pol Pot was not among them. He died on April 15, 1998. Representatives of the Khmer Rouge said that the former leader's heart failed. There is, however, a version that he was poisoned.

The Cambodian authorities sought the release of the body from the Khmer Rouge in order to make sure that Pol Pot was really dead and to establish all the circumstances of his death, but the corpse was hastily cremated.

The leader of the Khmer Rouge took his last secrets with him ...

The Cambodian genocide arose from Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's violent attempt to nationalize and centralize Cambodian peasant farms in line with the communist Chinese agricultural model. This led to the extermination of more than 25% of the country's population within three years.

Pol Pot regime: genocide in Cambodia

Cambodia is a small country (half the size of California) in Southeast Asia, its capital is Phnom Penh. The country is bordered to the west and northwest by Thailand, to the northeast by Laos, and to the southeast by Vietnam. Southern borders Cambodia pass along the beaches of the Gulf of Thailand.

In 1953, after 100 years of French colonial rule, Cambodia gained independence.

The elected Prime Minister of Cambodia, Prince N. Sihanouk, adopted a policy of neutrality, refused American assistance and severed diplomatic relations with the United States. In the years before the genocide, the population of Cambodia was more than 7 million, mostly Khmers who practiced Buddhism.

What preceded the genocide?

Prince Sihanouk and his loyal followers allied themselves with the communist organization partisan movement known as the Khmer Rouge. Shortly thereafter, a civil war broke out in Cambodia.

At the same time, the southeastern neighbor Vietnam fought for independence against the French. In 1954, it split into communist North Vietnam and pro-Western South Vietnam, which continued to fight among themselves.

In 1964, the US got involved in civil war in Vietnam, which eventually led to the death of more than three million American and Vietnamese residents.

Prince Sihanouk remained neutral during the Vietnam War, providing support to both sides. In 1970, the new prime minister, General Lon Nol, supported by the United States, staged a military coup d'état and became president of the new Khmer Republic.

In 1975, North Vietnamese troops captured the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon, and in Cambodia, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot entered Phnom Penh with his army. After the overthrow of the Lon Nol government in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge and the seizure of power by Pol Pot, the genocide began, which continued until 1978, until the Khmer Rouge were overthrown by the Vietnamese.

Khmer Rouge rule

The Khmer Rouge, who came to power, intended to instantly revolutionize Cambodian society. It was a violent revolutionary group with radical views.

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge army entered Phnom Penh, the modern capital of Cambodia. Uneducated youth from the peasant provinces burst into the city, they began to force all city dwellers to leave the city, leave all their belongings and head to the villages. Crying children were chased away from their parents.

After the heavy bombing by the US and the cooperation of the Lon Nol government with the US, many Cambodians hoped that Pol Pot's communism would bring a new peaceful life.

By 1975, Pol Pot's army had grown to 700,000 soldiers.

Collectivization in Cambodia

After seizing power, Pol Pot immediately began his policy of collectivization. All property was confiscated, nationalized and taken under control, including schools, hospitals, public institutions. Pol Pot studied in France, was a follower and passionate admirer of Mao Zedong and was going to introduce Maoism (Chinese communism) and Stalinism.

He was going to create a new Cambodia based on the Maoist model. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to turn Cambodia into a primitive country in which all citizens would work in the agricultural sector and any Western innovation would be removed.

Militant communism

In order to achieve the "ideal" communist model, all Cambodians had to become collective farmers, those who opposed this should be eliminated. Under the threat of death, people had to leave their hometowns and villages.

Disabled people, young and old, who could not go to collective farms, were killed on the spot. Those who refused to leave their homes were killed as opposition to the new regime. City residents were forcibly evacuated to the villages, no one had any civil and political rights. Children were separated from their parents and sent to different labor camps.

Cambodians were forced to live in public communes, similar to military barracks, with constant food shortages. In conditions of slave labor, hunger and disease, many became unable to perform hard work, after which they were killed.

The list of "potential oppositionists" included journalists, lawyers, doctors, intellectuals, students and professors. Factories, schools, universities, hospitals were closed.

The management and their employees were killed along with their families. Ownership foreign language was the reason for the shooting. Reading, writing, and even wearing glasses was a feature of the West, for which they could be shot.

Militant communism inspired the belief that journalists and intellectuals were a threat to the state. The Khmer Rouge was also persecuted for various religious views: Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Thais and Cambodians.

Leading Buddhist monks and Christian missionaries were killed and temples and churches burned. National minorities were forcibly resettled, the use of minority languages ​​was also prohibited.

The Khmer Rouge welcomed denunciations of treachery and sabotage. The survival of people depended on their ability to work. The elderly, the disabled, the sick and children in Cambodia suffered huge losses, as they were unable to do hard daily physical labor.

While the Khmers were gaining strength, the United States showed no interest in the events in Southeast Asia. The American embassy was not very worried about the Pol Pot regime, for them the main thing was the influence of Cambodia on the Vietnam War.

Victims of the Pol Pot regime

Only according to rough estimates of the Research Committee on the Genocide of the Pol Pot regime, from one and a half to three million Cambodians died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The report issued by the committee contained data on the death rate of about 3,314,768 people. This is 25% of the total population of Cambodia before the start of the regime. So many people died because of the policy of forced relocation from cities to villages, torture, executions, malnutrition and forced labor.

The people of Cambodia continued to suffer after the fall of Pol Pot's regime. Thousands of people were forced to flee to Thailand, many of them starving, eating leaves and roots. Some starved to death on the way, some blew themselves up in a minefield as the Khmer mined the area along the western border. From the camps, refugees brought malaria, typhus, cholera and many other diseases to Thailand. Experts estimate that more than 650,000 more people died during the year following the fall of the regime.

killing fields

Most Khmer Rouge suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. In the 1990s, no one defined this and offered no treatment. The sickness continued long years sometimes progressed. Those who suffered from such a stress disorder periodically fell into a panic that could provoke a heart attack. In the early 1990s, mass graves were carried out throughout Cambodia. Dozens and hundreds of remains were piled in each of them. Even decades later, residents often find skulls on the surface.

International reaction

Bringing the perpetrators to justice has become a rather difficult task. Three decades after the expulsion of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh, the Cambodian government turned to the United Nations for help in prosecuting crimes between 1975 and 1979.

Initially, the UN intended to create a court resembling the International Tribunal for Yugoslavia, but the Cambodian government refused the UN proposal, fearing Western influence in prosecuting the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge regime. After long negotiations through the UN General Assembly, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) were established. While these judicial bodies have been created for so long, many of the perpetrators have already died.

The fate of the top members of the Pol Pot regime

Among the dead were: Pol Pot, Song Shen (Minister of Defense in charge of the political police). Many ministers and suspects were killed in clashes with Vietnam.