Monday, 7 January 2008

7 January

’The Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, was captured today, Vietnam and the insurgent front it is backing in Cambodia announced tonight.

The regime of dictatorial, militarist domination of the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique has completely collapsed, the radio announcement declared. Nothing was said about the whereabouts of Prime Minister Pol Pot and Deputy Prime Minister Ieng Sary.’ New York Times, 7 January 1979
Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot or Brother Number One, along with his Khmer Rouge regime was responsble for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979 (other estimates put it at some 25 per cent of the population). His ‘Year Zero’ vision of an agrarian economy was partly inspired by China’s Cultural Revolution.

‘There are no schools, faculties or universities in the traditional sense, although they did exist in our country prior to liberation, because we wish to do away with all vestiges of the past. There is no money, no commerce, as the state takes care of provisioning all its citizens. The cities have been resettled as this is the way things had to be.’ Pol Pot 1978

Consistently throughout the 1980s, the United States blocked international efforts to hold the Khmer Rouge guilty of genocide and declare Pol Pot a war criminal. It was only after an internal struggle among the remaining Khmer Rouge that Pol Pot was arrested in July 1997 and charged with treason. Sentenced to life under house arrest he later declared, ‘My conscience is clear.’

No comments: