Pol Pot

Brief Biography of Pol Pot

Personal Background

1) Original Name: Saloth Sar. Revolutionary Names and Aliases: Pol Pot, Pol, Comrade Pol, Comrade Secretary, Angkar, Hai, 870, Brother Number One, Brother 87 or 870 Committee. Nickname: Comrade Pouk.2) Place of Birth: Prek Sbauv Village, Sangkat Number 4, Stung Sen District, Kampong Thom Province, Region 43, Northern Zone.3) Age: Born in the year of Ox, month of Boss-January 25, 1925.4) Personal Characteristics: Making jokes about serious statements. Suffered from frequent illnesses, including dysentery and malaria.
Pre-1975 Activities
1948: Enrolled in technical school to study carpentry at Russei Keo, Phnom Penh.
1949: Received a scholarship to the Ecole Francaise de Radioelectricite in France. Failed to meet the school’s requirements and returned home on January 14, 1953.
Mid 1950s: Teacher at Kampuchbotr High School (a CPR cell), Phnom Penh.
August 1953: Joined United Issarakn Front based in the Eastern Zone.
1954: Arrested and detained for 4 months. Served as a secretary of Kampong Cham Provincial Town of Kampong Cham.
1960: Held a third position in the Workers’ Party
1962: Lecturer at a Party School (next to Preah Sang Hospital), Phnom Penh, and secretary of the CPK.
1963: Fled into the jungle in the Northeastern Zone.
1964: Lecturer on Communism at Chamreun Vichea high school.
1966: Shifted the line and changed the date of the CPK’s founding to 1960.
1967: Promoted up to Office 102, where he suffered serious and frequent malaria.
1968: Party Secretary of the Northeastern Zone.
1970: Went to Beijing and returned to the Northeastern Zone (elected by members of the Kampuchean Workers’ Party).
1968-1970: CPK’s Northern Zone Secretary. Leader of Internal Guerilla Movement under his name (Saloth Sar).
1973: So Phim requested Men Chhay to be appointed as Acting Party secretary in the Eastern Zone, but this was rejected by Pol Pot.

Ieng Sary

Ieng Sary's Brief Biography

Kim Trang is Ieng Sary’s original name. Sou Hav and Comrade Vann were his revolutionary names. His Khmer Krom name is Penh. Ieng Sary was born in 1930 in Tra Ninh province, Vietnam. His wife is Ieng Thirith. He has three daughters and a son.
Today, his niece occupies his birth house.
We met Ieng Sary's nephew, named Thach Vutha (son of Ieng Sary’s older sister) and his wife Him.
According to Vutha, Ieng Sary's father is Kim Riem, a Khmer Krom native, and his mother is Tran Thi Loi, a Chinese immigrant who came to Vietnam with her parents when she was a child. Due to illness, Kim Riem is blind in one eye.
Ieng Sary is the youngest of three children. His brother Kim Chau, the oldest, worked as the chief of Orussey market during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime. About 1980, Chau and his family fled to Florida in the United States. His older sister Kim Thi Cau and her husband Thach Song passed away, leaving behind seven children. One died of illness, three live in Cambodia, and three live in Vietnam.
Ieng Sary visited his home village in Vietnam once before he studied in France. His older sister-in-law, Thach Song, sold 200 Tang [4 tonnes] of rice to back Ieng Sary's financial needs for his study in France.
Ieng Sary's mother missed him very much and always asked about him, while Ieng Sary never let his family know about his condition or visited his home village again.
Vutha revealed that around 1976 the Vietnamese government donated milk, tea, sugar, and other food supplies five or six times to Ieng Sary's family, but from 1977 they never did so.
In 1960, Ieng Sary taught history and geography at Kampuch Botr School which was directed by Hou Yun. In 1963, he fled to a northeastern jungle in Kampong Cham, where he built up force. In 1970, he traveled to Vietnam to establish cooperation with Vietnam. In 1972, he became the commander in chief of northeastern zone’s military. From 1971 to 1972, he and his wife made contacts with Khmers in Vietnam. In 1973, he worked in a secret office of the party in suburb of Hanoi. In 1975, he became a member of the People’s Revolutionary Party. In September 1975, he was a member of the central committee. On 9 October 1975, he was responsible for “foreign affairs of the party and the state.” On 30 March 1976, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister, in charge of Foreign Affairs.
After having power in their hands, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary and a handful of other leaders caused the death of millions of people.
Kim Keo Kanitha, Choung Sphearith and Long Dany

