Buchenwald concentration camp was not an extermination camp, though it was responsible for a vast number of deaths

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group",^[1] though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars.^[2] While a precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."^[3].

The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history,^[3] but it was not until Raphael Lemkin coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials that the United Nations agreed to the CPPCG which defined the crime of genocide under international law.

During a video interview with Raphael Lemkin, the interviewer asked him about how he came to be interested in this genocide. He replied; "I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times. First to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action."^[4][5]

There was a gap of more than forty years between the CPPCG coming into force and the first prosecution under the provisions of the treaty. To date all international prosecutions of genocide, the Rwandan Genocide and the Srebrenica Genocide, have been by ad hoc international tribunals.^[6] The International Criminal Court came into existence in 2002 and it has the authority to try people from the states that have signed the treaty, but to date it has not tried anyone.

Since the CPPCG came into effect in January 1951 about 80 member states of the United Nations have passed legislation that incorporates the provisions of the CPPCG into their domestic law, and some perpetrators of genocide have been found guilty under such municipal laws, such as Nikola Jorgic, who was found guilty of genocide in Bosnia by a German court (Jorgic v. Germany).

Critics of the CPPCG point to the narrow definition of the groups that are protected under the treaty, particularly the lack of protection for political groups for what has been termed politicide (politicide is included as genocide under some municipal jurisdictions).^[7] One of the problems was that until there was a body of case law from prosecutions, the precise definition of what the treaty meant had not been tested in court, for example, what precisely does the term "in part" mean? As more perpetrators are tried under international tribunals and municipal court cases, a body of legal arguments and legal interpretations are helping to address these issues.

The exclusion of political groups and politically motivated violence from the international definition of genocide is particularly controversial. The reason for this exclusion is because a number of UN member nations insisted on it when the Genocide Convention was being drafted in 1948. They argued that political groups are too vaguely defined, as well as temporary and unstable. They further held that international law should not seek to regulate or limit political conflicts, since that would give the UN too much power to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations.^[8] In the years since then, critics have argued that the exclusion of political groups from the definition, as well as the lack of a specific reference to the destruction of a social group through the forcible removal of a population, was designed to protect the Soviet Union and the Western Allies from possible accusations of genocide in the wake of World War II.^[9][10][11]

Another criticism of the CPPCG is that when its provisions have been invoked by the United Nations Security Council, they have only been invoked to punish those who have already committed genocide and have left a paper trail. It was this criticism that led to the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1674 by the United Nations Security Council on 28 April 2006 commits the Council to action to protect civilians in armed conflict and to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Genocide scholars such as Gregory Stanton have postulated that conditions and acts that often occur before, during, and after genocide—such as dehumanization of victim groups, strong organization of genocidal groups, and denial of genocide by its perpetrators—can be identified and actions taken to stop genocides before they happen. Critics of this approach such as Dirk Moses assert that this is unrealistic and that, for example, "Darfur will end when it suits the great powers that have a stake in the region".

Etymology[link]

The origin of the word genocide

The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, in 1944, firstly from the Greek root γένος génos (birth, race, stock, kind); secondly from Latin -cidium (cutting, killing) via French -cide.^[12][13]

In 1933 Lemkin wrote a proposal on the "crime of barbarity" to be presented to the Legal Council of the League of Nations in Madrid. This was his first formal attempt at creating a law against what he would later call genocide. Lemkin used as illustrations the experience of the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman government (Armenian Genocide) of its Christian population during the First World War^[14][15] and the renewed round of anti-Assyrian persecution in Iraq.^[16] His proposal failed, and his work incurred the disapproval of the Polish government, which was at the time pursuing a policy of conciliation with Nazi Germany.

In 1944, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published Lemkin's most important work, entitled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, in the United States. This book included an extensive legal analysis of German rule in countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the course of World War II, along with the definition of the term genocide ("the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group").^[17]

Lemkin's idea of genocide as an offense against international law was widely accepted by the international community and was one of the legal bases of the Nuremberg Trials (the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders specifies in Count 3 that the defendants "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide—namely, the extermination of racial and national groups..."^[18]) Lemkin presented a draft resolution for a Genocide Convention treaty to a number of countries in an effort to persuade them to sponsor the resolution. With the support of the United States, the resolution was placed before the General Assembly for consideration. In 1943, Lemkin wrote:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.^[13]

Genocide as a crime[link]

International law[link]

In the wake of the Holocaust, Lemkin successfully campaigned for the universal acceptance of international laws defining and forbidding genocide. In 1946, the first session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that "affirmed" that genocide was a crime under international law, but did not provide a legal definition of the crime. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which legally defined the crime of genocide for the first time.^[19]

The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). It contains an internationally-recognized definition of genocide which was incorporated into the national criminal legislation of many countries, and was also adopted by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide:

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II

The first draft of the Convention included political killings, but the USSR^[20] along with some other nations would not accept that actions against groups identified as holding similar political opinions or social status would constitute genocide,^[21] so these stipulations were subsequently removed in a political and diplomatic compromise.

The Convention was manifestly adopted for humanitarian and civilizing purposes. Its objectives are to safeguard the very existence of certain human groups and to affirm and emphasize the most elementary principles of humanity and morality. In view of the rights involved, the legal obligations to refrain from genocide are recognized as erga omnes.
When the Convention was drafted, it was already envisaged that it would apply not only to then existing forms of genocide, but also "to any method that might be evolved in the future with a view to destroying the physical existence of a group".^[22] As emphasized in the preamble to the Convention, genocide has marred all periods of history, and it is this very tragic recognition that gives the concept its historical evolutionary nature.
The Convention must be interpreted in good faith, in accordance with the ordinary meaning of its terms, in their context, and in the light of its object and purpose. Moreover, the text of the Convention should be interpreted in such a way that a reason and a meaning can be attributed to every word. No word or provision may be disregarded or treated as superfluous, unless this is absolutely necessary to give effect to the terms read as a whole.^[23]
Genocide is a crime under international law regardless of "whether committed in time of peace or in time of war" (art. I). Thus, irrespective of the context in which it occurs (for example, peace time, internal strife, international armed conflict or whatever the general overall situation) genocide is a punishable international crime.

— UN Commission of Experts that examined violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.^[24]

Intent to destroy[link]

In 2007 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), noted in its judgement on Jorgic v. Germany case that in 1992 the majority of legal scholars took the narrow view that "intent to destroy" in the CPPCG meant the intended physical-biological destruction of the protected group and that this was still the majority opinion. But the ECHR also noted that a minority took a broader view and did not consider biological-physical destruction was necessary as the intent to destroy a national, racial, religious or ethnical group was enough to qualify as genocide.^[25]

In the same judgement the ECHR reviewed the judgements of several international and municipal courts judgements. It noted that International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice had agreed with the narrow interpretation, that biological-physical destruction was necessary for an act to qualify as genocide. The ECHR also noted that at the time of its judgement, apart from courts in Germany which had taken a broad view, that there had been few cases of genocide under other Convention States municipal laws and that "There are no reported cases in which the courts of these States have defined the type of group destruction the perpetrator must have intended in order to be found guilty of genocide".^[26]

In part[link]

The phrase "in whole or in part" has been subject to much discussion by scholars of international humanitarian law.^[2] The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Trial Chamber I – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2001) ICTY8 (2 August 2001)^[27] that Genocide had been committed. In Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Appeals Chamber – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2004) ICTY 7 (19 April 2004)^[28] paragraphs 8, 9, 10, and 11 addressed the issue of in part and found that "the part must be a substantial part of that group. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole." The Appeals Chamber goes into details of other cases and the opinions of respected commentators on the Genocide Convention to explain how they came to this conclusion.

