May 19, 1925 - Pol Pot
As leader of the Khmer Rouge, he oversaw a radical agrarian revolution that emptied Cambodia's cities by force, abolished currency and formal education, and subjected the population to mass executions, forced labor, and famine. In under four years, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people — a quarter of Cambodia's population — perished under his government's policies. What distinguishes his rule historically is the ideological totality of the project: the systematic dismantling of an entire society in pursuit of a agrarian utopia designated "Year Zero."
From Wikipedia
Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr; 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian politician, revolutionary, and dictator who ruled Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 until his overthrow in 1979 during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Ideologically a Maoist and Khmer ethnonationalist, Pot led Cambodia's Communist movement, known as the Khmer Rouge, which seized power in 1975 and established a one-party state under the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5–2 million people died—approximately one-quarter of the country's pre-genocide population. In December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power, ending the genocide and establishing a new Cambodian government, with the Khmer Rouge restricted to the rural hinterlands in the western part of the country. He is widely believed to be one of the most brutal despots in modern world history.
Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools. Arriving in Paris in October 1949 on an academic scholarship, he later joined the French Communist Party in 1951 while studying at the École française de radioélectricité. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he involved himself in the Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government.
- Last updated on .