Real Dictators - Pol Pot Part 1: Tyrant in the Shadows

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Cambodia today is many people’s idea of heaven on earth. But in the 1970s it was a netherworld of death and despair. Under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, in just four years around a quarter of the population perished. Pol Pot was a uniquely anonymous dictator - a man who preferred to operate in the shadows. So who was he? And how did he come to lead such a staggeringly bloody regime? A Noiser production, written by Dan Smith. This is Part 1 of 4. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's just after dawn on April 17th 1975. We're in Phnom Penh, capital of the Southeast Asian state of Cambodia. All across the city, crowds of young men, dressed in all black, swarm through the streets. They have a steely look in their eyes, and AK-47s slung over their shoulders these men are rebel fighters for years operating out of their jungle bases they've battled to overthrow the government but now their enemy has finally succumbed the Prime Minister lon, has fled the country for Hawaii. Government troops have thrown down their guns and raised white flags of surrender.

Until recently, Phnom Penh was a thriving commercial city. But of late, life has been desperate. At the height of the war between the rebels and Lon Nol's government, weeks of shelling destroyed whole neighborhoods, many of them slum districts. Food has been in pitifully short supply. The hospitals have largely ceased to function. The arrival of these black-clad soldiers brings an unearthly calm, a sense of hope. Could this really be the merciful end of eight bloody years of conflict? Could this really be the merciful end of eight bloody years of conflict?

Entering the city centre, the rebel troops head straight to the headquarters of the local radio station and for the Ministry of Information. From now on, there will be new faces in charge of dictating the narrative. They proceed to broadcast the news that everybody already knows. Phnom Penh has fallen. An organization calling itself the Khmer Rouge is now in charge. Across the city people hug and kiss each other, ecstatic. Those who own cars tie white handkerchiefs around the aerials. Others do the same at the handlebars of bicycles.

Even the armoured vehicles of the government forces get a makeover. Alas, it soon becomes clear that the revolutionaries do not intend to share in the high spirits. Their faces betray hard lives. Covered in the dirt of the jungle, they do not smile. In fact, they rarely engage at all with the locals. They disarm any remaining government soldiers. They search vehicles. They seize control of all routes in and out of town. Many of them are little older than boys.

Boys who've grown up without their families around them, with no running water or electricity, without even basic schooling or any real knowledge of the world beyond the bush. This city, their capital, is an utter mystery to them. The rebels drink from toilet bowls they take to be wells. They eat toothpaste and glug down motor oil. The urban youths are a curious sight, with their long hair and makeup. These are signs, so the rebels have been told, of depravity.

They may be bewildered by Phnom Penh, but there is no confusion as to the nature of their mission. Soon they will commence part nature of their mission. Soon they will commence part two of their master's grand plan. They will set about emptying the city entirely. A mass compulsory exodus. Millions of citizens will be cajoled and harried into the countryside to work on the land. Within days, Phnom Penh will be a ghost town. But not before several hundred politicians and officials have been slaughtered,

their bodies deposited in rough-dug graves at the roadsides. South of Phnom Penh, hidden away in the jungle, is a camp. Through the trees, a handful of huts comes into view, bamboo constructions with thatches of palm leaves. It's dark here, oppressively so. The location was chosen specifically for the thick canopy of foliage that keeps out the light and conceals the camp from the prying eyes of potential enemies. You need only notice the craters nearby, courtesy of payloads dropped by American B-52 bombers, to understand why the inhabitants are on their guard.

Inside one of the huts, two men sit at a table, eating a frugal lunch. It seems like any other day. But then, news crackles through on an old radio about the events in the capital. This is exactly what these men have been working towards. But there is no great celebration. One of them speaks a few words. It is a great victory. One achieved by the Cambodian people alone, rasps Pol Pot. He may seem reluctant to take any credit, but Pol knows that the takeover of Phnom Penh

will see him installed as Cambodia's leader. This date will be recorded by his followers as the first day of Year Zero, Cambodia's supposed new beginning. He claims he is about to build a paradise. Instead, Pol Pot will take his country on a descent into hell. Cambodia today is many people's idea of heaven on earth, a beautiful, spiritual, laid-back country tucked away in Southeast Asia. But in the 1970s, it was a netherworld of death and despair.

Under Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge organization, in just four years between 1975 and 1979, somewhere around a quarter of the entire population perished. Paul was intent on building a nation based on his distinctive brand of rural communism. He was a uniquely anonymous dictator, a control freak, but one who preferred to operate in the shadows. He weaponized fear and secrecy to produce one of the most horrendous administrations the world has ever seen. Disastrous development policies saw millions moved from their urban homes to labor fruitlessly in the countryside, where many of them duly starved to death.