The judges continue in paragraph 12, "The determination of when the targeted part is substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of considerations. The numeric size of the targeted part of the group is the necessary and important starting point, though not in all cases the ending point of the inquiry. The number of individuals targeted should be evaluated not only in absolute terms, but also in relation to the overall size of the entire group. In addition to the numeric size of the targeted portion, its prominence within the group can be a useful consideration. If a specific part of the group is emblematic of the overall group, or is essential to its survival, that may support a finding that the part qualifies as substantial within the meaning of Article 4 [of the Tribunal's Statute]."^[29][30]

In paragraph 13 the judges raise the issue of the perpetrators' access to the victims: "The historical examples of genocide also suggest that the area of the perpetrators’ activity and control, as well as the possible extent of their reach, should be considered. ... The intent to destroy formed by a perpetrator of genocide will always be limited by the opportunity presented to him. While this factor alone will not indicate whether the targeted group is substantial, it can—in combination with other factors—inform the analysis."^[28]

CPPCG coming into force[link]

After the minimum 20 countries became parties to the Convention, it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951. At that time however, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) were parties to the treaty: France and the Republic of China. Eventually the Soviet Union ratified in 1954, the United Kingdom in 1970, the People's Republic of China in 1983 (having replaced the Taiwan-based Republic of China on the UNSC in 1971), and the United States in 1988. This long delay in support for the Genocide Convention by the world's most powerful nations caused the Convention to languish for over four decades. Only in the 1990s did the international law on the crime of genocide begin to be enforced.

Security Council responsibility to protect[link]

UN Security Council Resolution 1674, adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 28 April 2006, "reaffirms the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document regarding the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity".^[31] The resolution committed the Council to action to protect civilians in armed conflict.^[32]

Municipal law[link]

Since the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) came into effect in January 1951 about 80 member states of the United Nations have passed legislation that incorporates the provisions of the CPPCG into their municipal law.

Criticisms of the CPPCG and other definitions of genocide[link]

William Schabas has suggested that a permanent body as recommended by the Whitaker Report to monitor the implementation of the Genocide Convention, and require States to issue reports on their compliance with the convention (such as were incorporated into the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture), would make the convention more effective.^[33]

Writing in 1998 Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Björnson stated that the CPPCG was a legal instrument resulting from a diplomatic compromise. As such the wording of the treaty is not intended to be a definition suitable as a research tool, and although it is used for this purpose, as it has an international legal credibility that others lack, other definitions have also been postulated. Jonassohn and Björnson go on to say that none of these alternative definitions have gained widespread support for various reasons.^[34]

Jonassohn and Björnson postulate that the major reason why no single generally accepted genocide definition has emerged is because academics have adjusted their focus to emphasise different periods and have found it expedient to use slightly different definitions to help them interpret events. For example Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn studied the whole of human history, while Leo Kuper and R. J. Rummel in their more recent works concentrated on the 20th century, and Helen Fein, Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr have looked at post World War II events. Jonassohn and Björnson are critical of some of these studies arguing that they are too expansive and concludes that the academic discipline of genocide studies is too young to have a canon of work on which to build an academic paradigm.^[34]

The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in the CPPCG legal definition has been criticized by some historians and sociologists, for example M. Hassan Kakar in his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982^[35] argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted,^[36] and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator and quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: "Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator."^[37] While there are various definitions of the term, Adam Jones states that the majority of genocide scholars consider that "intent to destroy" is a requirement for any act to be labelled genocide, and that there is growing agreement on the inclusion of the physical destruction criterion.^[38]

Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr defined genocide as "the promotion and execution of policies by a state or its agents which result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a group ...[when] the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality."^[39] Harff and Gurr also differentiate between genocides and politicides by the characteristics by which members of a group are identified by the state. In genocides, the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality. In politicides the victim groups are defined primarily in terms of their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups.^[40][41] Daniel D. Polsby and Don B. Kates, Jr. state that "... we follow Harff's distinction between genocides and 'pogroms,' which she describes as 'short-lived outbursts by mobs, which, although often condoned by authorities, rarely persist.' If the violence persists for long enough, however, Harff argues, the distinction between condonation and complicity collapses."^[42][43]

According to R. J. Rummel, genocide has 3 different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes non-killings that in the end eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. It is to avoid confusion regarding what meaning is intended that Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.^[44]

A major criticism of the international community's response to the Rwandan Genocide was that it was reactive, not proactive. The international community has developed a mechanism for prosecuting the perpetrators of genocide but has not developed the will or the mechanisms for intervening in a genocide as it happens. Critics point to the Darfur conflict and suggest that if anyone is found guilty of genocide after the conflict either by prosecutions brought in the International Criminal Court or in an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal, this will confirm this perception.^{[citation needed]}

International prosecution of genocide[link]

By ad hoc tribunals[link]

All signatories to the CPPCG are required to prevent and punish acts of genocide, both in peace and wartime, though some barriers make this enforcement difficult. In particular, some of the signatories—namely, Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia—signed with the proviso that no claim of genocide could be brought against them at the International Court of Justice without their consent.^[45] Despite official protests from other signatories (notably Cyprus and Norway) on the ethics and legal standing of these reservations, the immunity from prosecution they grant has been invoked from time to time, as when the United States refused to allow a charge of genocide brought against it by Yugoslavia following the 1999 Kosovo War.^[46]

It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish for prosecution, because a chain of accountability must be established. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily because the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.

Nuremberg Tribunal (1945–1946)[link]

Because the universal acceptance of international laws, defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), those criminals who were prosecuted after the war in international courts, for taking part in the Holocaust were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other more specific crimes like murder. Nevertheless the Holocaust is universally recognized to have been a genocide and the term, that had been coined the year before by Raphael Lemkin,^[47] appeared in the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders, Count 3, stated that all the defendants had "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide—namely, the extermination of racial and national groups..."^[48]

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1993 to present (2014 is the scheduled end date))[link]

The cemetery at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery to Genocide Victims

The term Bosnian Genocide is used to refer either to the genocide committed by Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995,^[49] or to ethnic cleansing that took place during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War (an interpretation rejected by a majority of scholars).^[50]

In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judged that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide.^[51]

On 26 February 2007 the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the Bosnian Genocide Case upheld the ICTY's earlier finding that the Srebrenica massacre constituted genocide, but found that the Serbian government had not participated in a wider genocide on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war, as the Bosnian government had claimed.^[52]

On 12 July 2007, European Court of Human Rights when dismissing the appeal by Nikola Jorgic against his conviction for genocide by a German court (Jorgic v. Germany) noted that the German courts wider interpretation of genocide has since been rejected by international courts considering similar cases.^[53][54][55] The ECHR also noted that in the 21st century "Amongst scholars, the majority have taken the view that ethnic cleansing, in the way in which it was carried out by the Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to expel Muslims and Croats from their homes, did not constitute genocide. However, there are also a considerable number of scholars who have suggested that these acts did amount to genocide"^[56]

About 30 people have been indicted for participating in genocide or complicity in genocide during the early 1990s in Bosnia. To date after several plea bargains and some convictions that were successfully challenged on appeal two men, Vujadin Popović and Ljubiša Beara, have been found guilty of genocide, and two others, Radislav Krstic and Drago Nikolic, have been found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide. Three others have been found guilty of participating in genocides in Bosnia by German courts, one of whom Nikola Jorgic lost an appeal against his conviction in the European Court of Human Rights. A further eight men, former members of the Bosnian Serb security forces were found guilty of genocide by the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (See List of Bosnian genocide prosecutions).

Slobodan Milosevic, as the former President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia was the most senior political figure to stand trial at the ICTY. He died on 11 March 2006 during his trial where he was accused of genocide or complicity in genocide in territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina, so no verdict was returned. In 1995 the ICTY issued a warrant for the arrest of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic on several charges including genocide. On 21 July 2008, Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade, and he is currently in The Hague on trial accused of genocide among other crimes.^[57] Ratko Mladic was arrested on 26 May 2011 by Serbian special police in Lazarevo, Serbia.^[58]

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1994 to present (2012 is the scheduled end date))[link]

Rwandan Genocide Victims

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda during the genocide which occurred there during April, 1994, commencing on 6 April. The ICTR was created on 8 November 1994 by the Security Council of the United Nations in order to judge those people responsible for the acts of genocide and other serious violations of the international law performed in the territory of Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994.

