Sar patchata
Pol Pot
Cambodian communist leader (–)
In this Cambodian name, the surname is Pol. In accordance with Cambodian custom, this person should be referred to by the given name, Pot.
Pol Pot | |
|---|---|
| In office 22 February &#;– 6 December | |
| Deputy | Nuon Chea |
| Preceded by | Tou Samouth () |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished (party dissolved) |
| In office 25 October &#;– 7 January | |
| President | Khieu Samphan |
| Deputy | |
| Preceded by | Khieu Samphan (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Nuon Chea () |
| In office 14 April &#;– 27 September | |
| President | Khieu Samphan |
| Deputy | |
| Preceded by | Khieu Samphan (acting) |
| Succeeded by | Nuon Chea (acting) |
| In office – | |
| In office – | |
| Preceded by | Himself (as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea) |
| Succeeded by | Khieu Samphan |
| Born | Saloth Sâr ()25 May Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom Province, Cambodia, French Indochina |
| Died | 15 April () (aged&#;72) Choam, Trapeang Prei&#;[km], Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey, Cambodia 14°21′14″N°07′17″E / °N °E / ; |
| Resting place | Choam, Trapeang Prei&#;[km], Anlong Veng, Oddar Meanchey, Cambodia 14°20′34″N°03′29″E / °N °E / ; |
| Political party | |
| Other political affiliations | French Communist Party (s) |
| Spouses | Khieu Ponnary &#; &#; (m.&#;; div.&#;)&#;Mea Son &#; (m.&#;)&#; |
| Children | Sar Patchata[1] |
| Education | EFREI (no degree) |
| Signature | |
| Allegiance | |
| Branch/service | Kampuchea Revolutionary Army |
| Years&#;of service | – |
| Rank | General |
| Battles/wars | |
Pol Pot[a] (born Saloth Sâr;[b] 19 May – 15 April ) was a Cambodian revolutionary and politician who was the dictator of communist Cambodia from until his overthrow in He oversaw mass atrocities and is widely believed to be one of the most brutal despots in modern world history.
Biography video for kids In , a faction of the Khmer Rouge arrested Pol Pot and tried him in what many consider to have been little more than a show. Confirm New Password. Many who had trafficked with him—the Chinese, the Thais, the former Khmer Rouge cadres now running the government in Phnom Penh—had good reason to prefer his death to a revealing trial. The case settled out of court and significantly impacted his career and personal life.Ideologically a Maoist and a Khmer ethnonationalist, Pot was a leader of Cambodia's Communist movement, known as the Khmer Rouge, from to He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from to , during which Cambodia was converted into a one-party state. Between and , Pot perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated –2&#;million people died—approximately one-quarter of the country's pre-genocide population.
In December , Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power. Within two weeks, Vietnamese forces occupied most of the country, ending the genocide and establishing a new Cambodian government, with the Khmer Rouge restricted to the rural hinterlands in the western part of the country.
Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools.
Arriving in Paris in October on an academic scholarship, he later joined the French Communist Party in while studying at École française de radioélectricité. Returning to Cambodia in , he involved himself in the Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government.
Following the Khmer Viet Minh's retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement. In , he helped formalise the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party, which was later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK).
To avoid state repression, in he relocated to a jungle encampment and in became the CPK's leader. In , he relaunched the war against Sihanouk's government. After Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk in a coup, Pol Pot's forces sided with the deposed leader against the new government, which was bolstered by the United States military. Aided by the Viet Cong militia and North Vietnamese troops, Khmer Rouge forces advanced and controlled all of Cambodia by
Pol Pot transformed Cambodia into a one-party state that he called Democratic Kampuchea, seeking to create an agrarian socialist society that he believed would evolve into a communist one.
Year Zero was an idea put into practice by Pol Pot where he believed that all cultures and traditions must be completely destroyed and a new revolutionary culture must replace it starting from scratch. “Year Zero" was announced by the Khmer Rouge on April 17, , where everything before that date must be purged. The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, frogmarched Cambodians to labor camps and relocated the urban population to collective farms, where mass executions, abuse, torture, malnutrition and disease were rampant.