His own rising paranoia and desire to suppress all opposition resulted in the murders of millions more. How does a country end up under the rule of such a man? How did he brutalize an entire population, overseeing such a staggeringly cruel and bloody regime? From Neuser, this is the Pol Pot story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's travel back 50 years from the fall of Phnom Penh to the year 1925. to the year 1925.

In the northeast of Cambodia, a small village of Prek Subov sits nestled on the banks of the River Sen. It's an idyllic scene. Butterflies carry on the breeze, fluttering between the morning glories and lotus blossoms that colour this landscape. On the river, fishermen stand at the sterns of their flat-bottomed canoes, navigating

with single oars as they string their nets ready for the day's catch. The locals live in simple wooden houses built on stilts, to keep them dry above the waterline. Life is governed by a mixture of Buddhist belief and homespun spirituality. A bad growing season means going hungry, but that is rarely a problem in this village. Rice grows abundantly in the paddy fields that stretch as far as the eye can see. Sometimes when the water level is high, hunters climb on the backs of buffalo and go in search of wild boar to spear and then cook. This is the world into which Salot Sa is born. He will become infamous to the world under the alias of Pol Pot.

He will later claim to have endured the hardships of a poor peasant background, but in fact his is a particularly comfortable upbringing. His father owns some fifty acres of rice paddy. The harvests are so bountiful that he employs local laborers to help bring it all in. The family home is by some distance the largest residence in the area. Tsar's family also enjoys the benefits of being well-connected. Tsar's family also enjoys the benefits of being well connected. They have enviable ties to the king, who heads the country from his court in Phnom Penh.

One of Tsar's aunts works in the royal household. His cousin is a concubine of the monarch and mother to one of his children. Alex Hinton is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. He's also UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention and Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. So he came from a peasant background in one sense, but it was a relatively wealthy, connected peasant background. And in fact, potentially would have been the sort of class that would have been targeted even by the Khmer Rouge themselves. He had connections to the royal family. And so even though he was in the countryside, he was connected. He was cosmopolitan. In contrast to some of the other Khmer Rouge leaders, he definitely had more advantages. And I think that that sort of dual perspective influenced him in many different ways.

He told journalists that his family had been impoverished at that time. But again, that was to his advantage to claim the poorer your family, the better it was in terms of the purity of your class consciousness. For all his privilege, Salazar grows up in a country that is not its own master. Since 1863, Cambodia has been part of French Indochina, a region that also comprises modern-day Laos and parts of China and Vietnam. Cambodia's subservience to a foreign overlord is a bitter pill to swallow for a people with their own history as a powerful imperial nation. Cambodia's golden age was the period of the Khmer Empire, which prospered from

the 10th to the 14th century. Named after the Khmer people, the predominant indigenous ethnic group in Cambodia, at its peak this Hindu-Buddhist realm ruled the swathe of Southeast Asia, twice as big as the contemporary Byzantine Empire. The beating heart of this empire was its capital, Angkor. For a while it was the largest city in the world. To this day it remains famous for its awe-inspiring temple complex, Angkor Wat. But after the collapse of the Khmer Empire in the 15th century, Cambodia's decline was steep. This was made all the more painful by the simultaneous rise of its neighbours, Thailand and Vietnam.

By the 19th century, Cambodia was the clear junior partner in the region, with the two larger realms fighting to absorb it within their own borders. Cambodians developed a suspicion of the Vietnamese especially. Sopo Ir is Associate Dean and Associate Professor at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. As we will hear in due course, his own family suffered under and escaped from Pol Pot's regime. He remembers one particular tale, Passed Down the Generations, which details the brutal treatment of Cambodians at the hands of their neighbors.

So this historical animus towards Vietnam, it goes a long way. And I don't know whether they have any historical truth whatsoever, but Cambodians have grown up on the stories of Vietnamese abusive Cambodians brewing tea on the heads of Cambodians, three Cambodians buried in their heads, and then a fire and then a teapot basically being boiled on their heads. It was to avoid a takeover by Thailand that the then Cambodian king first sought the protection of French rule. Elizabeth Becker is a journalist who lived in Cambodia in the 1970s. She is author of When the War Was Over, Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution.