So far, the ICTR has finished nineteen trials and convicted twenty seven accused persons. On 14 December 2009 two more men were accused and convicted for their crimes. Another twenty five persons are still on trial. Twenty-one are awaiting trial in detention, two more added on 14 December 2009. Ten are still at large.^[59] The first trial, of Jean-Paul Akayesu, began in 1997. In October, 1998, Akayesu was sentenced to life imprisonment. Jean Kambanda, interim Prime Minister, pled guilty.

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (2003 to present)[link]

Skulls in the Choeung Ek.

The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, Ta Mok and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups. The total number of victims is estimated at approximately 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975–1979, including deaths from slave labour.^[60]

On 6 June 2003 the Cambodian government and the United Nations reached an agreement to set up the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) which would focus exclusively on crimes committed by the most senior Khmer Rouge officials during the period of Khmer Rouge rule of 1975–1979.^[61] The judges were sworn in early July 2006.^[62][63][64]

The investigating judges were presented with the names of five possible suspects by the prosecution on 18 July 2007.^[62][65]

• Kang Kek Iew was formally charged with war crime and crimes against humanity and detained by the Tribunal on 31 July 2007. He was indicted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity on 12 August 2008..^[66] His appeal against his conviction for war crimes and crimes against humanity was rejected on 3 February 2012, and he is serving a sentence of life imprisonment.^[67]
• Nuon Chea, a former prime minister, who was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010. He was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 19 September 2007. His trial, which is ongoing, started on 27 June 2011.^[68][69]
• Khieu Samphan, a former head of state, who was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010. He was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 19 September 2007. His trial, which is ongoing, started on 27 June 2011.^[68][69]
• Ieng Sary, a former foreign minister, who was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010. He was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 12 November 2007. His trial, which is ongoing, started on 27 June 2011.^[68][69]
• Ieng Thirith, wife of Ieng Sary and a former minister for social affairs, who was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and several other crimes under Cambodian law on 15 September 2010. She was transferred into the custody of the ECCC on 12 November 2007. Proceedings against her have been suspended pending a health evaluation.^[70][69]

There has been disagreement between some of the international jurists and the Cambodian government over whether any other people should be tried by the Tribunal.^[65]

By the International Criminal Court[link]

To date all international prosecutions for genocide have been brought in specially convened international tribunals. Since 2002, the International Criminal Court can exercise its jurisdiction if national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute genocide, thus being a "court of last resort," leaving the primary responsibility to exercise jurisdiction over alleged criminals to individual states. Due to the United States concerns over the ICC, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.^[71]

Darfur, Sudan[link]

A mother with her sick baby at Abu Shouk IDP camp in North Darfur

There has been much debate over categorizing the situation in Darfur as genocide.^[72] The on-going conflict in Darfur, Sudan, which started in 2003, was declared a "genocide" by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on 9 September 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.^[73] Since that time however, no other permanent member of the UN Security Council followed suit. In fact, in January 2005, an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, issued a report to the Secretary-General stating that "the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide."^[74] Nevertheless, the Commission cautioned that "The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide."^[74]

In March 2005, the Security Council formally referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, taking into account the Commission report but without mentioning any specific crimes.^[75] Two permanent members of the Security Council, the United States and China, abstained from the vote on the referral resolution.^[76] As of his fourth report to the Security Council, the Prosecutor has found "reasonable grounds to believe that the individuals identified [in the UN Security Council Resolution 1593] have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes," but did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute for genocide.^[77]

In April 2007, the Judges of the ICC issued arrest warrants against the former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmad Harun, and a Militia Janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.^[78]

On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC), filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC's prosecutors claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity.

On 4 March 2009, the ICC issued a warrant of arrest for Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan as the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I concluded that his position as head of state does not grant him immunity against prosecution before the ICC. The warrant was for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It did not include the crime of genocide because the majority of the Chamber did not find that the prosecutors had provided enough evidence to include such a charge.^[79]

Genocide in history[link]

Naked Soviet POWs in Mauthausen concentration camp. "... the murder of at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs is one of the least-known of modern genocides; there is still no full-length book on the subject in English." —Adam Jones^[80]

The preamble to the CPPCG states that "genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world," and that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity."

In many cases where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans have fiercely disputed such an interpretation and the details of the event. This often leads to the promotion of vastly different versions of the event in question.

Revisionist attempts to deny or challenge claims of genocides are illegal in some countries. For example, several European countries ban denying the Holocaust, whilst in Turkey it is illegal to refer to mass killings of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians by the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the First World War as a genocide.

The 'Age of Totalitarianism' included nearly all of the infamous examples of genocide in modern history, headed by the Jewish Holocaust, but also comprising the mass murders and purges of the Communist world, other mass killings carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies, and also the Armenian genocide of 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin, the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government of much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result of the First World War, without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots.

— William Rubinstein, Genocide: a history^[81]

Stages of genocide, influences leading to genocide, and efforts to prevent it[link]

For genocide to happen, there must be certain preconditions. Foremost among them is a national culture that does not place a high value on human life. A totalitarian society, with its assumed superior ideology, is also a precondition for genocidal acts.^[82] In addition, members of the dominant society must perceive their potential victims as less than fully human: as "pagans," "savages," "uncouth barbarians," "unbelievers," "effete degenerates," "ritual outlaws," "racial inferiors," "class antagonists," "counterrevolutionaries," and so on.^[83] In themselves, these conditions are not enough for the perpetrators to commit genocide. To do that—that is, to commit genocide—the perpetrators need a strong, centralized authority and bureaucratic organization as well as pathological individuals and criminals. Also required is a campaign of vilification and dehumanization of the victims by the perpetrators, who are usually new states or new regimes attempting to impose conformity to a new ideology and its model of society.^[82]

— M. Hassan Kakar^[84]

In 1996 Gregory Stanton, the president of Genocide Watch, presented a briefing paper called "The 8 Stages of Genocide" at the United States Department of State.^[85] In it he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are "predictable but not inexorable".^[85][86]

The Stanton paper was presented at the State Department, shortly after the Rwanda genocide and much of the analysis is based on why that genocide occurred. The preventative measures suggested, given the original target audience, were those that the United States could implement directly or use their influence on other governments to have implemented.

In April of 2012, it was reported that Stanton would soon be officially adding two new stages, Discrimination and Persecution, to his original theory, which would make for a 10-stage theory of genocide.^[87]

In a paper for the Social Science Research Council Dirk Moses criticises the Stanton approach concluding:

In view of this rather poor record of ending genocide, the question needs to be asked why the "genocide studies" paradigm cannot predict and prevent genocides with any accuracy and reliability. The paradigm of "genocide studies," as currently constituted in North America in particular, has both strengths and limitations. While the moral fervor and public activism is admirable and salutary, the paradigm appears blind to its own implication in imperial projects that are themselves as much part of the problem as they are part of the solution. The US government called Darfur a genocide to appease domestic lobbies, and because the statement cost it nothing. Darfur will end when it suits the great powers that have a stake in the region.

