Real Dictators - Pol Pot Part 4: The Killing Fields

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Pol Pot constructs a secretive one-party state. Cambodia descends into hell as his twisted social experiment begins. Finally, the shifting sands of geopolitics will create challenges for the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot will be forced back into the jungle. But even then, the man with untold blood on his hands will somehow evade justice. A Noiser production, written by Dan Smith. Many thanks to Elizabeth Becker and University of Washington Libraries for archive audio. This is Part 4 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 April 1977, a balmy evening in the south of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. An angular man in his mid-thirties sits in his office. At his desk, he flicks through the day's paperwork. His name is Doik. He's a former schoolmaster. He's working in what used to be a high school, but these are not homework assignments or report cards before him. This educational establishment was once an elegant, inviting sort of place, with its colonnades and courtyard of coconut palms. But now it

serves as a prison, and Comrade Doik is its governor. The five blocks of the compound are surrounded by electrified barbed wire. Iron bars cover the windows. This is Security Prison 21, or S-21 for short. It is the most feared address in Cambodia. Ordered by the country's secretive leader, Pol Pot, to root out and punish all rivals, Doik is going through the latest batch of confessions. Page after page, details attempt to undermine the Khmer Rouge regime.

But Doik knows not to take them at face value. Most of the confessions are the result of prolonged torture. Under duress, prisoners spin elaborate stories. With the least believable confessions, Doik orders the prisoners be tortured some more, to get something that sounds more plausible. Given the sheer volume of tip-offs, an individual must be denounced three times before the allegations

are taken seriously. Even so, in the first six months after opening, 400 prisoners passed through S-21. Now in 1977, a thousand a month are processed. Ultimately, as many as 20,000 people will pass through these gates. Of those, perhaps as few as a dozen will make it out the other side. Doik is an enthusiastic administrator, fanatically devoted to the communist regime. A foul stench hangs in the air. Newcomers often assume it to be rotting fish or dead rodents.

In fact, it's the odour of decomposing human flesh. Doik has been here long enough that he hardly notices it now. Today has been typically busy. Plenty of new arrivals, most blindfolded and with their hands tied. plenty of new arrivals most blindfolded and with their hands tied. On admission they're photographed and ordered to write a short autobiography a first opportunity for confession.

They're then stripped and taken to the classrooms which have been crudely converted into cells and torture chambers fitted with shackles. Small ammunition boxes function as toilets. When they overfill, prisoners are forced to lick up the mess. The Khmer Rouge talk of smashing, some of the leaders dress it up, suggesting the term refers to smashing the corrupting individualism out of people. But everyone knows that it's meant literally. The corridors ring with the screams of those being beaten with metal bars or sticks covered in wire.

Others are waterboarded or receive shocks through electrodes inserted into their ears. All manner of grotesque punishments. All in the name of protecting Cambodia. Death often comes as a relief, but even that is a drawn-out affair. The authorities consider it wasteful to use bullets to dispatch their victims. Most are beaten to death, others are killed with machetes occasionally they're burned alive and so another day draws to a close

there are no mats blankets or mosquito nets those inmates who've made it through to the evening bed down on the concrete floors sleep deprivation is part of the process of breaking you. Comrade Doig shuffles his papers one last time and prepares to send his daily report to ANCA, or the Organization, as the ruling authorities call themselves. Despite their omnipotence, mystery still shrouds them.

It suits Pol Pot to operate in the shadows. People fear what they can't see. Doik heads off to bed, the prison now silent, save for the scuttling of rats across the cell floors. He sleeps soundly. It will be light again in a few hours, and the process will start once more. It will be light again in a few hours, and the process will start once more. In the words of the interrogators, words that they hiss into their victims' ears, Anchor will smash you all.

This is the final part of the Pol Pot story, and this is Real Dictators. How does a country so often admired for its beauty and tranquility arrive at such horrors? Let's go back to April 1975 and the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh. It marks the end of years of civil war. While no one really knows what to expect, there is hope that the worst might be over. Professor Sopo-Ia. In those initial days, it was jubilation, or at least on the day of April 17th, it was jubilation in that the country had suffered for years. There was a bombing campaign by the United States that had devastated the countryside. I mean, more bombs fell on Cambodia than World War II Europe and the

tonnage equivalent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People just thought that things could not get worse. Journalist and author, Elizabeth Becker. They wanted to believe that the Khmer Rouge, being Cambodian, would bring about peace because Cambodians wouldn't be bad to Cambodians. One of my best buddies was a banker who I would always go to when I couldn't figure out what was going on. And he'd say, no, really, I'm not going to leave the country. I trust them. They're not going to do anything crazy. They're Cambodians. And so everybody was waving white flags. Yay, hooray, when they came in in April 1975. They wanted to believe. On April the 20th, just days after his troops have emptied it, Pol Pot sets foot in Phnom Penh.