Pol Pot Biography - YouTube While still a member of the Jackson 5, Michael pursued a solo career. Michael married Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis Presley's daughter, in , but their union ended get the picture divorce two years later. Beyond music, Michael Jackson became deeply involved in humanitarian efforts. His music broke racial and genre barriers, making him a global figure.At the Killing Fields, more than &#;million people were executed and buried in mass graves. Pursuing complete egalitarianism, money, religion, and private property were abolished and all citizens were forced to wear the same black clothing. Repeated purges of the CPK generated growing discontent; by Cambodian soldiers were mounting a rebellion in the east.
After several years of violent incursions by the Khmer Rouge on Vietnamese territory resulting in massacres, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December By January , Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been toppled. The surviving Khmer Rouge members retreated to the scattered jungles near the Thai border, from where they continued to fight and raid.
Severely weakened, they were hunted down by Vietnamese soldiers until their withdrawal in In declining health, Pol Pot stepped back from many of his roles in the movement. In , the Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok placed Pot under house arrest. Pol Pot died shortly after.
Taking power at the high point of the communist movement's potency across the world, Pot proved to be divisive to the international communist movement.
Many claimed that he deviated from orthodox Marxism–Leninism, but China and the US supported his government as a bulwark against Soviet influence in Southeast Asia. He was widely denounced internationally for his role in the Cambodian genocide and he was also regarded as a totalitarian dictator who was guilty of crimes against humanity.
Early life
Childhood: –
Pol Pot was born in the village of Prek Sbauv, outside the city of Kampong Thom.[2] He was named Saloth Sâr, the word sâr ("white, pale") referencing his comparatively light skin complexion. French colonial records placed his birth date on 25 May ,[4] but biographer Philip Short argues he was born in March
His family was of mixed Chinese and ethnic Khmer heritage, but did not speak Chinese and lived as though they were fully Khmer.
His father Loth, who later took the name Saloth Phem, was a prosperous farmer who owned nine hectares of rice land and several draft cattle.[6] Loth's house was one of the largest in the village and at transplanting and harvest time he hired poorer neighbors to carry out much of the agricultural labour. Sâr's mother, Sok Nem, was locally respected as a pious Buddhist.[7] Sâr was the eighth of nine children (two girls and seven boys),[7] three of whom died young.
They were raised as Theravada Buddhists, and on festivals travelled to the Kampong Thom monastery. Despite his family's relatively prosperous origins, in an interview with Yugoslav television in , Pol Pot claimed that he was born into a "poor, peasant family".[10]
At the time, Cambodia was a monarchy but the French colonial regime held effective political control of the country.[11] Sâr's family had connections to the Cambodian royalty: his cousin Meak was a consort of King Sisowath Monivong and later worked as a ballet teacher.[12] When Sâr was six years old, he and an older brother were sent to live with Meak in Phnom Penh; informal adoptions by wealthier relatives were then common in Cambodia.[7] In Phnom Penh, he spent 18 months as a novice monk in the city's Vat Botum Vaddei monastery, learning Buddhist teachings and to read and write the Khmer language.[13]
In summer , Sâr went to live with his brother Suong and the latter's wife and child.
That year, he began an education at a Roman Catholic primary school, the École Miche,[15] with Meak paying the tuition fees.[16] Most of his classmates were the children of French bureaucrats and Catholic Vietnamese.[16] He became literate in French and familiar with Christianity.[16] Sâr was not academically gifted and was held back two years, receiving his Certificat d'Etudes Primaires Complémentaires in at the age of He continued to visit Meak at the king's palace, and it was there that he had some of his earliest sexual experiences with some of the king's concubines.
Later education: –
While Sâr was at the school, King Monivong died.
In , the French authorities appointed Norodom Sihanouk as his replacement.[19] A new junior middle school, the Collége Pream Sihanouk, was established in Kampong Cham, and Sâr was selected as a boarder at the institution in [20] This level of education afforded him a privileged position in Cambodian society.[21] He learned to play the violin and took part in school plays.[22] Much of his spare time was spent playing football (soccer) and basketball.[23] Several fellow pupils, among them Hu Nim and Khieu Samphan, later served in his government.[24] During the new year vacation in , Sâr and several friends from his college theatre troupe went on a provincial tour in a bus to raise money for a trip to Angkor Wat.