— Dirk Moses^[88]

Other authors have focused on the structural conditions leading up to genocide and the psychological and social processes that create an evolution toward genocide. Helen Fein^[89] showed that pre-existing anti-Semitism and systems that maintained anti-Semitic policies was related to the number of Jews killed in different European countries during the Holocaust. Ervin Staub showed that economic deterioration and political confusion and disorganization were starting points of increasing discrimination and violence in many instances of genocides and mass killing. They lead to scapegoating a group and ideologies that identified that group as an enemy. A history of devaluation of the group that becomes the victim, past violence against the group that becomes the perpetrator leading to psychological wounds, authoritarian cultures and political systems, and the passivity of internal and external witnesses (bystanders) all contribute to the probability that the violence develops into genocide.^[90] Intense conflict between groups that is unresolved, becomes intractable and violent can also lead to genocide. The conditions that lead to genocide provide guidance to early prevention, such as humanizing a devalued group,creating ideologies that embrace all groups, and activating bystander responses. There is substantial research to indicate how this can be done, but information is only slowly transformed into action.^[91]

Cultural genocide[link]

The precise definition of "cultural genocide" remains unclear. The term was proposed by lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1933 as a component to genocide, which he called "vandalism".^[92] The drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention considered the use of the term,^[93] but dropped it under strong opposition from western countries, especially the United Kingdom, who feared that too broad a definition of genocide could implicate its activity in its colonies.^[94]

See also[link]

Genocide portal

• Forensic osteology
• List of genocides
• Autogenocide
• Gendercide
• Policide
• Feticide
• Infanticide
• Eugenics

Research:

• The Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights
• International Association of Genocide Scholars

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Kakar, M. Hassan. Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0-520-08591-4.
• Lemkin, Raphael (1944). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress. Washington, D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

Further reading[link]

Articles[link]

• The Genocide in Darfur is Not What It Seems Christian Science Monitor
• (in Spanish) Aizenstatd, Najman Alexander. "Origen y Evolución del Concepto de Genocidio". Vol. 25 Revista de Derecho de la Universidad Francisco Marroquín 11 (2007). ISSN 1562-2576 [4]
• No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955 American Political Science Review. Vol. 97, No. 1. February 2003.
• Harff, B. and T. R. Gurr (1988). "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945." International Studies Quarterly 32: 359–371.
• (in Spanish) Marco, Jorge. "Genocidio y Genocide Studies: Definiciones y debates", en: Aróstegui, Julio, Marco, Jorge y Gómez Bravo, Gutmaro (coord.): "De Genocidios, Holocaustos, Exterminios...", Hispania Nova, 10 (2012). Véase [5]
• What Really Happened in Rwanda? Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam.
• Reyntjens, F. (2004). "Rwanda, Ten Years On: From Genocide to Dictatorship." African Affairs 103(411): 177–210.
• Brysk, Alison. 1994. "The Politics of Measurement: The Contested Count of the Disappeared in Argentina." Human Rights Quarterly 16: 676–92.
• Davenport, C. and P. Ball (2002). "Views to a Kill: Exploring the Implications of Source Selection in the Case of Guatemalan State Terror, 1977–1996." Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(3): 427–450.
• Krain, M. (1997). "State-Sponsored Mass Murder: A Study of the Onset and Severity of Genocides and Politicides." Journal of Conflict Resolution 41(3): 331–360.

Books[link]

• Andreopoulos, George J., ed. (1994). Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-3249-6. 
• Ball, P., P. Kobrak, and H. Spirer (1999). State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–1996: A Quantitative Reflection. Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• Chalk, Frank; Kurt Jonassohn (1990). The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-04446-1. 
• Charny, Israel W. (1 December 1999). Encyclopedia of Genocide. ABC-Clio Inc. ISBN 0-87436-928-2. 
• Conversi, Daniele (2005). "Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and nationalism". In Gerard Delanty, Krishan Kumar (eds). Handbook of Nations and Nationalism. vol. 1. London: Sage Publications. pp. 319–333. ISBN 1-4129-0101-4. 
• Corradi, Juan, Patricia Weiss Fagen, and Manuel Antonio Garreton, eds. 1992. Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Elliot, G. (1972). Twentieth Century Book of the Dead. New York, C. Scribner.
• Goldhagen, Daniel (2009). Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. PublicAffairs. pp. 672. ISBN 1-58648-769-8. 
• Harff, Barbara (August 2003). Early Warning of Communal Conflict and Genocide: Linking Empirical Research to International Responses. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-9840-1. 
• Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0-395-75924-2. 
• Horowitz, Irving (2001). Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power (5th ed.). Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0094-2. 
• Jonassohn, Kurt; Karin Björnson (1998). Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-314-6. 
• Jones, Adam (2010). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-48619-X. 
• Kelly, Michael J. (2005). Nowhere to Hide: Defeat of the Sovereign Immunity Defense for Crimes of Genocide & the Trials of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-7835-0. 
• Kiernan, Ben (2007). Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10098-1. 
• Laban, Alexander (2002). Genocide: An Anthropological Reader. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-22355-X. 
• Lemarchand, René (1996). Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-56623-1. 
• Levene, M. (2005). Genocide in the Age of the Nation State. New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
• MacKinnon, Catharine A. (2006). Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-02555-5. 
• Lewy, Guenter (2012). Essays on Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention. University of Utah Press. ISBN 978-1-60781-168-8.
• Mamdani, M. (2001). When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
• Power, Samantha (2003). "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-054164-4. 
• Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. (1999). "The Politics of Uniqueness: Reflections on the Recent Polemical Turn in Holocaust and Genocide Scholarship". Holocaust and Genocide Studies 13 (1): 28–61. DOI:10.1093/hgs/13.1.28. 
• Rotberg, Robert I.; Thomas G. Weiss (1996). From Massacres to Genocide: The Media, Public Policy, and Humanitarian Crises. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 0-8157-7590-3. 
• Rummel, R.J. (March 1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-927-6. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM. 
• Shaw, Martin (2007). What is Genocide?. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-3182-7. 
• Sunga, Lyal S. (1997). The Emerging System of International Criminal Law: Developments in Codification and Implementation. Kluwer. ISBN 90-411-0472-0. 
• Sunga, Lyal S. (1992). Individual Responsibility in International Law for Serious Human Rights Violations. Springer. ISBN 0-7923-1453-0. 
• Totten, Samuel; William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny (2008). Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (3rd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-99085-8. 
• Staub, Ervin (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. New York: Cambridge University Press. 978-0521-42214-7
• Staub, Ervin (2011). Overcoming Evil: Genocide, violent conflict and terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press. 978-0-19-538204-4
• Valentino, Benjamin A. (2004). Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3965-5. 
• Weitz, Eric D. (2003). A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. Princeton University Press. pp. 360. ISBN 0-691-12271-7. 
• "Preventing Genocide and Mass Killing: The Challenge for the United Nations" (PDF). Archived from the original on 3 July 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070703100816/http://www.minorityrights.org/admin/Download/pdf/MRGGenocideReport.pdf. PDF (366 KB), report by Minority Rights Group International, 2006
• Rummel, R. J. (1990) Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocides and Mass Murders 1917–1987, Rutgers, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
• Rummel, R. J.(1991) China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900. Rutgers, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
• Rummel, R. J.(1992) Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder. Rutgers, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
• Rummel, R. J.(1994) Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder in the Twentieth Century, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
• Rummel, R. J.(1997) Statistics of Democide. Center on National Security and Law, University of Virginia, 1997: entire. Republished by Lit Verlag, MŸster, Germany in 1998 and distributed in North America by Transaction Publishers.
• Rummel, R. J.(1997). Power Kills. New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers.
• Schmid, A. P. (1991). Repression, State Terrorism, and Genocide: Conceptual Clarifications. State Organized Terror: The Case of Violent Internal Repression. P. T. Bushnell. Boulder, Colo., Westview Press: x, 312 p.
• Van den Berghe, P. L. (1990). State Violence and Ethnicity. Niwot, Colo., University of Colorado Press.

