Pol Pot

Cambodia 1975–1982 presents a unique and carefully researched analysis of the Democratic Kampuchea regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (1975–79) and the early years of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979–89). When it was first published in 1984, the book provided one of the few balanced and reasoned voices in a world shocked by media reports of incredible brutality.

Renowned journalist Thierry Cruvellier takes us into the dark heart of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge with The Master of Confessions, a suspenseful account of a Chief Interrogator's trial for war crimes.
On April 17, 1975, the communist Khmer Rouge, led by its secretive prime minister Pol Pot, took over Cambodia. Renaming the country Democratic Kampuchea, they cut the nation off from the world and began systematically killing and starving two million of their people.

This handbook of slogans, interspersed with historical commentary and contextual analysis, describes the Khmer Rouge regime and exposes the horrific foundation upon which it constructed its reign of terror. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Phnom Penh. In the three years, eight months, and twenty days of their government, they made a tabula rasa of Cambodian society and culture, forcing the people to evacuate the cities and move to the countryside.

This is a true account of what the author experienced when the Khmer Rouge revolutionary forces under Pol Pot took control of Cambodia in 1975. Swept from their industrious life of learning and enterprise in Phnom Penh, the Ky family was driven, along with millions of others, into the Cambodian countryside to fulfill Pol Pot's vision of a Communist, agrarian society.

How did Pol Pot, a tyrant comparable to Hitler and Stalin in his brutality and contempt for human life, rise to power? This authoritative book explores what happened in Cambodia from 1930 to 1975, tracing the origins and trajectory of the Cambodian Communist movement and setting the ascension of Pol Pot's genocidal regime in the context of the conflict between colonialism and nationalism.

The 1975-1979 regime of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), led by Pol Pot and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, left more than one million Cambodians dead, their bones scattered like those of animals. All of the more than 6,000,000 people who survived the regime lived with constant horror and fear throughout those 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days.

Observing Pol Pot at close quarters during the one and only official visit he ever made abroad, to China in 1975, Philip Short was struck by the Cambodian leader’s charm and charisma. Yet Pol Pot’s utopian experiments in social engineering would result in the death of one in every five Cambodians—more than a million people.

Between 1975 and 1979 the seemingly peaceful nation of Cambodia succumbed to one of the most bloodthirsty revolutions in modern history. Nearly two million people were killed. As head of the Khmer Rouge's secret police, Comrade Duch was responsible for the murder of more than 20,000 of them. Twenty years later, not one member of the Khmer Rouge had been held accountable for what had happened, and Comrade Duch had disappeared.

The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century's major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name "S-21."

The political history of Cambodia between 1945 and 1979, which culminated in the devastating revolutionary excesses of the Pol Pot regime, is one of unrest and misery. This book by David P. Chandler is the first to give a full account of this tumultuous period. Drawing on his experience as a foreign service officer in Phnom Penh, on interviews, and on archival material. Chandler considers why the revolution happened and how it was related to Cambodia's earlier history and to other events in Southeast Asia.