Later on, we'll hear how she once came face to face with Pol Pot himself. The idea that France saved Cambodia, I wouldn't say Cambodians invited them in, but definitely after the fact, the French said, see, we've saved you from Thailand and from Vietnam. You would have been gobbled up by now. I'm not going to dignify that by saying that the French really did do all of that. But yes, that's part of it. The rivalry is cultural because Vietnam is very much part of the Sinosphere, very much influenced by China, a thousand years of Chinese influence. Cambodia, very much influenced by India, language, culture. There's a natural difference. And then there was territorial fights, no question. There's this memory of threat by other countries, swallowing, as the

Khmer Rouge term was, the threat that Khembadu would be swallowed by these covetous neighbors. There's also this notion of greatness and decline, and the Khmer Rouge aspired to bring back this greatness again. In 1934, when Salat Sa is around nine years old, the price of rice rockets up. This is good news for his father, who, as a rice farmer, can reap significant financial rewards. Feeling flush, Sar Sr. decides it's time for his son to travel a hundred or so miles south to the capital, to find a place in one of its prestigious French schools. Salazar's older brother is already building a life there. He's found a job within the royal palace,

and has wangled himself a suitable wife and a good home. It's difficult to overstate just how different life is in Phnom Penh compared with the rest of Cambodia. For the vast majority, it's utterly detached from the reality of their rural lives. A small city dominated by

the golden spires of Buddhist pagodas, a Southeast Asian field that was generally considered gentle, artistic, intriguing cultural foundation of ballet, arts, and so on and so forth the biggest change

definitely came under French colonialism when the French were sort of competing to try to catch up with the British and their dominance of countries as a colonial empire and that's when the French built up the French Quarter which is where we journalists live. They were always in that artistic French way trying to meld it with the Cambodian way. By the time Saar arrives there Phnom Penh is a modern capital fusing the influences of old and new east and west. It's home to 100,000 people

of whom only about a third are Khmer. The rest of the population is comprised of Chinese merchants, Vietnamese migrants, and small but significant groupings of Thai, Malay and Indian peoples. An expat community of a few hundred French families inhabit their own bubble, recreating a mini Paris in a corner of a foreign land. Each group tends to stick to its own designated quarter, but the many cultural influences are evident all around.

The French, for example, have introduced wide, tree-lined boulevards, complete with cafes and villas in the European style. Alongside Western cars, the roads are filled with horse-drawn carriages and man-drawn rickshaws, cars, the roads are filled with horse-drawn carriages and man-drawn rickshaws, and you don't have to go far to find one of the markets full of livestock and agricultural fare all laid out on the pavement in characteristic Phnom Penh style. When the French took control of Cambodia back in 1863, they had the good sense to let the country keep its beloved monarchy.

Now, in 1934, a man called Saïs-Sovat Monivaux is on the throne. Approaching his 60th birthday, he has been king since 1927. In truth, Saïs-Sovat is little more than a figurehead and a puppet for the French. He may lack hard power, but the symbolism of his monarchy is strong, and his court is the center of elite social life. In Phnom Penh, young Salot Sa spends a year attending a Buddhist preparatory school. In stark contrast to the decadence of the royals, this is a bastion of asceticism and self-denial. At the heart of the school is its temple, set amid a forest of banyan and palm trees. Surrounding it is a labyrinth of lanes, where the monks and students live and eat.

Tsar rises at four each morning and dons the red robes of a novice. Discipline is the watchword. The boys study texts for hours at a time. Failure to meet expectations is met with corporal punishment. As is the Buddhist way, Sa is taught to embrace introspection, to renounce the desire for worldly things, and to pursue self-reliance. The next few years will show that he is very much a work in progress on these fronts. At the end of his year of Buddhist learning,

Sa moves into the home shared by his brother, Suon, and his wife. It's a sprawling house, with its own luscious courtyard. After the austerity of monastic life, a welcome relief, Saar attends a new school, a French one, alongside the children of the colonial administrators, and the offspring of the wealthiest Vietnamese immigrants. Such opportunities are a rare privilege. Of perhaps half a million children of school-going age in the country, only a few thousand attend school. First of all, in terms of his studies, he wasn't the greatest student. Some people say he was a really bad student. Some people say he was a mediocre student. But certainly everyone's agreed that he wasn't the best student to sort of show up. But he did like to read.

He was young. He was a youth, like all youths. There's a search for identity, a search for meaning. Salazar possesses a natural charm that allows him to get away with rather a lot. He's great fun to be around. He has a disarming smile. He is rather keener on extracurricular activities than academic pursuits. The boy who will become one of history's bloodiest tyrants plays the violin. He's a member of a drama group. He's a decent basketball player, and even better

on the soccer pitch, where he's famed for an impressive ability to execute a scissor kick. He attracts plenty of girls. Granted access through his family connections, the royal palace becomes something of a playground. He swaggers about the place in a loose white shirt, baggy trousers and wooden shoes. In the corridors of the palace, he receives his sexual initiation. Quite what his Buddhist teachers would make of this lifestyle is anyone's guess. Sa is accepted into a respected lycee, but continues to struggle academically, failing

his exams to go into the upper classes. By 1948, at the age of 23, the prospect of an academic career is gone. Instead, he enrolls at a technical school in the north of the city, where he specializes in carpentry. It's shortly after this that Tsar is the recipient of an enormous piece of luck. His school puts up for grabs five scholarships to study engineering in Paris. As poorer students drop out of the running, Sa is one of the few left standing. He secures his spot. He is set to become one of just 250 or so Cambodians to study overseas since the beginning of the 20th century.