Overviews[link]

• Institute for the Study of Genocide/International Association of Genocide Scholars
• Genocide Intervention Network
• OneWorld Perspectives Magazine: Preventing Genocide (April/May 2006)- global human rights and development network looks at genocide from a variety of perspectives
• Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Responding to Threats of Genocide
• Staff, The Crime of Genocide in Domestic Laws and Penal Codes, Prevent Genocide International
• Voices of the Holocaust—a learning resource at the British Library
• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at Law-Ref.org—fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
• Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide
• International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS)
• Genocide Watch stages of genocide
• Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity—a learning resource, highlighting the cases of Myanmar, Bosnia, the DRC, and Darfur
• Whitaker Report

Resources[link]

• Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation
• USA for UNHCR Web site

Research Programs[link]

• Centre for the Study of Genocide and Mass Violence, Sheffield, United Kingdom
• Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
• Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota
• Genocide Studies Program, Yale University
• GenoDynamics: Understanding Genocide Through Time and Space by Christian Davenport (Kroc Institute – University of Notre Dame) and Allan Stam (University of Michigan)
• Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, Concordia University
• Minorities at Risk project at the University of Maryland
• The Inforce Foundation (International Forensic Centre of Excellence), UK
• Foundation for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, Hungary

External links[link]

Look up genocide in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Genocide

• Ethnocide
• Ethnocide by Barbara Lukunka in the encyclopedia of mass violence

v t e Racism History of racism Racial Equality Proposal · Civil rights movement · The Holocaust · Racism by country · Apartheid in South Africa Racist ideologies Aryanism · Black supremacy · Kahanism · Malay supremacy · Nazism · Neo-Nazism · White supremacy Acts of racism Crime of apartheid · Hate speech · Institutional racism · Interminority racism · Racial segregation · Racist music · Scientific racism · Slavery · State racism Racial violence Ethnic cleansing · Genocide · Hate crime · Lynching · Race war Racism against groups Anti-Arabism · Anti-Armenianism · Anti-German sentiment · Anti-Irish racism · Anti-Italianism · Anti-Japanese sentiment · Anti-Korean sentiment · Anti-Mexican sentiment · Anti-Pakistan sentiment · Anti-Polish sentiment · Antisemitism · Racial antisemitism · Anti-Turkism · Anti-Ukrainian sentiment · Antiziganism · Francophobia · Hispanophobia · Indophobia · Lusophobia · Russophobia · Sinophobia · Anti-Slavism Racist groups Heathen Front · Kach and Kahane Chai · Ku Klux Klan · National Party of South Africa · New Black Panther Party · Nation of Islam · SPLC list Anti-racist groups and movements Anti-Defamation League · Anti-Fascist Action · Anti-racism · Civil rights movement · Diversity/Multiculturalism · Fighting Discrimination/Human Rights First · National Association for the Advancement of Colored People · Searchlight · Southern Poverty Law Center

Pol Pot
Pol Pot in 1978
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea
In office February 1963 – 1981 (party dissolved)
Deputy	Nuon Chea (as vice-secretary)
Preceded by	Tou Samouth
Succeeded by	None (party dissolved)
Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea
In office 14 April 1976 – 27 September 1976
President	Khieu Samphan
Preceded by	Khieu Samphan
Succeeded by	Nuon Chea
In office 25 October 1976 – January 7, 1979
President	Khieu Samphan Religion: None
Preceded by	Nuon Chea
Succeeded by	Pen Sovan
Personal details
Born	(1925-05-19)19 May 1925[1][2] Kampong Thom Province, French Indochina
Died	15 April 1998(1998-04-15) (aged 72) Anlong Veng, Kingdom of Cambodia
Political party	Communist Party of Kampuchea
Spouse(s)	1) Khieu Ponnary (div.) 2) Mea Son

This article contains Khmer text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Khmer script.

Saloth Sar (19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998),^[1][2] better known as Pol Pot (Khmer: ប៉ុល ពត), was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge^[3] from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. From 1976 to 1979, he also served as the prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia on April 17, 1975.^[4] During his time in power he imposed agrarian socialism, forcing urban dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects. The combined effects of forced labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of approximately 21% of the Cambodian population.^[5] In all, an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died as a result of the policies of his three-year premiership.^[6][7][8]

In 1979, after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed.^[9] From 1979 to 1997, he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near the border of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung to power, with nominal United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot died in 1998 while under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge. Since his death, rumours that he was poisoned have persisted.^[10]

Biography[link]

Early life (1925–61)[link]

Prek Sbauv, birthplace of Pol Pot.

Saloth Sar was born on May 19, 1925—the eighth of nine children,^[11] and the second of three sons. He was from a moderately wealthy family of Sino-Khmer descent^[12][13] living in the small fishing village of Prek Sbauv, Kampong Thom Province during the French colonialism of the area. In 1935, Sar left Prek Sbauv to attend the École Miche, a Catholic school in Phnom Penh. His sister Roeung was a concubine of King Sisowath Monivong, so he often visited the royal palace.^[14] In 1947, he gained admission to the exclusive Lycée Sisowath, but was unsuccessful in his studies.

Paris[link]

After switching to a technical school at Russey Keo, north of Phnom Penh, Saloth Sar qualified for a scholarship for technical studies in France. He studied radio electronics at the EFR in Paris from 1949 to 1953. He also participated in an international labour brigade building roads in Zagreb in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1950. After the Soviet Union recognized the Viet Minh as the government of Vietnam in 1950, French Communists (PCF) took up the cause of Vietnam's independence. The PCF's anti-colonialism views attracted many young Cambodians, including Sar.

In 1951, he joined a communist cell in a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste ("Marxist circle") which had taken control of the Khmer Student's Association (AER) that same year. Within a few months, Saloth joined the PCF. His poor academic record was a considerable advantage within the anti-intellectual PCF who saw uneducated peasants as the true proletariat.^{[citation needed]}

Return[link]

As a result of failing his exams in three successive years, Sar was forced to return to Cambodia in January 1953. He was the first member of the Cercle Marxiste to return to Cambodia. He was given the task of evaluating the various groups rebelling against the government. He recommended the Khmer Viet Minh,^{[clarification needed]} and in August 1954, Sar, along with Rath Samoeun, travelled to the Viet Minh Eastern Zone headquarters in the village of Krabao in the Kampong Cham Province/Prey Veng Province near the border of Cambodia.

Sar learned that the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) was little more than a Vietnamese front organization. Due to the 1954 Geneva peace accord, requiring all Viet Minh forces and insurgents be expelled, a group of Cambodians followed the Vietnamese back to Vietnam (as cadres Vietnam would use in a future war to liberate Cambodia). The rest, including Sar, returned to Cambodia.

After Cambodian independence following the 1954 Geneva Conference, both left and right wing parties struggled for power in the new government. Khmer King Norodom Sihanouk pitted the parties against each other while using the police and army to suppress extreme political groups. Corrupt elections in 1955 led many leftists in Cambodia to abandon hope of taking power by legal means. The communist movement, while ideologically committed to guerrilla warfare in such circumstances, did not launch a rebellion due to the party's weakness.

After his return to Phnom Penh, Sar became the liaison between the above-ground leftist parties (Democrats and Pracheachon) and the underground communist movement. He married Khieu Ponnary on July 14, 1956. She returned to Lycée Sisowath, becoming a teacher, while Sar taught French literature and history at Chamraon Vichea, a newly established private college.^[15]

The path to rebellion (1962–68)[link]

In January 1962, the Cambodian government arrested most of the leadership of the far-left Pracheachon party before parliamentary elections, which were to take place that June. Their newspapers and other publications were closed. Such measures effectively ended any legitimate political role of the communist movement in Cambodia. In July 1962, the underground communist party secretary Tou Samouth was arrested and later killed while in custody, allowing Sar to become the acting leader. At a 1963 party meeting, attended by at most 18 people, Sar was elected secretary of the party's central committee. That March, Saloth went into hiding after his name was published in a list of leftist suspects put together by the police for Norodom Sihanouk. He fled to the Vietnamese border region and made contact with Vietnamese units fighting against South Vietnam.

