Pol Pot's Really Dead
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SUSAN STAMBERG, HOST: This is MORNING EDITION. I'm Susan Stamberg in for Bob Edwards.
Pol Pot, the former leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, is dead.
Pol Pot led a movement that killed, starved or worked to death some two million people between 1975 and 1979. After a power struggle last year, he was put under house arrest, and his followers have been on the run in recent months in the jungles of the Thailand-Cambodia border. And it is there that he died last night.
Nate Thayer is on the line with us from the Thai-Cambodian border. Mr. Thayer reports for the Far Eastern Economic Review.
You were shown a body today. And people claim that it is the body of Pol Pot. Tell us -- describe the scene for us.
NATE THAYER, REPORTER, FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW: Well, there is no question that Pol Pot died. He died last night. He died apparently of heart failure as the direct cause, but also clearly contributing causes of fleeing through the jungles for the last 20 days as the government has taken much of the Khmer Rouge area. We were brought to Pol Pot's house. Pol Pot was lying in a bed, a very spartan room. He had some very crude temporary embalming techniques. And he was dead. There's no question that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge for the last 38 years, died about 16 hours ago.
STAMBERG: Who was it who brought you to that house?
THAYER: We were brought into the jungles of northern Cambodia, into some of the last jungle enclaves of the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. We were met and spent several hours with Ta Mok, the leader of the rump of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces. It was his soldiers who brought us to the house of Pol Pot, a house that was surrounded by mine fields. It had newly dug trenches.
There was heavy fighting going on near -- in nearby front lines. And we met both his wife and his daughter and saw the body of Pol Pot, which is -- will be cremated, they say, in about 48 hours.
STAMBERG: What was -- what's the last time that you saw Pol Pot, Mr. Thayer? THAYER: A few months ago, I was the journalist who attended the people's tribunal of Pol Pot when he was purged because of internal disputes last July. I then interviewed him at length several months ago and then again went in just a number of weeks ago. We knew Pol Pot was very sick. Clearly, the trauma of the advancing government forces, which had forced the Khmer Rouge out of their productive zones and into these very rugged jungles and mountain escarpments along the Thai border, probably was a significant contributing factor to Pol Pot's demise last night, which is claimed to be through heart disease. His wife told us that he was feeling dizzy and laid down, and he -- she heard him gasp and went over, and when she touched him he was dead. And that was at 10:45 p.m. Cambodian time last night, about 16 hours ago.
STAMBERG: And dead at the age of 73. How would you describe what Pol Pot's legacy is, Mr. Thayer?
THAYER: Well, there's no question that Pol Pot caused unspeakable suffering to millions of people who didn't deserve it.
And there's no question that his death leaves really many unanswered historical questions as well. He went to his grave believing that he had contributed more to his country than the suffering that he inflicted. Pol Pot was considered to be a patriot and a nationalist fighting a historical enemy by those who supported him. And he refused to the end to take responsibility for the terrible, terrible reign of three years in the late 1970s that crippled his country, the effects we still see today.
STAMBERG: Thank you very much, sir.
Nate Thayer of the "Far Eastern Economic Review," speaking with us from the Thai-Cambodian border.
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