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| Documentation Center of Cambodia Archives |
Two days ago, on April 17, 1975, marked the 50th year since Pol Pot (real name, Saloth Sar) rose to power. The Khmer Rouge only ruled for four years, but it showed one thing--a reign of less than six years isn't necessarily benevolent (read here). A look at Pol Pot's past may show that he was the typical inggitero--the Filipino word for someone who's easily jealous of others!
The History website reveals this brutal detail on Pol Pot's regime, which was most likely fueled by jealousy:
Pol Pot was a political leader whose communist Khmer Rouge government led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork. One detention center, S-21, was so notorious that only seven of the roughly 20,000 people imprisoned there are known to have survived. 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.
I would like to emphasize intellectuals and city residents. Pol Pot wanted to return Cambodia to an agrarian society and keep it away from the rest of the world. Of course, Pol Pot was influenced by Mao Zedong's ridiculous policies.
BBC News also gives this chilling detail on Pol Pot's hatred for intellectuals:
Declaring that the nation would start again at "Year Zero", Pol Pot isolated his people from the rest of the world and set about emptying the cities, abolishing money, private property and religion, and setting up rural collectives.
Anyone thought to be an intellectual of any sort was killed. Often people were condemned for wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language.
Ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslims in Cambodia were also targeted.
Hundreds of thousands of the educated middle-classes were tortured and executed in special centres.
The most notorious of these centres was the S-21 jail in Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleng, where as many as 17,000 men, women and children were imprisoned during the regime's four years in power.
Hundreds of thousands of others died from disease, starvation or exhaustion as members of the Khmer Rouge - often just teenagers themselves - forced people to do back-breaking work.
Why do you think Pol Pot went against city folks, money, and private property? The American journalist and economist, Henry Hazlitt, said this:
The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.
Pol Pot's actions really show one thing--Communism is all about power. It's a scam that has been proven false. However, some people advocate it because they know some are easily swayed by promises too good to be true.
To no one's surprise, Pol Pot lived well while the rest of Cambodia starved. The Guardian gives this information:
And in the middle of the raw misery of the Zero Years, Pol Pot himself, however, lived well. The photographs of him in his years of power, from 1975 to 1979, show a man with the tapioca-pudding-smooth skin and soft plumpness of a fleshy buddha. Even after the Vietnamese invaded Democratic Kampuchea on Christmas Day 1978, and drove out Pol Pot from Phnom Penh, and pushed him into the jungle where he lived to kill plenty more in a dirty civil war, the Dear Leader ate handsomely.
The cook of Pailin recalled the eating habits of Pol Pot and his friends: 'I used to cook for them. They ate simple country food. But for hygiene's sake, we used to wash the vegetables in potassium permanganate.' This was an item few of Pol Pot's countrymen could afford when a dead rat was a luxury. What did they eat?
The cook chewed that one over: 'Deer, wild pig, snake. For dessert, apples, grapes.' They drank brandy, Thai potcheen, and Chinese wine in big, brown pitchers. Cooking for the KR leadership required diplomatic skills. Ta Mok hated stinky fish sauce. Nuon Chea (another KR boss, still at liberty) 'wouldn't eat soup without stinky fish sauce.' She stirred her pot some more.
In short, Pol Pot's life would be best defined as a man driven by bitter envy. In the end, Pol Pot's became a fugitive hiding in the jungle. Eventually, Pol Pot's only made his life worse. Nobody ever gets better by continuously blaming others and being driven by envy.