It's his first time back in 12 years. He's driven in a captured armoured car alongside a cavalcade of jeeps plundered over the previous days. They race through the eerily deserted streets. Communist Party officials are already in the city to discuss the way forward. Pol Pot summons them to the Art Deco railway station, a remnant of the colonial era. For now, it will serve as the new government's headquarters. There is much to discuss. For starters, there's the question of how the new administration will be structured. There's no doubt that real power rests with the Khmer Rouge, but the matter is not quite

as straightforward as that. Remarkably the Communist Party of Kampuchea has never publicly acknowledged its own existence, and so to many its leader Pol Pot remains faceless. Meanwhile, the official ousted government is continuing to operate in exile. Then there is the conundrum of what to do about Noradom Sihanouk. The former king, prime minister and head of state for life is the most recognizable and popular political figure in Cambodia, and in name at least, he is the Khmer Rouge's ally.

Sihanouk was the public face of the supposedly united front that has just deposed Lon Nol and his regime. So how is he going to fit into proceedings? China and North Korea, key communist power brokers, are both adamant that Sihanouk should retain a role. He is a source of stability and legitimacy. Pol Pot takes the path of least resistance. Sihanouk is once more offered the role of head of state.

Sihanouk doesn't quite know what to expect from his new title. Chairman Mao tells him with a glint in his eye that he needn't be scared. It's not as if he'll be set to work in the fields, but he might have to pick up a broom to do a bit of sweeping. When Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh, he's pleasantly surprised. There's a welcoming committee at the airport. Buddhist monks greet him, while girls from the Khmer Rouge scatter flowers at his feet. It feels like old times. Scammerouge scatter flowers at his feet.

It feels like old times. Never mind picking up a broom, the royal palace is looking spic and span for the return of the former king and his entourage. But the honeymoon will not last long. The next time Sihanouk returns from a trip abroad, he notices a distinct difference. Gone are the monks and the girls with flowers. Instead, a small crowd chants Khmer Rouge slogans in a slightly subdued manner,

as the old king fixes a smile on his face. It is, he will later recall, all rather Kafkaesque. Behind the scenes, a one-party state is rapidly being constructed. A state secretly directed by the Communist Party, which itself is secretly directed by Pol Pot. Pol describes his nation as a precious model for humanity. In the entire world, he claims, no country, no people, and no army has been able to drive the imperialists out to the last man and score total victory over them. He now wants to push the country on further still, to make, in his words, a prodigious leap.

Professor Alex Hinton. Mao and China talked about the Great Leap Forward. That very much influenced the Khmer Rouge as well. At the same time, they talked about a super Great Leap Forward. So they wanted to move quicker than anybody else, and in truth they did, and it was a catastrophe in the end.

The mass evacuation of the capital, the forced march of some two and a half million people undertaken within hours of Phnom Penh's fall, might have looked chaotic. But for those who decreed it, it was all part of their grand plan. Pol Pot, or Brother Number One as he will also be known, has long regarded agriculture as the key to national transformation. If the country can keep itself well fed, it will have no need to rely on its untrustworthy

neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand. In Pol Pot's own words, agriculture is the key to both nation building and national defense. Cambodia's farming methods are antiquated and small-scale. But Paul is confident he can swiftly increase Cambodia's rice yields. He aims for 80% of farms to be mechanized within a decade. There will be major land clearances and the construction of a mass irrigation system. This whole scheme rests on enormous supplies of labor, hence the move to force human capital out of the cities and into the countryside.

The Khmer Rouge had planned all along to put everybody in the countryside where their dream of agrarian revolution would be realized. And so my family, which had no experience in farming, along with so many others in urban areas, was made to be farmers to grow rice. They had no compunction about doing this horrible, vicious, ruthless emptying of the city. Ruthless. Didn't care a damn about medical care, food, nothing. Torture. And then they end up in the equivalent of labor camps. That's not a, quote, rational agricultural plan. This is controlling population. Across the land, millions of adults and children are forced to work up to 18 hours a day, with just one day off every 10.