In early 1964, Sar convinced the Vietnamese to help the Cambodian communists set up their own base camp. The party's central committee met later that year and issued a declaration calling for armed struggle, emphasizing "self-reliance" in accordance with extreme Cambodians. In the border camps, the ideology of the Khmer Rouge was gradually developed. The party, breaking with Marxism, declared that rural peasant farmers were the true working class proletarian and lifeblood of the revolution. This is, in some sense, explained by the fact that none of the central committee were in any sense "working class." All of them had grown up in a feudal peasant society.

After another wave of repression by Sihanouk in 1965, the Khmer Rouge movement under Saloth grew at a rapid rate. Many teachers and students left the cities to the countryside to join the movement.

In April 1965, Sar went to North Vietnam to gain approval for an uprising in Cambodia against the government. North Vietnam refused to support any uprising due to ongoing negotiation with the Cambodian government. Sihanouk promised to allow the Vietnamese to use Cambodian territory and Cambodian ports in their war against South Vietnam.

After returning to Cambodia in 1966, Sar organized a party meeting where a number of important decisions were made. The party was officially, but secretly, renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Lower ranks of the party were not informed of the decision. It was also decided to establish command zones and prepare each region for an uprising against the government.

In early 1966, fighting broke out in the countryside between peasants and the government over the price paid for rice. Sar's Khmer Rouge was caught by surprise by the uprisings and was unable to take any real advantage of them. But the government's refusal to find a peaceful solution to the problem created rural unrest that played into the hands of the Communist movement.

It was not until early 1967 that Sar decided to launch a national uprising, even after North Vietnam refused to assist it in any meaningful way. The uprising was launched on January 18, 1968 with a raid on an army base south of Battambang. The Battambang area had already seen two years of great peasant unrest. The attack was driven off by the army, but the Khmer Rouge had captured a number of weapons, which were then used to drive police forces out of Cambodian villages.

By the summer of 1968, Sar began transitioning from a party leader working with a collective leadership, into the absolutist leader of the Khmer Rouge movement. Where before he had shared communal quarters with other leaders, he now had his own compound with a personal staff and guards. Outsiders were no longer allowed to approach him. Rather, people were summoned into his presence by his staff.

The path to power (1969–75)[link]

The movement was estimated to consist of no more than 200 regular members, but the core of the movement was supported by a number of villagers many times that size. While weapons were in short supply, the insurgency was still able to operate in twelve of nineteen districts of Cambodia. In 1969 Sar called a party conference and decided on a change in the propaganda strategy. Prior to 1969, opposition to Sihanouk was the main focus of their propaganda. However, the party decided to shift the propaganda against the right-wing parties of Cambodia and their alleged pro-American attitudes. While the party ceased making anti-Sihanouk public statements, in private the party had not changed its view of him.

The road to power for Sar and the Khmer Rouge was opened by the events of January 1970 in Cambodia. Sihanouk, while out of the country, ordered the government to stage anti-Vietnamese protests in the capital. The protesters quickly went out of control and wrecked the embassies of both North and South Vietnam. Sihanouk, who had ordered the protests, then denounced them from Paris and blamed unnamed individuals in Cambodia for them. These actions, along with intrigues by Sihanouk's followers in Cambodia, convinced the government that he should be removed as head of state. The National Assembly voted to remove Sihanouk from office. Afterward, the government closed Cambodia's ports to Vietnamese weapons traffic and demanded that the Vietnamese leave Cambodia.

The North Vietnamese reacted to the political changes in Cambodia by sending Premier Phạm Văn Đồng to meet Sihanouk in China and recruit him into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge. Sar was also contacted by the Vietnamese who now offered him whatever resources he wanted for his insurgency against the Cambodian government. Sar and Sihanouk were actually in Beijing at the same time but the Vietnamese and Chinese leaders never informed Sihanouk of the presence of Saloth or allowed the two men to meet. Shortly after, Sihanouk issued an appeal by radio to the people of Cambodia to rise up against the government and support the Khmer Rouge. In May 1970, Saloth finally returned to Cambodia and the pace of the insurgency greatly increased.

Earlier, on March 29, 1970, the Vietnamese had taken matters into their own hands and launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. A force of 50 Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within 15 miles (24 km) of Phnom Penh before being pushed back. In these battles the Khmer Rouge and Saloth played a very small role.

In October 1970, Sar issued a resolution in the name of the Central Committee. The resolution stated the principle of independence mastery which was a call for Cambodia to decide its own future independent of the influence of any other country. The resolution also included statements describing the betrayal of the Cambodian Communist movement in the 1950s by the Viet Minh. This was the first statement of the anti-Vietnamese/self sufficiency at all costs ideology that would be a part of the Pol Pot regime when it took power years later.

Through 1971, the Vietnamese (North Vietnamese and Viet Cong) did most of the fighting against the Cambodian government while Sar and the Khmer Rouge functioned almost as auxiliaries to their forces. Sar took advantage of the situation to gather in new recruits and to train them to a higher standard than previously was possible. Sar also put resources of Khmer Rouge organizations into political education and indoctrination. While accepting anyone regardless of background into the Khmer Rouge army at this time, Saloth greatly increased the requirements for membership in the party. Students and so-called middle peasants were now rejected by the party. Those with clear peasant backgrounds were the preferred recruits for party membership. These restrictions were ironic in that most of the senior party leadership including Saloth came from student and middle peasant backgrounds. They also created an intellectual split between the educated old guard party members and the uneducated peasant new party members.

In early 1972, Sar toured the insurgent/Vietnamese controlled areas in Cambodia. He saw a regular Khmer Rouge army of 35,000 men taking shape supported by around 100,000 irregulars. China was supplying five million dollars a year in weapons and Sar had organized an independent revenue source for the party in the form of rubber plantations in eastern Cambodia using forced labour.

The Khmer Rouge also used the massive U.S bombings of villages in Eastern Cambodia, where over two million tons of bombs were dropped during Operation Menu, to aid in their recruitment of members.

After a central committee meeting in May 1972, the party under the direction of Sar began to enforce new levels of discipline and conformity in areas under their control. Minorities such as the Chams were forced to conform to Cambodian styles of dress and appearance. These policies, such as forbidding the Chams from wearing jewelry, were soon extended to the whole population. A haphazard version of land reform was undertaken by Saloth. Its basis was that all land holdings should be of uniform size. The party also confiscated all private means of transportation at this time. The 1972 policies were aimed at reducing the peoples of the liberated areas to a sort of feudal peasant equality. These policies were generally favourable at the time to poor peasants and extremely unfavourable to refugees from towns who had fled to the countryside.

In 1972, the Vietnamese army forces began to withdraw from the fighting against the Cambodian government. Sar issued a new set of decrees in May 1973 which started the process of reorganizing peasant villages into cooperatives where property was jointly owned and individual possessions banned.

Control of the countryside[link]

The Khmer Rouge advanced during 1973. After they reached the edges of Phnom Penh, Sar issued orders during the peak of the rainy season that the city be taken. The orders led to futile attacks and wasted lives among the Khmer Rouge army. By the middle of 1973, the Khmer Rouge under Sar controlled almost two-thirds of the country and half the population. Vietnam realized that it no longer controlled the situation and began to treat Saloth as more of an equal leader than a junior partner.

In late 1973, Sar made strategic decisions about the future of the war. His first decision was to cut the capital off from contact from outside supply and effectively put the city under siege. The second decision was to enforce tight command on people trying to leave the city through the Khmer Rouge lines. He also ordered a series of general purges. Former government officials, along with anyone with an education, were singled out in the purges. A set of new prisons was also constructed in Khmer Rouge run areas. The Cham minority attempted an uprising to stop the destruction of their culture. The uprising was quickly crushed, Saloth ordered that harsh physical torture be used against most of those involved in the revolt. As previously, Saloth tested out harsh new policies against the Cham minority, before extending them to the general population of the country.