In , he left the school.[26]
That year, he passed exams that admitted him into the Lycée Sisowath, meanwhile living with Suong and his new wife. In summer , he sat the brevet entry examinations for the upper classes of the Lycée, but failed. Unlike several of his friends, he could not continue on at the school for a baccalauréat.[28] Instead, he enrolled in to study carpentry at the Ecole Technique in Russey Keo, in Phnom Penh's northern suburbs.[29] This drop from an academic education to a vocational one likely came as a shock.
His fellow students were generally of a lower class than those at the Lycée Sisowath, though they were not peasants.[21] At the Ecole Technique, he met Ieng Sary, who became a close friend and later a member of his government.[21] In summer , Sâr passed his brevet and secured one of five scholarships allowing him to travel to France to study at one of its engineering schools.
During the Second World War, Nazi Germany invaded France, and in the Japanese ousted the French from Cambodia, with Sihanouk proclaiming his country's independence.
After the war ended, France reasserted its control over Cambodia in , but allowed for the creation of a new constitution and the establishment of various political parties.[34] The most successful of these was the Democratic Party, which won the general election.[35] According to historian David Chandler, Sâr and Sary worked for the party during its successful election campaign;[36] conversely, Short maintains that Sâr had no contact with the party.
Sihanouk opposed the party's left-leaning reforms and in dissolved the National Assembly, instead ruling by decree.[37] The Việt Minh attempted to establish a nascent communist movement, but it was beset by ethnic tensions between the Khmer and Vietnamese. News of the group was censored from the press, and it is unlikely Sâr was aware of it.
Paris: –
Access to further education abroad made Sâr part of a tiny elite in Cambodia.
He and the 21 other selected students sailed from Saigon aboard the SS Jamaïque, stopping at Singapore, Colombo, and Djibouti en route to Marseille.[40] Sâr arrived in Paris on 1 October In January , Sâr enrolled at the École française de radioélectricité to study radio electronics. He took a room in the Cité Universitaire's Indochinese Pavilion,[42] then lodgings on the rue Amyot, and eventually a bedsit on the corner of the rue de Commerce and the rue Letellier.
Sâr earned good marks during his first year. He failed his first end-of-year exams but was allowed to retake them and narrowly passed, enabling him to continue his studies.
Sâr spent three years in Paris.[42] In summer , he was one of 18 Cambodian students who joined French counterparts in traveling to the FPR Yugoslavia to volunteer in a labour battalion building a motorway in Zagreb.[45] He returned to Yugoslavia the following year for a camping holiday.
Sâr made little or no attempt to assimilate into French culture[46] and was never completely at ease in the French language. He nevertheless became familiar with French literature; one of his favorite authors being Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[47] His most significant friendships in the country were with Ieng Sary, who had joined him there, Thiounn Mumm and Keng Vannsak.[48] He was a member of Vannsak's discussion circle, whose ideologically diverse membership discussed ways to achieve Cambodian independence.
In Paris, Ieng Sary and two others established the Cercle Marxiste ("Marxist Circle"), an organisation arranged in a clandestine cell system.
The cells met to read Marxist texts and hold self-criticism sessions.
Sâr joined a cell that met on the rue Lacepède; his cell comrades included Hou Yuon, Sien Ary, and Sok Knaol. He helped to duplicate the Cercle's newspaper, Reaksmei ("The Spark"), named after a former Russian paper. In October , Yuon was elected head of the Khmer Student Association (AEK; l'Association des Etudiants Khmers), establishing close links between the organisation and the leftist Union Nationale des Étudiants de France.
The Cercle Marxiste manipulated the AEK and its successor organisations for the next 19 years. Several months after the Cercle Marxiste's formation, Sâr and Sary joined the French Communist Party (PCF).[54] Sâr attended party meetings, including those of its Cambodian group, and read its magazine, Les Cahiers Internationaux.
To many young people in France and Cambodia, communism seemed to be the future; the Chinese Communist Party won the Chinese Civil War and the French Communist Party was one of the country's largest,[56] attracting the votes of around 25% of the French electorate.
Sâr found many of Karl Marx's denser texts difficult, later saying he "didn't really understand" them.
But he became familiar with the writings of Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin,[58] including The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Sâr also read Mao's work, especially On New Democracy, a text outlining a framework for carrying out a revolution in colonial and semi-colonial, semi-feudal societies.