Chanriti Him. They force us to leave my grandparents' home to go to a different part of Cambodia, particularly that one village, Dok Po, where we have to live in a makeshift hut where they built for us.

My older sisters, they had to go work in irrigation canal, and I was separated from my mom to work with child labor, you know, building irrigation canal and we were starving. I mean, we barely get salt, any food. I have to work so early, I don't know, three or four in the morning, too late. You work all day in the hot sun and you're being watched by the local, the old people, and they treat you like a slave. On the afternoon of June 21st, 1975, Pol Pot reclines by a private swimming pool.

Opposite him sits Mao Zedong, an old man now, beset with health problems, but he can still captivate an audience. Here in the shadow of Beijing's Forbidden City, the two men converse at length. Mao tells him that China has no right to lecture or criticize Cambodia, but he will give this warning, Don't push too hard. A degree of restraint may bear fruit in the long run. Keep the people on side. To guide his understudy, Mao offers him dozens of books on Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin. Paul leaves the swimming pool with the promises of Mao ringing in his ears. Access to Chinese markets, technical training, military support, and of course, those communist textbooks under his arm.

You might think a message of restraint from Chairman Mao, a man hardly known for caution himself, might stick in the mind. But you'd be wrong. Back in Cambodia, Pol Pot summons the leaders of Angkor. If we wish to defend the fruits of the revolution, there must be no let-up, he tells them. Out in the countryside, the population is divided into three broad groups. Each of these groups has different entitlements to food rations and to hold positions in village cooperatives, the army, and the party.

The full rights members and the candidates are the more privileged categories. They are populated by the so-called old people, those who lived in the liberated zones prior to the communist victory. The group with fewest privileges, the depositees, are largely new people, those who came from the cities. In Pol Pot's new world order, some are more equal than others. We certainly knew that. I had an uncle who lived with us and he was a former minister under Sihanouk. And so I guess he thought that that would be some big shot situation

where he could manhandle his way through the Khmer Rouge. But the moment he started talking about, I was such and such minister, we knew he was going to be targeted. You better not talk about your history in that way, because if you talk about it in that way, they'll know that you were part of the Ancien Régime and that you should be eliminated. The Khmer Rouge plans to replace the old government money system with a new one. This soon gives way to a more radical idea, the abandonment of money altogether.

This had been trialed in the liberated zones. Now, in Phnom Penh, bundles of revolutionary notes lie discarded at the roadsides. They literally blew up the central bank and made money worthless. This is almost the lyrics of John Lennon's Imagine, Realized, except it's a nightmare instead. Yeah, if we just get rid of possessions and money, everything will be fine. No, people then barter. The only thing left is gold. Even diamonds had very little value compared to what could perhaps be tradable.

In a society without money, denunciation becomes a currency. For some, accusing and informing on others becomes a way of life. For some, accusing and informing on others becomes a way of life. One of my paternal aunts, for example, who hadn't been as well off as we were, we suspect had gone to the Khmer Rouge to say that we were actually well off in our pre-Khmer Rouge lives. And so we would be made targets as a result. My father apparently said, OK, well, we're going to have to get away from them because we don't want to have a situation where they report us. From October 1975, the Khmer Rouge take it up another gear.

There's a push for even greater collectivization. People aren't even allowed to prepare their own meager meals anymore. Everything is to be provided by communal kitchens. The spoon became the only possession you're allowed and literally if you don't have your spoon you can't eat. They reduced everything to the point of nothing is yours. Foraging is banned. So too are fishing and hunting. Even picking up a piece of fruit from the floor can result in a beating. In one case, a ten-year-old is caught digging up a sweet potato.

For this act of selfishness, he is led off into a hut which soon fills with other offenders. The building is then set ablaze. Marriage is permissible only when approved by the authorities. The state makes entirely unsuitable matches. Old men are routinely partnered with young women. Women's hair is to be cut short. Illicit affairs become punishable by death. Children's toys are outlawed, as are sports and reading, unless the material has been specially sanctioned by the party. Some regions ban singing and dancing. Language itself becomes a battleground.