The Khmer Rouge also had a policy of evacuating urban areas to the countryside. When the Khmer Rouge took the town of Kratie in 1971, Saloth and other members of the party were shocked at how fast the liberated urban areas shook off socialism and went back to the old ways. Various ideas were tried to re-create the town in the image of the party, but nothing worked. In 1973, out of total frustration, Saloth decided that the only solution was to send the entire population of the town to the fields in the countryside. He wrote at the time "if the result of so many sacrifices was that the capitalists remain in control, what was the point of the revolution?". Shortly after, Sar ordered the evacuation of the 15,000 people of Kompong Cham for the same reasons. The Khmer Rouge then moved on in 1974 to evacuate the larger city of Oudong.

Internationally, Sar and the Khmer Rouge were able to gain the recognition of 63 countries as the true government of Cambodia. A move was made at the UN to give the seat for Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge, they prevailed by three votes.

In September 1974, Sar gathered the central committee of the party together. As the military campaign was moving toward a conclusion, Saloth decided to move the party toward implementing a socialist transformation of the country in the form of a series of decisions. The first being to evacuate the main cities, moving the population to the countryside. The second dictated they would cease to put money in circulation and quickly phase it out. The final decision was that the party would accept Sar's first major purge. In 1974, Saloth had purged a top party official named Prasith. Prasith was taken out into a forest and shot without any chance to defend himself. His death was followed by a purge of cadres who, like Prasith, were ethnically Thai. Sar's explanation was that the class struggle had become acute, requiring a strong stand against party enemies.

The Khmer Rouge were positioned for a final offensive against the government in January 1975. Simultaneously, at a press event in Beijing, Sihanouk proudly announced Sar's "death list" of enemies to kill after victory. The list, which originally contained seven names expanded to 23, including all the senior government leaders along with the military and police leadership. The rivalry between Vietnam and Cambodia also came out into the open. North Vietnam, as the rival socialist country in Indochina, was determined to take Saigon before the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. Shipments of weapons from China were delayed, in one instance the Cambodians were forced to sign a humiliating document thanking Vietnam for shipments of Chinese weapons.

In September 1975, the government formed a Supreme National Council with new leadership, with the aim of negotiating a surrender to the Khmer Rouge. It was headed by Sak Sutsakhan who had studied in France with Saloth, and was cousin to the Khmer Rouge Deputy Secretary Nuon Chea. Saloth reacted to this by adding the names of everyone involved to his post-victory death list. Government resistance finally collapsed on September 17, 1975.

Leader of Kampuchea (1975–79)[link]

Skulls of Khmer Rouge victims

Mass grave in Choeung Ek

The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. As the leader of the Communist Party, Saloth Sar was the designated leader of the new regime. He took the name "brother number one" and declared his nom de guerre Pol Pot. This derives from Politique potentielle, the French equivalent of a phrase supposedly coined for him by the Chinese leadership. An alternative version of the origin of Pol Pot's name is from Philip Short, who states that Saloth Sar announced that he was adopting the name in July 1970 and suspects that it is derived from pol: “the Pols were royal slaves, an aboriginal people,” and that “Pot” was simply a “euphonic monosyllable” that he liked.^[16]

A new constitution was adopted on January 5, 1976, officially altering the country's name to "Democratic Kampuchea." The newly established Representative Assembly held its first plenary meeting on April 11 – 13, electing a new government with Pol Pot as prime minister. His predecessor, Khieu Samphan was instead given the position of head of state as President of the State Presidium. Prince Sihanouk was given no role in the government and was placed under detention.

Immediately after the fall of Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge began to implement their concept of Year Zero and ordered the complete evacuation of Phnom Penh and all other recently captured major towns and cities. Those leaving were told that the evacuation was due to the threat of severe American bombing and it would last for no more than a few days.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been evacuating captured urban areas for many years, but the evacuation of Phnom Penh was unique due to its scale. The first operations to evacuate urban areas occurred in 1968 in the Ratanakiri area and were aimed at moving people deeper into Khmer Rouge territory to better control them. From 1971–1973, the motivation changed. Pol Pot and the other senior leaders were frustrated that urban Cambodians were retaining old habits of trade and business. When all other methods had failed, evacuation to the countryside was adopted to solve the problem.

In 1976, people were reclassified as full-rights (base) people, candidates and depositees – so called because they included most of the new people who had been deposited from the cities into the communes. Depositees were marked for destruction. Their rations were reduced to two bowls of rice soup, or "p'baw" per day. This led to widespread starvation. "New people" were allegedly given no place in the elections taking place on March 20, 1976, despite the fact the constitution supposedly established universal suffrage for all Cambodians over age 18.

The Khmer Rouge leadership boasted over the state-controlled radio that only one or two million people were needed to build the new agrarian communist utopia. As for the others, as their proverb put it, "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss."^[17]

Hundreds of thousands of the new people, and later the depositees, were taken out in shackles to dig their own mass graves. Then the Khmer Rouge soldiers beat them to death with iron bars and hoes, or buried them alive. A Khmer Rouge extermination prison directive ordered, "Bullets are not to be wasted." These mass graves are often referred to as The Killing Fields.

Photos of the victims of the Khmer Rouge, Tuol Sleng

The Khmer Rouge also classified people by religion and ethnic group. They banned all religion and dispersed minority groups, forbidding them to speak their languages or to practice their customs. They especially targeted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christians, Western-educated intellectuals, educated people in general, people who had contact with Western countries or with Vietnam, disabled people, and the ethnic Chinese, Laotians and Vietnamese. Some were put in the S-21 camp for interrogation involving torture in cases where a confession was useful to the government. Many others were summarily executed. Confessions forced at S-21 were extracted from prisoners through such methods as raising prisoners by their arms tied behind and dislocating shoulders, removing toenails with pliers, suffocating a prisoner repeatedly and skinning a person while alive.^[18]

According to François Ponchaud's book Cambodia: Year Zero, "Ever since 1972, the guerrilla fighters had been sending all the inhabitants of the villages and towns they occupied into the forest to live and often burning their homes, so that they would have nothing to come back to." The Khmer Rouge refused offers of humanitarian aid, a decision that caused a humanitarian catastrophe: millions died of starvation and brutal government-inflicted overwork in the countryside. To the Khmer Rouge, outside aid went against their principle of national self-reliance.

Property became collective, and education was dispensed at communal schools. Children were raised on a communal basis. Even meals were prepared and eaten communally. Pol Pot's regime was extremely paranoid. Political dissent and opposition was not permitted. People were treated as opponents based on their appearance or background. Torture was widespread, thousands of politicians and bureaucrats accused of association with previous governments were executed. Phnom Penh was turned into a ghost city, while people in the countryside were dying of starvation, illnesses, or simply killed.

U.S. officials had predicted that more than one million people would be killed by the Khmer Rouge if they took power,^[19] and President Gerald Ford had warned of "an unbelievable horror story."^[20] Different estimates as to the number killed by the Khmer Rouge regime vary from 750,000 to over three million. Analysis of 20,000 mass grave sites by the DC-Cam Mapping Program and Yale University indicate at least 1,386,734 victims.^[21] Estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.7 to 2.5 million out of a population of around 8 million.^[22][23]. A figure of 3 million deaths between 1975 and 1979 was given by the People's Republic of Kampuchea. François Ponchaud suggested 2.3 million, R.J. Rummel 2.4 million (counting democide in the civil wars), the Yale Cambodian Genocide Project 1.7 million, and Amnesty International 1.4 million. Demographer Marek Sliwinski concluded that at least 1.8 million were killed from 1975–9 on the basis of the total population decline, compared to roughly 40,000 killed by the U.S. bombing.^[24] Researcher Craig Etcheson of the Documentation Center of Cambodia suggests that the death toll was between 2 and 2.5 million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2 million. After five years of researching some 20,000 grave sites, he concludes that, "these mass graves contain the remains of 1,386,734 victims of execution."^[25] Execution is believed to have accounted for about 30–50 percent of the death toll. This would indicate 2.5 to 3 million deaths, but normal mortality over this period would have accounted for about 500,000 deaths — subtracting this from the total sum, we arrive at Etcheson's range for the number of "excess" deaths attributable to the Khmer Rouge regime.^[25] A U.N. investigation reported 2–3 million dead, while UNICEF estimated 3 million had been killed.^[26] Even the Khmer Rouge acknowledged that 2 million had been killed—though they attributed those deaths to a subsequent Vietnamese invasion.^[27] By late 1979, U.N. and Red Cross officials were warning that another 2.25 million Cambodians faced death by starvation due to “the near destruction of Cambodian society under the regime of ousted Prime Minister Pol Pot,”^[28] who were saved by American and international aid after the Vietnamese invasion. It is estimated that at least half a million more were starved to death or slaughtered after the invasion from Vietnam.^[29][30]

Pol Pot aligned the country politically with the People's Republic of China and adopted an anti-Soviet line. This alignment was more political and practical than ideological. Vietnam was aligned with the Soviet Union, so Cambodia aligned with the rival of the Soviet Union and Vietnam in Southeast Asia. China had been supplying the Khmer Rouge with weapons for years before they took power.