Nuon Chea

The original name of Nuon Chea is Long Rith. In the Khmer Rouge time, Nuon Chea was generally referred to by the cadre as “Brother” Nuon or “Uncle” Nuon. Some other called him “Ta Pra Hok” (“the old fish-paste man”), as he apparently liked fish paste. Nuon Chea’s birth date remains unknown. However, it is public knowledge that he was born in Battambang Province and went to Thammassat University in Thailand in 1945. In Bangkok, Nuon Chea was a member of The Communist Party of Thailand. In 1951, he was appointed minister of the economy in the United Issarak Front. In 1954, he attended a training course in Hanoi, Vietnam. Some evidence indicates that in 1976, Nuon Chea was appointed as Prime Minister in the Khmer Rouge regime, with Pol Pot taking over the position in October of that year. Nuon Chea was a fullrights member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and its Standing Committee. It is this latter committee that determined the policies of the Khmer Rouge regime that took the lives of millions of people. A number of documents reveal that the policy set for implementation in the bases had to be informed, supported and approved by the Standing Committee. Following are several documentary examples of this fact:
A. Telegram Number 2, dated October 12, 1976, states: “Dear beloved Brother Nuon, we have received your telegram, which included all instructions...with warm revolutionary fraternity, Comrade Laing.”
B. The minutes of a meeting between Comrade Tall, Division 290 and Division 170, dated September 16, 1976, at 16:15 hours, include the following:
“Comrade Duch’s comment: After the meeting, comrade Sokh and comrade Tall reached an agreement proposing [to arrest] 29 persons more...The proposed names come from a decision made by S-21 and Division 170. The number doesn’t include the 11 persons proposed in a meeting held on September 15. Based on the reason confirmed by S-21, the observations of the Division that has witnessed subsequent activities, and on the principles of Angkar...the meeting decides to take the names of [the] 29 persons...[We] must carry out on the basis of our experience, according to which we have subsequently arrested these types of persons. Avoid the situation of chaos in the unit, grasp the unit firmly and keep it secret.

Khieu Samphan

Brief Biography of Khieu Samphan

Khieu Samphan’s revolutionary name was comrade Hem; he was also known as Ta Chhun and Ta Hong. He was born to Khmer-Chinese parents in 1929 (the year of the snake) in Koh Sotin District, Kampong Cham Province, Region 22, Eastern Zone. Khieu Samphan completed his coursework for a doctorate degree in political economy in Paris and obtained his degree in 1959 after he had returned to Cambodia. In Cambodia, Khieu Samphan served as a minister in King Norodom Sihanouk’s government from 1950 to 1960. During this period, he also took a job as a French language teacher, and in 1954, established a newspaper called Observateur. In mid-1960, he made a declaration provoking a struggle for the restitution of the land known as Kampuchea Kroam from Vietnam, and in August of that year, was arrested for being a “Khmer Rouge.” In the 1966 national elections, he became a people’s representative from Kandal Province. After the Sihanouk government issued a warrant for his arrest on April 24, 1967, Khieu Samphan escaped to the jungle together with Hou Yuon and Hu Nim. All three were wanted for their association with left-leaning groups. Khieu Samphan chaired a two-week meeting held in July 1971 at Pol Pot’s head office in the Northern Zone. The main item on the meeting’s agenda was to discuss whether “King Norodom Sihanouk should be permitted to join the struggle movement.” At a party meeting in 1974, Khieu Samphan expressed his support for the idea of evacuating the residents of Phnom Penh. On October 9, 1975, he attended the “Meeting of the Standing Committee,” which discussed “task assignments.” At the meeting he was appointed to be responsible for the fronts and for the commercial sector areas of inventory and the fixed pricing of produce. Khieu Samphan participated in another meeting, the “Local Tasks Meeting,” on March 8, 1976, where the March 20, 1976 election and the situations in “106 and 103, Northern [Zone]” were discussed. On March 30, 1976, the Central Committee made a decision to appoint Khieu Samphan as the president of the state presidium. He was then appointed as a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in mid-1976. According to a speech given by Ieng Sary in 1977, Khieu Samphan was appointed to replace comrade Doeun as the chief of Office 870. This office was under the direction of the CPK’s Central Committee.