People must no longer refer to themselves as I, but as we. Nor may children refer to their parents as mother and father. Paul tells his party leadership that mothers should not get too attached to their offspring. Familiar love is selfish and sentimental. The family unit was destroyed. Parents were separated from their children so that the kids could be sent to children's camps to be educated in essentially becoming spies against their families, right? And questioning their elders. Not that questioning your elders isn't an intergenerational thing that we all go through, but this was the extreme case of being taught from an early age to essentially no longer believe in the family

structure. The immediate evacuation, throwing people out of Phnom Penh, was the first step in eliminating classic communities. Families, your faith, they closed the pagodas, they closed schools, they closed marketplaces, They often separated men and women. You make everybody separate, scared, and unable to react. Within mere months of his takeover, Pol Pot has turned the country into a giant jail without walls, or, as some call it, given the regime's suppression of the facts, a fire without smoke.

On January 5th, 1976, Cambodia is officially reconstituted as Democratic Kampuchea. For anyone who is in doubt, the new constitution makes a point of clarifying that worklessness is absolutely non-existent. But by now there is already copious evidence that the regime is a disaster, even on its own terms. Then you see that whatever the propaganda is, they are incredibly incompetent. is they are incredibly incompetent. You have a mishmash of understanding what the revolution is about, what you do, and every region is trying to do what they're supposed to do. And when things don't work out, they're executing people because they know that they'll get in trouble if they don't measure up. They were not ready for prime time. You cannot overestimate the incompetency. Terrified party cadres, commanding malnourished slaves, massage their production figures to

report higher yields than they really have. Poland's officials welcome the good news and start taking rice away from the countryside to put into storage. Now the workers have even less to live on, and so the spiral continues. Before long, food shortages give way to full-blown famine. The greater the pressure to make up the shortfalls, the more violently the party cadres impose their authority. As the saying goes, Ankar kills but does not explain. I think of my friend who heads the documentation center of Cambodia.

He tells the story of his sister who was killed. So she was accused of stealing rice under the Khmer Rouge. She said she didn't steal any rice. She didn't have any rice. And they said she did. And so to make their point, they decided, okay, let's find out if you stole rice. Let's open you up. And so they sliced her open to find no rice at all.

And she died. It doesn't take long before Noordam Sianouk is having serious doubts about throwing in his lot with the Khmer Rouge. He was basically in a gilded cage at the royal palace, so he was not given any power. And so he didn't obviously starve to death, but still, he was miserable. A lot of his family members were killed. He had made a Faustian pact with the Khmer Rouge. He had given them his credibility to allow them to rise to power, thinking that they were going to hand the keys to the kingdom to him, and they simply put him as figurehead, head of state.

Sihanouk too is the country over the winter of 1975 to 76. Forced to confront the reality of the regime, he is appalled by what he sees. My people, he says, have been transformed into cattle. My eyes were opened to a madness which neither I nor anyone else had imagined. He attempts to resign as head of state, blaming ill health. Pol Pot tries to persuade him to stay. He understands that to most of the population, Sihanouk is the government, its public face. He's also the Khmer Rouge's fall guy.

Solasar's name doesn't come up ever, ever, ever, ever. Whether you're in Phnom Penh or any village. This was deliberate. He did not want to be known. It's Sihanouk, Sihanouk, Sihanouk. Without Sihanouk, I don't know what they would have done. But Pol will lose this particular battle. Less than a year after the fall of Phnom Penh,

Sihanouk broadcasts a farewell message to the nation. He is washing his hands of the whole affair. Pol Pot now stands alone as Cambodian leader. With the myth of a united front government over, he has little choice but to assume the role of prime minister. He's not interested in being known as the leader of the Khmer Rouge. He's interested in obviously controlling the Khmer Rouge, controlling the regime, but doing it almost behind the scenes.

He may relish secrecy, but he also craves control. As prime minister, his fingerprints are on everything, down to the tiniest details. He wants to know the menus and place settings ahead of banquets. He vets the program schedules for Radio Khmer Rouge. As a character, a personality, he remains elusive. Colleagues speak of being utterly unable to read him. He can be courteous and softly spoken, serene like a monk, and with a singular charisma. He will look you in the eye and flash that winning smile even as he orders your death. When he takes up the premiership, a fictional biography

is written at his behest. It claims he used to work on a rubber plantation and fought with the nationalists against the Japanese during World War II. All lies. This cloak of anonymity is more important than ever because out in the countryside during World War II. All lies.