Alongside these texts, Sâr read the anarchistPeter Kropotkin's book on the French Revolution, The Great Revolution. From Kropotkin he took the idea that an alliance between intellectuals and the peasantry was necessary for revolution; that a revolution had to be carried out without compromise to its conclusion to succeed; and that egalitarianism was the basis of a communist society.
In Cambodia, growing internal strife resulted in King Sihanouk dismissing the government and declaring himself prime minister.
Razzies View all posts. Like what we do? During its reign, which ended in , Pol Pot oversaw the deaths of an estimated one to two million people from starvation, overwork or execution. While still a member of the Jackson 5, Michael pursued a solo career.In response, Sâr wrote an article, "Monarchy or Democracy?", published in the student magazine Khmer Nisut under the pseudonym "Khmer daom" ("Original Khmer").[63] In it, he referred positively to Buddhism, portraying Buddhist monks as an anti-monarchist force on the side of the peasantry. At a meeting, the Cercle decided to send someone to Cambodia to assess the situation and determine which rebel group they should support; Sâr volunteered for the role.
His decision to leave may also have been because he had failed his second-year exams two years in a row and thus lost his scholarship.[66] In December, he boarded the SS Jamaïque,[67] returning to Cambodia without a degree.[68]
Revolutionary and political activism
Return to Cambodia: –
Sâr arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on 13 January , the same day on which Sihanouk disbanded the Democratic-controlled National Assembly, began ruling by decree, and imprisoned Democratic members of parliament without trial.
Amid the broader First Indochina War in neighboring French Indochina, Cambodia was in a civil war, with civilian massacres and other atrocities carried out by all sides. Sâr spent several months at the headquarters of Prince Norodom Chantaraingsey—the leader of one faction—in Trapeng Kroloeung, before moving to Phnom Penh, where he met with fellow Cercle member Ping Say to discuss the situation.
Sâr regarded the Khmer Việt Minh, a mixed Vietnamese and Cambodian guerrilla subgroup of the North Vietnam-based Việt Minh, as the most promising resistance group. He believed the Khmer Việt Minh's relationship to the Việt Minh and thus the international movement made it the best group for the Cercle Marxiste to support.
The Cercle members in Paris took his recommendation.
In August , Sâr and Rath Samoeun travelled to Krabao, the headquarters of the Việt Minh Eastern Zone. Over the following nine months, around 12 other Cercle members joined them there. They found that the Khmer Việt Minh was run and numerically dominated by Vietnamese guerrillas, with Khmer recruits largely given menial tasks; Sâr was tasked with growing cassava and working in the canteen.[77] At Krabao, he gained a rudimentary grasp of Vietnamese, and rose to become secretary and aide to Tou Samouth, the Secretary of the Khmer Việt Minh's Eastern Zone.[79]
Sihanouk desired independence from French rule, but after France refused his requests he called for public resistance to its administration in June Khmer troops deserted the French Army in large numbers and the French government relented, rather than risk a costly, protracted war to retain control.
In November, Sihanouk declared Cambodia's independence.[81] The civil conflict then intensified, with France backing Sihanouk's war against the rebels. Following the Geneva Conference held to end the First Indochina War, Sihanouk secured an agreement from the North Vietnamese that they would withdraw Khmer Việt Minh forces from Cambodian territory.[83] The last Khmer Việt Minh units left Cambodia for North Vietnam in October [84] Sâr was not among them, deciding to remain in Cambodia; he trekked, via South Vietnam, to Prey Veng to reach Phnom Penh.[85] He and other Cambodian revolutionaries decided to pursue their aims through electoral means.
Developing the movement: –
Cambodia's communists wanted to operate clandestinely but also established a socialist party, Pracheachon, to serve as a front organization through which they could compete in the election.[87] Although Pracheachon had strong support in some areas, most observers expected the Democratic Party to win.[88] Sihanouk feared a Democratic Party government and in March abdicated the throne in favor of his father, Norodom Suramarit.
Pol pot wife: Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. View all posts. Forced to toil nonstop on very little food, many died of starvation, disease or overwork. For the past three weeks he had been hustled between safe houses near the Thai border to avoid shelling.
This allowed him to legally establish a political party, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum, with which to contest the election.[89] The September election witnessed widespread voter intimidation and electoral fraud, resulting in Sangkum winning all 91 seats.[90] Sihanouk's establishment of a de facto one-party state extinguished hopes that the Cambodian left could take power electorally.
