Pol Pot

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sar 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian communist revolutionary and politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Khmer nationalist, he led the Khmer Rouge group from 1963 until 1997. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea.

Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's elite schools. In the 1940s, Pol Pot moved to Paris, France, where he joined the French Communist Party and adopted Marxism–Leninism, particularly as it was presented in the writings of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he joined the Marxist–Leninist Khmer Việt Minh organisation in its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Việt Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of the Cambodian Marxist–Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped to convert the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party—later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea—and in 1960 took control of it as party secretary. To avoid state repression, he relocated in 1962 to a Việt Cộng encampment in the jungle before visiting Hanoi and Beijing. In 1968, he re-launched the war against Sihanouk.

Renaming the country Democratic Kampuchea and seeking to create an agrarian socialist society, Pol Pot's government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside to work on collective farms. Those regarded as enemies of the new government were killed. These mass killings, coupled with malnutrition, strenuous working conditions, and poor medical care, killed between 1.5 to 3 million people of a population of roughly 8 million (about 25%), a period later termed the Cambodian genocide. Marxist–Leninists unhappy with Pol Pot's government encouraged Vietnamese intervention. In 1978, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, toppling Pol Pot's government in 1979. The Vietnamese installed a rival Marxist–Leninist faction opposed to Pol Pot and renamed the country as the People's Republic of Kampuchea. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge retreated to a jungle base near the Thai border. Until 1993, they remained part of a coalition internationally recognized as Cambodia's rightful government. The Ta Mok faction placed Pol Pot under house arrest, where he died.

Pol Pot died in 1998. from Heart Attack.