This cloak of anonymity is more important than ever, because out in the countryside the most heinous crimes are being committed, crimes for which future generations will demand justice. The scale of murder perpetrated by the state is staggering. Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot's regime is responsible for the deaths of between 1.5 and 2 million people, about a quarter of the entire population. Most are cast into mass graves. There are almost 25,000 of these sites across the country, the notorious killing fields. Counter-intuitively, what Pol Pot really wants is for the population to double or triple

to 15 or 20 million within a decade, more people to do more work. But in addition to the murders, malnutrition is now so widespread that many women can no longer have children. In percentage terms, there has perhaps never been a regime responsible for killing so many of its own people. As the Khmer Rouge say, to keep you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss. Chanriti Him lost both of her parents and several siblings under the Khmer Rouge. Here she remembers the death of her mother. She died in 1977 because of the Khmer Rouge, you know, told her to go to this so-called hospital.

I remember it was heartbreaking for my baby brother. She died there. I took him there. And the last time I saw my mom, she was a beautiful woman. And suddenly, after just a few years of this hell, I couldn't recognize her. The only thing I could recognize my mom was the faded flower, flowers that she had. She just said, my son, my daughter, come here and just tear, you know, streaming on her swollen face. All pale and swollen. Her eyelids were swollen with edema. And she said they haven't, you know, they haven't given her water for four days. And she begged me to take care of her.

And as much as I wanted to take care of her, I was barely surviving. After spending years as a jungle guerrilla, looking over his shoulder, Pol Pot was already paranoid before taking power in Phnom Penh. Since then his paranoia has only accelerated. It's no surprise that he strikes up a friendship with another notorious communist leader, North Korea's Kim Il-sung. Kim promises to assist Pol's agricultural and hydroelectric projects. But the Cambodian leader picks up some other tips from him too.

They completely cut off their country in a way that even North Korea never did. All borders cut off. The only flights they allowed, they allowed some from China and Vietnam and maybe a couple other communist countries. No cables, no mail, no telephone. Expats returning from overseas are viewed with particular suspicion, even if they are avowed supporters of the regime. Returnees are expected to prove their credentials through tests of character that last months,

and in some cases years. Some are given absurdly futile tasks to test their commitment. In one instance, prisoners are told to plant rice on a concrete basketball court. When things go wrong, it's always the fault of others. City dwellers, foreigners, Buddhist monks, the Muslim Cham minority. All of these groups find themselves in the firing line at one time or another. Every time there's a problem, every time there's a mistake, he doesn't say, oh, that's a mistake, I'll learn from my mistakes. He says, someone is betraying us.

Nothing is by accident. Everything. There's somebody behind it, the CIA, Soviet Union. Pol Pot sees saboteurs and foreign agents everywhere. Hidden enemies, he says, are depriving his citizens of food. It is these traitors who force people to work when they're sick and who misinterpret the regime's directives. Pol estimates one to two% of the population are bad elements, working against the country's common goals. So, following in the footsteps of Stalin and Mao, he embarks on a seemingly never-ending purge.

They particularly targeted for execution military of the former regime, intellectuals, professionals, anybody with a competency. They targeted as potential foes. What do you have left? You don't have people left who can help you run the country. There's great plans for these dams. I saw one of the dams and it was clearly not up to snuff.

Who's the engineer who's going to help you on this one? For farming, they don't have training. They don't have food to keep them healthy. They don't have health care because you've killed most of the doctors. It is truly a country of gulags. In the process of breaking up what they considered the old society to create a new revolutionary society, they broke it up, but they created nothing in its place but fear and genocide. The center of Pol Pot's murder machine is S21, overseen by the aforementioned Comrade Doik.

The medical unit indulges in experimentation reminiscent of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. Victims are bled dry while they're still alive. experimentation reminiscent of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. Victims are bled dry while they are still alive. Others have their gallbladders extracted and other organs removed without anesthetic. Then there are the stories of pregnant women who have their babies ripped from their wombs, the fetuses hung up to dry, becoming Khun Krak or smoke children. Talismans the Khmer tradition says carry magical properties of protection.

