American Experience

Who's Who: Cambodia		return to index
	Pol Pot			2 of 41

The architect of the genocidal slaughter of two million of his own people, Pol Pot (a meaningless pseudonym; his given name was Saloth Sar) ruled the communist Khmer Rouge of Cambodia from 1975 to 1978. Seeking to create an agricultural utopia, Pol Pot ordered the execution of anyone considered to be educated or an intellectual. Traces of Cambodia's past were destroyed along with books and artifacts. Cambodia, renamed Kampuchea, was turned into a huge concentration camp where citizens were forcibly "re-educated" or put to death. Pol Pot fled to the jungle following the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea in 1978. He continued to live in the jungles of northern Cambodia and Thailand, and led guerrilla efforts until his death in 1998.