It's a chance to broaden his horizons and reclaim his place among the elite. While the adolescent Salat Sa was living it up in the capital, things have been moving quickly on Cambodia's political scene. Let's scroll back a few years, to July 1940. Europe is in the early salvos of the Second World War. Most significantly for Cambodia, much of France has fallen to Nazi Germany. It's now in the hands of Marshal Pétain, an old warhorse, fiercely right-wing, and well into his ninth decade, whose rule is dependent on his collaboration with Berlin.

In Asia, these events present an opportunity to Germany's ally, Imperial Japan. With France itself under German occupation, its hold on faraway Indochina is much weakened. On September 22, 1940, the Japanese strike. Their troops flood into the region, sparking five days of chaotic battles. 140,000 soldiers swiftly gain a foothold in northern Indochina. It's several months before Tokyo orders its men further south, into Cambodian territory. In late July 1941, waved through by the bedraggled French, some 8,000 invaders breeze into Phnom Penh and seize control of the city. French officials are allowed to retain their posts. Rule remains nominally in the hands of Paris.

But there is no doubt who is really calling the shots. As of this year, 1941, there is a new king on the Cambodian throne. Following the death of King Monivon, his 19-year-old grandson has ascended. Noradom Sihanianuk is his name. He will go on to play a pivotal role in the life of Cambodia and in the career of a certain Pol Pot. King Sianuk, as he is now known, is a keen painter and jazz musician. Later he'll become a huge fan of Elvis Presley and even direct several movies.

In fact, as the Japanese march through Cambodia, he is busy studying the arts over in Vietnam. The French had hoped he'd be as much their puppet as his grandfather was. Sihanouk, however, is cut from a different cloth. His artistic temperament notwithstanding, he is fiercely politically ambitious. The headstrong young sovereign is determined not to bow to Paris. As the Japanese settle into life in Phnom Penh, they make overtures to Sihanouk. They encourage him to flex his muscles against the weakened European overlords. By the time 1945 rolls around, Sihanouk is convinced of the cause.

Deaf to French protestations, he unilaterally declares full Cambodian independence. It turns out to be something of a false dawn. As Japan surrenders to the Allies and withdraws from Indochina, Sihanouk's cause is quietly forgotten. By October, the French are back in charge of Phnom Penh. But their status as colonial rulers is much diminished. When Indochina had needed protection from Japan, they folded. Sihanouk is adamant that if the French are to remain in his land,

it will be on very different terms. A pro-independence group emerges. They are called the Khmer Isarak, the Khmer freedom fighters. Under pressure from them, King Sihanouk demands more autonomy from Paris. He calls for a new constitution to boot. There is a new sense of untapped possibility. Political parties start appearing. The most significant of these is the Democratic Party. They will prove crucial power brokers. Siena could better keep an eye on them. The Democrats are determined to realize Cambodian independence, but they also want

to keep the king's power in check. There are developments afoot in the wider region too. Next door, in Vietnam, the communist Viet Minh, in the north of the country led by Ho Chi Minh, are embroiled in a ferocious battle against the French settlers there. are embroiled in a ferocious battle against the French settlers there. For good or for ill, Cambodia, and Indochina more broadly, has become an extremely unstable place. The conditions for revolution are beginning to emerge. It's four years after the Second World War, in August 1949, by the time Salazar begins his long journey to study in France.

His country's political dramas are of nothing more than a passing interest, as he looks forward to his European adventure. Salazar's odyssey begins with a trip to Vietnam and a stop-off in Saigon. From there he boards the SS Jamaic, a weary old passenger liner that's been converted into a troop carrier, ferrying French soldiers back and forth to the battlefields of Indochina. Saar travels in fourth class with the troops. He sleeps on one of the narrow bunks stacked up in banks of three. He discovers on the four-week voyage that he has good sea legs and a strong stomach.

Others are not so lucky. It doesn't help that the French cooking on board is unfamiliar to many of the Asian passengers. To escape the stench of vomit in his bunk room, Tsar takes to sleeping out in the open on the upper deck. At long last, the Jamek docks in Marseille. Saar boards an overnight train to Paris. It's October the 1st, 1949. At this very moment, 5,000 miles away, a man called Mao Zedong steps up to a microphone on a stage in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

To the gathered masses, he proclaims the People's Republic of China. It would seem far-fetched in the extreme to suggest that Salah Tsar will one day stand alongside the Great Helmsman as a fellow communist statesman. But in actual fact, in Paris, Tsar's journey to global infamy is about to begin. That's next time on Real Dictators.