But no kind of folklore can protect Cambodia now. It's only after the death of Chairman Mao in September 1976 that Ankar publicly acknowledges its own Marxist-Leninist ideology for the first time. A few months later, stepping out of his late mentor's shadow, Pol Pot gives a landmark five-hour speech in which he formally presents himself as the head of the Communist Party and leader of the nation. The goal was to create people who would think like a pure revolutionary, who would internalize and be socialized into these pure revolutionary ideals. And so eventually he

announced himself, broadcast to the masses, and sort of told the history that they should all believe. He went back and he constructed the history in a certain sort of told the history that they should all believe. He went back and he constructed the history in a certain sort of way to legitimate his and his faction's leadership and power. At a certain point, even the most avowedly evil tyrant cannot keep butchering his own people. Perhaps recognizing this, in the aftermath of the speech the regime begins to introduce some extremely modest reforms. Foraging is begrudgingly permitted again,

as is family dining. It is no longer an offense to wear colorful clothes, and freedom of marriage is returned. Even a few educational establishments open up. This does little to end the mass slaughter, but it does reflect the fact that bigger forces are once again sweeping Cambodia along in their slipstream. Since July 1976, North and South Vietnam have been unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Cambodian relations with this reconstituted neighbour have been in steady decline.

The question of sovereignty in the disputed borderlands becomes a source of increasing tension. The prospect of a war between Cambodia and Vietnam makes China in particular very nervous. Pol Pot still has China's backing, but Beijing doesn't want its protégé to embark on a full-scale conflict. They fear this would drag Vietnam's superpower ally, the Soviet Union, into a regional war. Nonetheless, Pol Pot presses on.

In 1977, Cambodian troops cross into Khmer Krom, a region of Vietnam on which Phnom Penh has long had designs. Further incursions into Vietnam follow. So the Khmer Rouge start attacking Vietnam, and even in their radio broadcasts, they made this incredible argument that if every one Cambodian killed 10 Vietnamese, then we would eliminate Vietnam. Of course, we would probably eliminate Cambodia too. That, along with the actual incursions by the Khmer Rouge into Vietnam, led to the Vietnamese deciding, even though they're ideologically aligned, to say, okay,

well, you know what, we've had enough of your attacks and now we're going to invade Cambodia. Within Cambodia, there is a fresh surge of violence against Vietnamese migrants. Beijing makes it clear they will provide no troops of their own. So, with open war looming, Pol Pot seeks to make new friends. To this end, he opens up Cambodia a little, meeting foreign dignitaries from sympathetic nations including Burma and Romania. He even toys with the idea of raising his own profile. He's seen how well personality cults have played in China and North Korea. Portraits of him are commissioned for the first time.

There is a new silver statue and a grand 25-foot-high memorial showing him leading a band of revolutionaries. For the first time, the Khmer Rouge begin to consider that the United States might be a potential ally against Vietnam. To this end, they begin granting access to reporters which mere months ago would have been totally unthinkable. mere months ago would have been totally unthinkable. In December 1978, Elizabeth Becker becomes one of only two Western journalists ever to be granted an interview with Pol Pot himself. This is how it happened. They took us to what used to be the French colonial headquarters for Cambodia.

Beautiful building on the river. And there he was sitting in a lovely old chair, almost like a throne. Beautiful, beautiful Mao-style jacket, well-tailored, beautifully groomed. And he didn't rise when we came. He sat there. He was gracious and lovely smile, twinkling eyes, you know, all the charisma you wanted. For two hours, Paul delivers a virtual monologue on why his country needs the U.S. and NATO to join the fight against Vietnam. We need only to live in peace, in independence, on national honor and dignity.

That is the sacred wishes of Cambodia's people. If they don't act soon, he says, Warsaw Pact troops will attack Cambodia. Astounded by the claim, Becker prepares to fly home to America the following day to file her extraordinary story but someone else whose identity remains unclear to this day has other ideas and that night we were attacked there's no question in my mind

that it had to be approved by some top people in the government I heard the assassin come in first. I went out to the foyer and saw him. We were all in the official guest house. And I yelled in my perfect frightened Khmer, don't shoot. He pointed his weapon at me. I ran away and hid in the bathtub, which is what we were always trained to do.

And instead of following me, which he could have done, he went up the stairs to the men's bedrooms. That's significant because the guy knew the lay of the land and he let me go free. Upstairs, another guest, a Scottish academic called Malcolm Caldwell, is not so lucky. He is shot dead. My guess would be, and it's only a guess, that there are people in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy who did not want us there in the first place. Why they killed Malcolm Caldwell, I don't know that it's so much him,

it's that they wanted to send a warning. It's that they wanted to send a warning. A few days later, the anticipated Vietnamese invasion begins in earnest. But as 120,000 enemy troops sweep across the country, Pol Pot acts as if this is nothing more than a minor annoyance. He gives an audience to the chair of the Canadian Marxist-Leninist Communist League. He meets with a Peruvian newspaper editor. It's business as usual. A couple of weeks later, however, he invites Noridam Sianuk to a banquet. Amazingly, despite their many dealings over the years, this will be the first time the two men have ever come face to face for any significant period of time.

