Pol Pot Was Responsible For 'Killing Fields'
"Saloth Sar" better known as Pol Pot, was the leader of the Cambodian Communist movement known as the Khmer Rougeand was Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976–1979. Pol Pot's leadership, in which he attempted to "cleanse" the country, resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7–2.5 million people.
Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia in mid-1975. During his time in power, Pol Pot imposed a version of Agrarian Socialism. April 17th, 1975 he began forcing urban dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects, toward a goal of "restarting civilization" in a "Year Zero". The combined effects of forced labor, malnutrition, poor medical care and executions resulted in the deaths of approximately 21% of the Cambodian population.
In 1979, after the invasion of Cambodia by neighboring Vietnam in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, Pol Pot fled into the jungles of southwest Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed. From 1979 to 1997 he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated from the border region of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung to power, with nominal United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot was held under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge. On the evening of April 15, 1998 Pol was listening to his favorite radio program "Voice of America" when it was announced that the Khmer Rouge had agreed to turn him over to an international tribunal. According to his wife, he died in his bed later in the night while waiting to be moved to another location.
Ta Mok claimed that his death was due to heart failure. Despite the government requests to inspect the body, he had been cremated a few days later at Anlong Veng in the Khmer Rouge zone, raising strong suspicions that he committed suicide or was poisoned.
President Richard Nixon had taken the blame for the Cambodian airstrikes that killed 200,000 men, women & children in Phnom Penh. It was widely believed that for this atrocity he should be impeached but it was a charge he vehemently denied; he ultimately resigned from office for the "Watergate" scandal. President Nixon swore he did not authorize the Cambodian bombings until his death.
In 2000, President Clinton unsealed the official records of our involvement in the Cambodian bombings and it proved that President Lyndon Baines Johnson ordered "Operation Menu" in 1969; a full four years before the American public ever knew. I have read so many postings on IMDB on this movie that I felt compelled to write some of the history that was never taught to us in school and to name Pol Pot as the leader of Cambodia. I also wanted to correctly lay the blame where in squarely belongs on LBJ not Richard M Nixon.
Great movie and a great cast. One cast member in particular, Spaulding Gray, was never the same again after being there and wrote a play called "Swimming to Cambodia" which was a major success. He penned 3 other plays and performed them all as documentaries and I for one was moved by all of them and in particular by him. He suffered depression and Bi-Polar tendencies his adult life and on January 10th 2004 he went missing he was found in the East River on March 7th 2004 and it is believed he jumped off the side of The Staten Island Ferry to commit suicide. How very sad he must have been......