Pol Pot's World Ended With a Whimper; Khmer Rouge Chief Was Sick, Friendless, Frightened of Dying
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, the architect of Cambodia's killing fields, spent his final days sick, hungry and fearful of dying, according to new details emerging from the Cambodian jungle.
He was suffering from diarrhea. He cried at the sight of the troops he once commanded collapsing along the roadside. And he could hear the sound of government artillery moving ever closer to his jungle redoubt -- sometimes forcing him and his wife to cower in a freshly dug trench just outside their small wooden hut.
A final indignity came when Pol Pot learned on the Voice of America's Cambodian language broadcast that his former colleagues were negotiating to turn him over to an international tribunal to face genocide charges. Pol Pot heard the news at 8 p.m. on April 15. Two hours and 15 minutes later, he was dead, apparently of a heart attack, his comrades and wife said. These new insights into Pol Pot's final days have emerged in a detailed article in today's Far Eastern Economic Review written by correspondent Nate Thayer, a Cambodia expert who has spent the last decade reporting on the elusive Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement and who last year became the first reporter to interview Pol Pot in nearly two decades. Thayer's account -- based on hours of interviews with Pol Pot's 40-year-old wife, Muon, and the new hard-line Khmer Rouge leader, Ta Mok -- paint an extraordinary picture of the enigmatic Pol Pot's physical and mental deterioration. Perhaps most striking is that the Khmer Rouge leader deemed responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million to 1.7 million Cambodians expressed fear about his own demise. " `My father died at 73,' " his wife quoted Pol Pot as saying. " `I am 73 now. My time is not far away.' " Ta Mok, a one-legged guerrilla commander known as "the Butcher," told Thayer: "He wanted to live. He took medicine all the time. He wanted to live. He did not want to die, but he had lost everything, and he was old." Other Khmer Rouge leaders described Pol Pot's distress recently, when he looked out the window of a four-wheel drive vehicle as he was being driven away from a jungle battlefield and saw guerrillas he once commanded lying along the road without food or shelter. "He broke down in tears," said Gen. Noun Nou, who was driving the vehicle. Muon, Pol Pot's wife, said: "He saw the people lying on the ground and he cried." Pol Pot then told her: " `My only wish is that the Cambodians stay united, so that Vietnam will not swallow our country.' " From the new accounts, Pol Pot's final days were those of a man hunted -- and clearly afraid of being caught, particularly by Cambodian government troops whom he saw as puppets of Vietnam, historically a foe of Cambodia. There was little food available once the government offensive forced the rebels from their base at Anlong Veng, said Khmer Rouge officials. "For the last few weeks he had diarrhea, and we haven't had much food because of the fighting," Ta Mok said. On April 10, five days before his death, Pol Pot dyed his gray hair black to fool Khmer Rouge troops who had mutinied and were fighting on the side of government forces. "For a person to do that, it showed real fear in his mind," Khmer Rouge military chief of staff Khem Nuon was quoted as saying. At one point, Khmer Rouge leaders, including Ta Mok, told Pol Pot that he might have to leave Cambodia, and tears reportedly welled in the former dictator's eyes. Their intention was to turn Pol Pot over to an international tribunal to gain new respectability. Khmer Rouge officials even asked Thayer's advice on how to turn over Pol Pot, since they had no contact with the United States or other Western countries or groups. Thayer suggested they approach the International Committee of the Red Cross. But Pol Pot apparently was led to believe that he would be sent into asylum overseas, not turned over for trial. It appears he discovered the truth on Wednesday, April 15, when he tuned in his shortwave radio -- one of the few possessions he had left -- to the 8 p.m. Cambodian language news broadcast of the Voice of America. "He listened to VOA every night," Khem Nuon told Thayer in an interview in the jungle, "and VOA on Wednesday reported your story at 8 p.m., that he would be turned over to an international court. We thought the shock of hearing this on VOA might have killed him." Thayer was the first journalist invited across the Cambodian border from Thailand last Thursday to see the body -- which he said seemed to wear a pained expression, with one eye shut and the other half open. But Thayer said he looked closely at the body, even poking it, and saw no outward evidence of foul play. The Khmer Rouge, though, were eager to prove to the world that Pol Pot died a natural death. "I did not kill him," Ta Mok insisted. "He was sitting in his chair, waiting for the car to come. But he felt tired. Pol Pot's wife asked him to take a rest. He lay down in his bed. His wife heard a gasp of air. It was the sounds of dying. When she touched him, he had already passed away." Thayer said in an interview that he was well aware of Pol Pot's health problems, because the guerrilla leader had listed them in their October meeting. Pol Pot told Thayer he suffered from a heart condition and serious respiratory problems. Thayer recalled that at the time Pol Pot could walk only a few feet before "he was literally gasping for breath." Thayer said that in February, during another trip he made to the Khmer Rouge-held jungle of northern Cambodia, he carried with him heart medicine that the Khmer Rouge had requested for Pol Pot. "I brought the medicine in, and I delivered it to the Khmer Rouge leadership to give to Pol Pot," Thayer said. But Thayer needed some forensic evidence to take back to Thailand -- evidence that the body was indeed that of Pol Pot and that could perhaps provide clues to the cause of death. So Thayer decided he needed Pol Pot's false front teeth. "The teeth is what I was going after," Thayer said. "We knew that his two front teeth were false, and there aren't any dentists in Cambodia so there had to be dental records somewhere. If I came out with the two front teeth off the corpse and they matched, there'd be no question that was Pol Pot." "They agreed to give me the teeth," Thayer said. "The wife was a little freaked out -- she didn't like the idea. . . .The wife looked at me like I was nuts." The Khmer Rouge leaders later changed their minds about the teeth after more journalists poured over the border. Ta Mok and other Khmer Rouge leaders said they hope Pol Pot's death will allow the group to rehabilitate its image and shed its murderous reputation. "Pol Pot has nothing to do with our movement," Ta Mok said. "It is Pol Pot who caused trouble to our movement. Without Pol Pot, our movement might not be like it is today."