Since stepping down as head of state, Sihanouk has effectively been under house arrest. But Pol understands the hold the former king still has over the nation. At dinner, Sihanouk is totally disarmed by Pol Pot's charisma. Pol is all smiles, relaxed and persuasive. He asks whether Sihanouk would consider traveling to New York. He wants him to address the United Nations, to ask for assistance from the Security Council. The former king agrees. That very same day, Pol Pot records a broadcast to his people.

That very same day, Pol Pot records a broadcast to his people. He acknowledges some temporary difficulties, but assures that the valiant Cambodian army will soon regain the upper hand. In contrast to his words, his actions betray the truth of the situation. The following day, as Sihanouk leaves for America, Pol Pot and his Ankar lieutenants abandon Phnom Penh and flee to Pursat, deep in central Cambodia. Meanwhile, at S21, Comrade Doik is told that the time has come to wind things up. His task is now to liquidate all remaining prisoners. A group of Cambodians held responsible for murdering Malcolm Caldwell are among the last to be tortured and killed here. The Vietnamese get closer and closer to Phnom Penh.

Finally, they reach the capital's limits. With the Khmer Rouge's most senior figures in hiding, the invaders break through to the city centre and set about establishing a puppet government. It's all happened so fast. It's January 7th 1979. After centuries of rumour and innuendo, what Cambodians feared the most has finally come to pass.

Their noisy neighbours have taken Phnom Penh. And for Pol Pot, the three years, eight months and twenty days of his reign of terror are abruptly at an end. On January 12, Norodom Sihanouk, dressed in a sober dark grey suit, addresses the UN. He calls for a resolution demanding the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces. He promises that his country will fight to the death. When the votes are counted, he has the backing of the entire Security Council, save for the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia.

But Sihanouk has something else to say. Making use of this platform, he also moves to condemn the Khmer Rouge for their genocide of the Cambodian people. It's a bold move. On his way out of UN headquarters, Sihanouk stops to speak to journalists. They ask if he expects to see Cambodia again. No, he replies. I have no role to play. Aristocratic nationalists are not much in demand anymore.

On his way back to his hotel, under Khmer Rouge guard, Sihanouk slips a note to one of the American agents assigned to his party. On it is scrawled a desperate plea for asylum. At two o'clock in the morning, a US Secret Service team sweeps into his hotel and extracts him, taking him to a private suite at a local hospital. He stays there for several weeks. Reporters are told that he is suffering from stress and exhaustion. Sihanouk's asylum application is ultimately rejected. He will shortly try his luck in China. Incredibly, this is not the end for either Pol Pot or his organisation.

In May 1979, Pol crosses the border into Thailand. But by July, he's back in Cambodia. Once more, he adopts a pseudonym. This time, he calls himself Fem, after his father, Salak Fem. Fem creates for himself a new mountain headquarters. Not Office 100 this time, but Office 131. It's like something from a James Bond movie. The wooden huts of the camp are surrounded by minefields and pits stacked with sharpened

bamboo. Paul lives further up the mountains in relative comfort, but for most of his followers, the conditions are terrible. Some resort to cannibalism. Forced out of office, stashed away in his hideout, the man they call Femme becomes something of a global statesman. His position as leader ousted by an aggressive neighbor gives him the veneer of legitimacy. Incredibly, despite the abundant evidence of his crimes against humanity, Pol Pot now finds himself supported by large sections

of the international community. The shock continues because they go into exile and the Chinese support them against the puppet government that the Vietnamese put in. And the United States supports the Khmer Rouge. Europe supports the Khmer Rouge. ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, support the Khmer Rouge. I was shocked. At the UN, they voted to keep the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodia seat, saying that it's important not to support an invasion by a foreign country. Years after the Cambodian Civil War, the Khmer Rouge had been recast as a guerrilla movement. Gradually, Pol Pot and his organization jettisoned their extreme ideology.