North Vietnam's government nevertheless urged the Khmer Party not to restart the armed struggle; the former was focused on undermining South Vietnam and had little desire to destabilize Sihanouk's regime given that it had—conveniently for them—remained internationally un-aligned rather than following the Thai and South Vietnamese governments in allying with the anti-communist United States.
Sâr rented a house in the Boeng Keng Kang area of Phnom Penh.[93] Although not qualified to teach at a state school,[94] he gained employment teaching history, geography, French literature, and morals at a private school, the Chamraon Vichea ("Progressive Knowledge");[95] his pupils, who included the later novelist Soth Polin, described him as a good teacher.[96] He courted society belle Soeung Son Maly before entering a relationship with fellow communist revolutionary Khieu Ponnary, the sister of Sary's wife Thirith.
They were married in a Buddhist ceremony on 14 July According to Philip Short, Sâr had chosen this date in order to coincide with the symbolic Bastille Day[99] All correspondence between the Democratic Party and the Pracheachon went through him, as did most communication with underground elements.
Sihanouk cracked down on the movement, whose membership had halved since the end of the civil war. Links with the North Vietnamese communists declined, something Sâr later portrayed as a good thing as "it gave us the chance to be independent and develop ourselves". He and other members increasingly regarded Cambodians as too deferential to their Vietnamese counterparts; to deal with this, Sâr, Tou Samouth, and Nuon Chea drafted a programme and statutes for a new party that would be allied with but not subordinate to the Vietnamese.
They established party cells, emphasising the recruitment of small numbers of dedicated members, and organized political seminars in safe houses.
Kampuchean Labour Party: –
At a conference, the movement's leadership established the Kampuchean Labour Party, based on the Marxist–Leninist model of democratic centralism.
Sâr, Tou Samouth and Nuon Chea were part of a four-man General Affair Committee leading the party. Its existence was to be kept secret from non-members.[] The Kampuchean Labour Party's conference, held clandestinely from September to October in Phnom Penh, saw Samouth become party secretary and Nuon Chea his deputy, while Sâr took the third senior position and Ieng Sary the fourth.[][]
Sihanouk spoke out against the Cambodian Khmer communists; he also warned of its totalitarian character and its suppression of personal liberty.
In January , Sihanouk's security services cracked down further on Cambodia's socialists, incarcerating Pracheachon's leaders and leaving the party largely moribund.[] In July, Samouth was arrested, tortured and killed.[] Nuon Chea had also stepped back from his political activities, leaving open Sâr's path to become party leader.
As well as facing leftist opposition, Sihanouk's government faced hostility from right-wing opposition centred on Sihanouk's former Minister of State, Sam Sary, who was backed by the United States, Thailand and South Vietnam.
After the South Vietnamese supported a failed coup against Sihanouk, relations between the countries deteriorated and the United States initiated an economic blockade of Cambodia in After Sihanouk's father died in , Sihanouk introduced a constitutional amendment allowing himself to become head of state for life.[] In February , anti-government student protests turned into riots, at which Sihanouk dismissed the Sangkum government, called new elections, and produced a list of 34 left-leaning Cambodians, demanding that they meet him to establish a new administration.[] Sâr was on the list, perhaps because of his role as a teacher, but refused to meet with Sihanouk.
He and Ieng Sary left Phnom Penh for a Viet Cong encampment near Thboung Khmum in the jungle along Cambodia's border with South Vietnam.[] According to Chandler, "from this point on he was a full-time revolutionary".[]
Plotting rebellion: –
Conditions at the Viet Cong camp were basic and food scarce.
As Sihanouk's government cracked down on the movement in Phnom Penh, growing numbers of its members fled to join Sâr at his jungle base. In February , at the party's second conference, held in a central Phnom Penh apartment, Sâr was elected party secretary, but soon fled into the jungle to avoid repression by Sihanouk's government.[] In early , Sâr established his own encampment, Office , on the South Vietnamese side of the border.
The Viet Cong allowed his actions to be officially separate from its own, but still wielded significant control over his camp. At a plenum of the party's Central Committee, it was agreed that they should re-emphasize their independence from Vietnamese control and endorse armed struggle against Sihanouk.