In December 1976, Pol Pot issued directives to the senior leadership to the effect that Vietnam was now an enemy. Defenses along the border were strengthened and unreliable deportees were moved deeper into Cambodia. Pol Pot's actions were in response to the Vietnamese Communist Party's fourth Congress, which approved a resolution describing Vietnam's special relationship with Laos and Cambodia. It also talked of how Vietnam would forever be associated with the building and defense of the other two countries.

Conflict with Vietnam[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)

In May 1975 a squad of Khmer Rouge soldiers raided and took Phu Quoc Island. By 1977, relations with Vietnam began to fall apart. There were small border clashes in January. Pol Pot tried to prevent border disputes by sending a team to Vietnam. The negotiations failed which resulted in even more border disputes. On April 30, the Cambodian army, backed by artillery, crossed over into Vietnam. In attempting to explain Pol Pot's behaviour, one region-watcher^[specify] suggested that Cambodia was attempting to intimidate Vietnam, by irrational acts, into respecting or at least fearing Cambodia to the point they would leave the country alone. However, these actions only served to anger the Vietnamese people and government against the Khmer Rouge.

In May 1976, Vietnam sent its air force into Cambodia in a series of raids. In July, Vietnam forced a Treaty of Friendship on Laos which gave Vietnam almost total control over the country. In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge commanders in the Eastern Zone began to tell their men that war with Vietnam was inevitable and that once the war started their goal would be to recover parts of Vietnam (Khmer Krom) that were once part of Cambodia, whose people, they alleged, were struggling for independence from Vietnam. It is not clear whether these statements were the official policy of Pol Pot.

In September 1977, Cambodia launched division-scale raids over the border which once again left a trail of murder and destruction in villages. The Vietnamese claimed that around 1,000 people had been killed or injured. Three days after the raid, Pol Pot officially announced the existence of the formerly secret Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and finally announced to the world that the country was a Communist state. In December, after having exhausted all other options, Vietnam sent 50,000 troops into Cambodia in what amounted to a short raid. The raid was meant to be secret. The Vietnamese withdrew after declaring they had achieved their goals, and the invasion was just a warning. Upon being threatened, the Vietnamese army promised to return with support from the Soviet Union. Pol Pot's actions made the operation much more visible than the Vietnamese had intended and created a situation in which Vietnam appeared weak.

After making one final attempt to negotiate a settlement with Cambodia, Vietnam decided that it had to prepare for a full war. Vietnam also tried to pressure Cambodia through China. However, China's refusal to pressure Cambodia and the flow of weapons from China into Cambodia were both signs that China also intended to act against Vietnam.

When Cambodian communists rebelled in the eastern zone in May 1978 Pol Pot’s armies were unable to crush them quickly. On May 10 his radio broadcast a call not only to ‘exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese’ but also to ‘purify the masses of the people’ of Cambodia. Of 1.5 million easterners, branded as ‘Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds’, at least 100,000 were exterminated in six months. Later that year, in response to threats to its borders and the Vietnamese people, Vietnam attacked Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, which Vietnam could justify on the basis of self-defense.^[31] The Cambodian army was defeated, the regime was toppled and Pol Pot fled to the Thai border area. In January 1979, Vietnam installed a new government under Heng Samrin, composed of Khmer Rouge who had fled to Vietnam to avoid the purges. Pol Pot eventually regrouped with his core supporters in the Thai border area where he received shelter and assistance. At different times during this period, he was located on both sides of the border. The military government of Thailand used the Khmer Rouge as a buffer force to keep the Vietnamese away from the border. The Thai military also made money from the shipment of weapons from China to the Khmer Rouge. Eventually Pol Pot was able to rebuild a small military force in the west of the country with the help of the People's Republic of China. The PRC also initiated the Sino-Vietnamese War around this time.

After the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by the Vietnamese in 1979, the United States and other powers^[specify] refused to allow the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government to take the seat of Cambodia at the United Nations. The seat, by default, remained in the hands of the Khmer Rouge. These countries considered that however negative allowing the Khmer Rouge to hold on to the seat was, recognising Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia was worse. Also, representatives of these countries argued^{[citation needed]} that both claimants to the seat were Khmer Rouge governments, because Vietnam's Cambodian government was formed from ex-Khmer Rouge cadres.

Nicolae Ceauşescu with Pol Pot (1978)

Pol Pot lived in the Phnom Malai area, giving interviews in the early 1980s accusing all those who opposed him of being traitors and "puppets" of the Vietnamese until he disappeared from public view. In 1985, his "retirement" was announced, but he retained influence over the party.^[32] A cadre interviewed during this period described Pol Pot's views on the death toll under his government:

He said that he knows that many people in the country hate him and think he’s responsible for the killings. He said that he knows many people died. When he said this he nearly broke down and cried. He said he must accept responsibility because the line was too far to the left, and because he didn’t keep proper track of what was going on. He said he was like the master in a house he didn’t know what the kids were up to, and that he trusted people too much. For example, he allowed [one person] to take care of central committee business for him, [another person] to take care of intellectuals, and [a third person] to take care of political education.... These were the people to whom he felt very close, and he trusted them completely. Then in the end ... they made a mess of everything.... They would tell him things that were not true, that everything was fine, that this person or that was a traitor. In the end they were the real traitors. The major problem had been cadres formed by the Vietnamese.^[33]

In December 1985, the Vietnamese launched a major offensive and overran most of the Khmer Rouge and other insurgent positions. The Khmer Rouge headquarters at Phnom Malai and its base near Pailin were completely destroyed; the Vietnamese attackers suffered substantial losses during the attack.^[34]

Pol Pot fled to Thailand where he lived for the next six years. His headquarters were a plantation villa near Trat. He was guarded by Thai Special Unit 838, though it has been argued that operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency had possibly engineered his assassination and replacement by an impostor.

Pol Pot officially resigned from the party in 1985 citing asthma as a contributing factor, but continued as the de facto Khmer Rouge leader and a dominant force within the anti-Vietnam alliance. He handed day to day power to Son Sen, his hand-picked successor. Opponents of the Khmer Rouge claimed that they were sometimes acting in an inhumane manner in territory controlled by the alliance but none of the forces fighting in Cambodia could be said to have clean hands.

In 1986, his new wife Mea Son gave birth to a daughter, Sitha, named after an experimental form of North Vietnamese cookery. Shortly after, Pol Pot moved to China for medical treatment for cancer. He remained there until 1988.

In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge established a new stronghold area in the west near the Thai border and Pol Pot relocated back into Cambodia from Thailand. Pol Pot refused to cooperate with the peace process, and kept fighting the new coalition government. The Khmer Rouge kept the government forces at bay until 1996, when troops started deserting. Several important Khmer Rouge leaders also defected. The government had a policy of making peace with Khmer Rouge individuals and groups after negotiations with the organization as a whole failed. In 1995 Pol Pot experienced a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body.