Instead, they rebranded as an anti-Vietnamese nationalist movement. In 1981, the Cambodian Communist Party dissolves itself. It's a move that shores up international support from non-communist states. It suits China, and even America now, to prop up Pol Pot and his rebels. Both nations want a weak Vietnam. But ultimately there will be no grand comeback. By 1988, cautious peace talks are underway between Hanoi and Phnom Penh. The Vietnamese negotiators make headway with Sihanouk, who is by now back on the scene

as head of the Cambodian government in exile. A year later, Vietnam withdraws its troops. Far away in Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall heralds the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. China introduces further market reforms. The Khmer Rouge, marooned in the jungle, are increasingly an irrelevance. In 1991, a formal peace agreement is signed in Paris between Vietnam and Cambodia. A formal peace agreement is signed in Paris between Vietnam and Cambodia. Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh as a hero,

driven through streets to throng with people once more, waving to the crowd from a pink Chevrolet convertible. He agrees to take the throne again. The king is back in business. Pol Pot, on the other hand, is done. By now his health is in steep decline. He has heart problems that require him to receive oxygen every day. A stroke leaves him partially paralyzed and with poor eyesight. He sits around in pastel blue suits he has custom made in Bangkok, drinking cognac, listening to traditional Khmer music, and

writing his memoirs. But the old, merciless warrior still lurks. In 1996, three young Western backpackers are captured and killed during a Khmer Rouge attack on a train. It feels like a desperate act of an organization that has lost any real purpose or direction. It feels like a desperate act of an organization that has lost any real purpose or direction. Yang Sari, Pol Pot's brother-in-law, and one of his most trusted lieutenants, defects. Then Pol falls out with another of his long-standing allies, his former Minister of Defense, Son Sen.

In June 1997, Pol orders that Sen be murdered, along with 13 members of his family, including children. It's one outrage too far. Tai Mok, Paul's former army chief, decides enough is enough. The invalid Paul is caught trying to make a run for it. He's carried off in a hammock. He's then subjected to a trial at a mass meeting at the Khmer Rouge near the Thai border. Sitting in a wooden chair, holding a bamboo pole and a rattan fan, he fights back the tears as he hears the evidence against him. Pol Pot is sentenced by his own cadres to life imprisonment. In practice, this means the relative comfort of house arrest.

After the trial, he tells a journalist, my conscience is clear. On April 15th, 1998, Pol Pot dies in his sleep from heart failure. His body is preserved with ice and formaldehyde. He's given the final Buddhist rites before being cremated on a funeral pyre, fuelled by rubbish and car tyres. Some wonder whether he really dies the sort of natural death that he's denied so many others.

Did he take his own life, perhaps? There had been rumours of an imminent extradition to the United States. Or did someone else get to him, nervous of what sort of deal he might strike, or what information he might pass on to the Americans? Whatever the case may be, Pol Pot is able to depart this world without ever truly answering for his crimes. His is the story of a catastrophic social experiment carried all the way to its terrible conclusion. He was responsible, quite simply, for some of the darkest days in human history. They're shutting down the human individual, right, and reshaping it.

And they literally talked about it as reshaping human beings to be pure revolutionary citizens. The lesson for all of us is that we need to become aware and recognize these social forces. And so I think calling for critical self-reflection is absolutely the sort of key lesson that we all need to keep in mind. Finally, in 2009, after years of delays, the much-trailed Khmer Rouge tribunal holds its first trial. 66-year-old Comrade Doik, the governor of S21, is found guilty of crimes against humanity. Subsequently, a handful of other high-ranking officials are convicted too, but by now many of the guilty are old men. To some, the tribunal is at least a belated attempt to right some of the wrongs of the past, but for many others its scope is so limited and the crimes it examines so vast

that it could never be anything other than inadequate. In the years since Pol Pot's rule, Cambodian politics has been dominated by Hun Sen, the Prime Minister, since 1985. Sen is a former Khmer Rouge soldier who defected and allied himself with the Vietnamese during the latter stages of Poles' rule. Today Sen heads what is effectively a one-party state. Although he has overseen economic expansion, poverty remains widespread and his regime has been accused of corruption and human rights abuses.

I would reach for the George Santayana, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. But I would also flip it on its head insofar as those who are too stuck on history or who think only of history insofar as what the future holds for them also cannot escape the past. So much of what happens in Cambodia today is kind of stuck in the fear of what took place under the Khmer Rouge. The fear of what happened under the Khmer Rouge has become a kind of handcuff for so many that they also can't imagine escaping their current situation. Cambodia may have recast itself in the decades since Pol Pot, but clearly the country and its people continue to bear the scars. Thank you.