Pol pot biography cambodia wiki

(1925-1998)

Who Was Pol Pot?

Pol Pot rose to power as leader of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s Communist regime, which took control of the country in 1975.

During its reign, which ended in 1979, Pol Pot oversaw the deaths of an estimated one to two million people from starvation, overwork or execution. The mass graves he commanded his people to dig were often referred to as "the killing fields." Pol Pot was arrested in 1997 and died under house arrest on April 15, 1998.

Early Life and Education

Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar on May 19, 1925, in Kompong Thom Province, Cambodia.

Pol pot biography cambodia wiki

He was the eighth of nine children born to relatively prosperous parents who owned 50 acres of rice paddies.

Saloth was initially educated at a monastery in the capital city of Phnom Penh and later attended a French Catholic school.

He eventually studied carpentry and then received a government scholarship which sent him to Paris to study radio technology in 1949. In Paris, he became inv