The Central Committee met again in January to denounce the "peaceful transition" to socialism espoused by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, accusing him of being a revisionist.
In contrast to Khrushchev's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism, Sâr and his comrades sought to develop their own, explicitly Cambodian variant of the ideology. Their interpretation moved away from the orthodox Marxist focus on the urban proletariat as the forces of a revolution to build socialism, giving that role instead to the rural peasantry, a far larger class in Cambodian society.
By , the party regarded Cambodia's small proletariat as full of "enemy agents" and systematically refused them membership. The party's main area of growth was in the rural provinces and by membership was at In April , Sâr travelled by foot along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi to meet North Vietnamese government figures, among them Ho Chi Minh and Lê Duẩn.[] The North Vietnamese were preoccupied with the ongoing Vietnam War and thus did not want Sâr's forces to destabilize Sihanouk's government; the latter's anti-American stance rendered him a de facto ally.[] In Hanoi, Sâr read through the archives of the Workers' Party of Vietnam, concluding that the Vietnamese Communists were committed to pursuing an Indochinese Federation and that their interests were therefore incompatible with Cambodia's.
In November , Saloth Sâr flew from Hanoi to Beijing, where his official host was Deng Xiaoping, although most of his meetings were with Peng Zhen.
Sâr gained a sympathetic hearing from many in the governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—especially Chen Boda, Zhang Chunqiao and Kang Sheng—who shared his negative view of Khrushchev amid the Sino-Soviet split.[][] CCP officials also trained him on topics like dictatorship of the proletariat, class struggles and political purge.[][] In Beijing, Sâr witnessed China's ongoing Cultural Revolution, influencing his later policies.[]
Sâr left Beijing in February , and flew back to Hanoi before a four-month journey along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to reach the Cambodian's new base at Loc Ninh.[] In October , he and other Cambodian party leaders made several key decisions.
They renamed their organisation the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), a decision initially kept secret.[] Sihanouk began referring to its members as the "Khmer Rouge" ('Red Cambodians'), but they did not adopt this term themselves.[] It was agreed that they would move their headquarters in Ratanakiri Province, away from the Viet Cong,[] and that—despite the views of the North Vietnamese—they would command each of the party's zone committees to prepare for the relaunch of armed struggle.
North Vietnam refused to assist in this, rejecting their requests for weaponry. In November , Sâr travelled from Tay Ninh to base Office near Kang Lêng. During the journey, he contracted malaria and required a respite in a Viet Cong medical base near Mount Ngork. By December, plans for armed conflict were complete, with the war to begin in the North-West Zone and then spread to other regions.
As communication across Cambodia was slow, each Zone would have to operate independently much of the time.
Cambodian Civil War
Main article: Cambodian Civil War
Against Sihanouk
In January , the war was launched with an attack on the Bay Damran army post south of Battambang.[] Further attacks targeted police and soldiers and seized weaponry.
The government responded with scorched-earth policies, aerially bombarding areas where rebels were active. The army's brutality aided the insurgents' cause;[] as the uprising spread, over , villagers joined them. In the summer, Sâr relocated his base 48 kilometres (30&#;mi) north to the more mountainous Naga's Tail, to avoid encroaching government troops.
At this base, called K-5, he increased his dominance over the party and had his own separate encampment, staff, and guards.
Pol pot biography video on michael jackson Its infectious bassline and groundbreaking music video received regular airplay on MTV. Today, Gates is My interests span a wide range of topics, and I strive to provide valuable insights through my work. Watch Next.No outsider was allowed to meet him without an escort. He took over from Sary as the Secretary of the North East Zone. In November , Sâr trekked to Hanoi to persuade the North Vietnamese government to provide direct military assistance. They refused, urging him to revert to a political struggle. In January he flew to Beijing.
There, his wife began showing early signs of the chronic paranoid schizophrenia she would later be diagnosed with.
Against Lon Nol
Collaboration with Sihanouk: –
In March , while Sâr was in Beijing, Cambodian parliamentarians led by Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk when he was out of the country.[] Sihanouk also flew to Beijing, where the Chinese and North Vietnamese Communist Parties urged him to form an alliance with the Khmer Rouge to overthrow Lon Nol's right-wing government.
Sihanouk agreed.[]