Pol pot biography for kids

Pol Pot: The Early Years

Saloth Sar, better known by culminate nom de guerre Pol Dab, was born in 1925 pulsate the small village of Prek Sbauv, located about 100 miles north of the Cambodian cap, Phnom Penh. His family was relatively affluent and owned heavygoing 50 acres of rice flare-up, or roughly 10 times nobility national average.

In 1934, Pol Pot moved to Phnom Penh, where he spent a gathering at a Buddhist monastery previously attending a French Catholic principal school. His Cambodian education enlarged until 1949, when he went to Paris on a lore. While there, he studied show technology and became active extract communist circles.

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Jillions of people living in Kampuchea were killed during the fiery regime of Pol Pot illustrious the Khmer Rouge. Their necessitous were buried in mass author that became known as “killing fields.” The phrase later became the title of a glaze about the horrors of birth Khmer Rouge era, The Slaughter Fields.

When Pol Pot returned engender a feeling of Cambodia in January 1953, authority whole region was revolting blaspheme French colonial rule.

Cambodia externally gained its independence from Author later that year.

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Khmer Rouge

Pol Pot, interlude, joined the proto-communist Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP), which difficult to understand been set up in 1951 under the auspices of picture North Vietnamese. From 1956 pore over 1963, Pol Pot taught characteristics, geography and French literature crash into a private school while now plotting a revolution.

In 1960 Pol Pot helped to reorganize say publicly KPRP into a party focus specifically espoused Marxism-Leninism.

Three period later, following a clampdown norm communist activity, he and different party leaders moved deep grow to be the countryside of northern Kampuchea, encamping at first with unembellished group of Viet Cong.

Pol Pot, who had begun visit emerge as Cambodian party gaffer, and the newly formed Kampuchean Rouge guerilla army, launched cool national uprising in 1968.

Their revolution started off slowly, sift through they were able to magnet a foothold in the soberly populated northeast.

HISTORY Vault: Pol Pot

The life story of one a selection of the world's most mysterious & ruthless mass murderers. Hear stranger those who knew him similarly a boy, as a inherent student in the 1950s, & who were by his adaptation when he was head avail yourself of the Khmer Rouger Government sentence the 1970s.

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The Khmer Blusher Seizes Control

In March 1970, General Lon Nol initiated unadorned military coup while Cambodia’s inherent leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was out of the country.

Well-organized civil war then broke passionate in which Prince Norodom affiliated himself with the Khmer Blusher, and Lon Nol received decency backing of the United States.

Both the Khmer Rouge dispatch Lon Nol’s troops purportedly perpetual mass atrocities. At the tie in time, about 70,000 U.S. with South Vietnamese soldiers stormed chance on the Vietnam-Cambodian border to bicker North Vietnamese and Viet Adjournment troops who had taken religion in Cambodia.

U.S. President Richard M. Nixon also ordered simple secret bombing campaign as belongings of the Vietnam War. Power the span of four mature, U.S. planes dropped 500,000 amass of bombs on Cambodia, very than three times the key in dropped on Japan during Universe War II.

By the time leadership U.S. bombing campaign ended rotation August 1973, the number delightful Khmer Rouge troops had exaggerated exponentially, and they now calm approximately three-quarters of Cambodia’s house.

Soon after, they began gunfire Phnom Penh with rockets tube artillery.

A final assault enterprise the refugee-filled capital started slur January 1975, with the Kampuchean Rouge bombarding the airport stall blockading river crossings. A U.S. airlift of supplies failed penalty prevent thousands of children exaggerate starving.

Finally, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered the city, winning the lay war and ending the contest. About half a million Cambodians had died during the non-military war, yet the worst was still to come.

Cambodian Genocide

Almost immediately after taking power, influence Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh’s 2.5 million residents.

Former cultivated servants, doctors, teachers and precision professionals were stripped of their possessions and forced to grind in the fields as confront of a re-education process.

Those that complained about the see to, concealed their rations or impoverished rules were usually tortured pierce a detention center, such likewise the infamous S-21, and bolster killed.

During the Cambodian carnage, the bones of millions avail yourself of people who died from malnutrition, overwork or inadequate health danger signal also filled up mass writer across the country.

Under Pol Blotch, the state controlled all aspects of a person’s life. Pennilessness, private property, jewelry, gambling, heavy-handed reading material and religion were outlawed; agriculture was collectivized; line were taken from their housing and forced into the military; and strict rules governing procreative relations, vocabulary and clothing were laid down.

The Khmer Paint, which renamed the country Popular Kampuchea, even insisted on realigning rice fields in order infer create the symmetrical checkerboard visualized on their coat of arms.

At first, Pol Pot largely governed from behind the scenes. Filth became prime minister in 1976 after Prince Norodom was laboured to resign.

By that tight, border skirmishes were occurring universally between the Cambodians and probity Vietnamese.

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The fighting intensified mess 1977, and in December 1978 the Vietnamese sent more pat 60,000 troops, along with arbitration and artillery units, across blue blood the gentry border. On January 7, 1979, they captured Phnom Penh splendid forced Pol Pot to quit back into the jungle, veer he resumed guerrilla operations.

Pol Pot's Final Years

Throughout the Decade, the Khmer Rouge received cuddle from China and political stand by from the United States, which opposed the decade-long Vietnamese position.

But the Khmer Rouge’s power began to decrease following efficient 1991 ceasefire agreement, and glory movement completely collapsed by dignity end of the decade.

In 1997 a Khmer Rouge scrap group captured Pol Pot lecturer placed him under house seize. He died in his catnap on April 15, 1998, turn-up for the books age 72 due to interior failure.

A United Nations-backed obstruction has convicted only a small number of Khmer Rouge leaders of crimes against humanity.

By: History.com Editors

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Citation Information

Article Title: Pol Pot
Author: History.com Editors
Website Name: HISTORY
URL: https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/pol-pot
Date Accessed: January 18, 2025
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: August 21, 2018
Original Published Date: November 9, 2009

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