Pol pot biography timeline examples

The Khmer Rouge, in their attempt to socially engineer a classless communist society, took particular aim at intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants and religious leaders. Some historians regard the Pol Pot regime as one of the most barbaric and murderous in recent history. Saloth Sar, better known by his nom de guerre Pol Pot, was born in in the small village of Prek Sbauv, located about miles north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

His family was relatively affluent and owned some 50 acres of rice paddy, or roughly 10 times the national average. His Cambodian education continued until , when he went to Paris on a scholarship. While there, he studied radio technology and became active in communist circles. Did you know? Millions of people living in Cambodia were killed during the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

When Pol Pot returned to Cambodia in January , the whole region was revolting against French colonial rule. Cambodia officially gained its independence from France later that year. From to , Pol Pot taught history, geography and French literature at a private school while simultaneously plotting a revolution. Three years later, following a clampdown on communist activity, he and other party leaders moved deep into the countryside of northern Cambodia, encamping at first with a group of Viet Cong.

In the years that followed, as Cambodia began the process of reopening to the international community, the full horrors of the regime became apparent. Survivors told their stories to shocked audiences, and in the s the Hollywood movie The Killing Fields brought the plight of the Khmer Rouge victims to worldwide attention. Pol Pot was denounced by his former comrades in a show trial in July , and sentenced to house arrest in his jungle home.

But less than a year later he was dead - denying the millions of people who were affected by this brutal regime the chance to bring him to justice. Khieu Samphan was found guilty of genocide in November The UN helped establish a tribunal to try surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, beginning work in Only three Khmer Rouge leaders have ever been sentenced.

Kaing Guek Eav - known as Duch - was jailed for life in for running the notorious Tuol Sleng prison. In November , the tribunal also found them guilty of genocide over the attempted extermination of the Cham and Vietnamese minorities. It remains the first and only genocide conviction against the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia's government, plagued by corruption and incompetence, also lost its American military support.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17 effectively seized control of Cambodia. Once in power, Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which he had witnessed first-hand during a visit to Communist China.

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" economic program included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies. He began by declaring, "This is Year Zero," and that society was about to be "purified. All foreigners were thus expelled, embassies closed, and any foreign economic or medical assistance was refused. The use of foreign languages was banned.

Newspapers and television stations were shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone usage curtailed. Money was forbidden. All businesses were shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care eliminated, and parental authority revoked. Thus Cambodia was sealed off from the outside world.

Pol pot biography timeline examples

All of Cambodia's cities were then forcibly evacuated. At Phnom Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into the countryside at gunpoint. The country was then a French protectorate and Pol Pot, whose family were relatively prosperous, was educated in a series of French-speaking schools. In , he won a scholarship to study in Paris where he became involved in communist politics.

He returned to Cambodia in and became one of the leaders of an underground communist movement, the 'Khmer Rouge'. In , the Khmer Rouge set up guerrilla bases in remote regions of the country to fight the government of Prince Sihanouk. In , Sihanouk was overthrown by General Lon Nol. Civil war broke out between Lon Nol's army and the Khmer Rouge.