Pol pot

WASHINGTON — Nate Thayer, the larger-than-life American freelance journalist who scored a massive scoop with his 1997 interview with Pol Pot, the genocidal leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, has died at 62, his family said Wednesday. Thayer was discovered dead by his brother Rob Thayer at his Falmouth, Massachusetts, home Tuesday. "He had a lot of ailments. He was seriously ill for many months," the brother told Agence France-Presse. Nate Thayer spent years reporting on Cambodia politics and society, including the Khmer Rouge, the brutal communist regime that left more than 1 million people dead between 1975 and 1979. Beginning in 1989, he worked for The Associated Press and then publications such as The Phnom Penh Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review, building contacts in the dangerous jungle border regions of Thailand and Cambodia. With his shaven head, chewing tobacco and handiness with guns, he gained a reputation as a gonzo journalist, setting out on crazy adventures such as traveling with a well-armed reporting team from Soldier of Fortune magazine into eastern Cambodia in search of a likely extinct forest ox called a kouprey. In the wild west frontier of Thailand and Cambodia, he braved firefights and was severely injured by a landmine in 1989 while riding with Cambodian guerillas. An interview with 'uncle' Thayer's work paid off in 1997 when he sent a cryptic message to Far Eastern Economic Review editor Nayan Chanda that he would interview "uncle," or Pol Pot, ...

On January 7, 1979, Vietnamese troops seize the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of The Khmer Rouge, organized by Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle in the 1960s, advocated a radical Communist revolution that would wipe out Western influences in Cambodia and set up a solely agrarian society. In 1970, aided by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, Khmer Rouge guerrillas began a large-scale insurgency against Cambodian government forces, soon gaining control of nearly a third of the country. By 1973, secret U.S. bombings of Cambodian territory controlled by the Vietnamese Communists forced the Vietnamese out of the country, creating a power vacuum that was soon filled by Pol Pot’s rapidly growing Khmer Rouge movement. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, overthrew the pro-U.S. regime, and established a new government, the Kampuchean People’s Republic. As the new ruler of Cambodia, Pol Pot set about transforming the country into his vision of an agrarian utopia. The cities were evacuated, factories and schools were closed, and currency and private property was abolished. Anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed. Skilled workers were also killed, in addition to anyone caught in possession of eyeglasses, a wristwatch, or any other modern technology. In forced marches punctuated with atrocities from the Khmer Rouge, the millions who failed to escape C...

The Khmer Rouge, organized by Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle in the 1960s, advocated a radical communist revolution that would wipe out Western influences in Cambodia and set up a solely agrarian society. In 1970, aided by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, Khmer Rouge guerrillas began a large-scale insurgency against Cambodian government forces, soon gaining control of nearly a third of the country. By 1973, secret U.S. bombings of Cambodian territory controlled by the Vietnamese communists forced the Vietnamese out of the country, creating a power vacuum that was soon filled by Pol Pot’s rapidly growing Khmer Rouge movement. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, overthrew the pro-U.S. regime, and established a new government, the Kampuchean People’s Republic. As the new ruler of Cambodia, Pol Pot set about transforming the country into his vision of an agrarian utopia. The cities were evacuated, factories and schools closed, and currency and private property was abolished. Anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed. Skilled workers were also killed, in addition to anyone caught in possession of eyeglasses, a wristwatch, or any other modern technology. In forced marches punctuated with atrocities from the Khmer Rouge, the millions who failed to escape Cambodia were herded onto rural collective farms. Between 1975 and 1978, an estimated two million Cambodians died by ...

Nate Thayer, an American journalist who was the last Western correspondent to interview the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal leader Pol Pot, died early this month in Massachusetts, aged 62. In September 2006, Sok Ry Sum and Kem Sos of RFA Khmer interviewed Thayer, who had spent years in the jungles of Cambodia chronicling the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-1979 rule, during which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished. The conversation with Thayer--who discusses his interviews with Pol Pot and other senior Khmer rouge figures including No. 2 leader and chief ideologist Nuon Chea, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, commandant of the notorious Tuol Sleng (S-21) torture prison, and senior military leader Ta Mok--has been edited for length. RFA: If I am correct, you were the only outside journalist able to get access to the Khmer Rouge camps and interview Pol Pot, Ta Mok and Duch. How did that happen? Thayer : I was the first outsider to gain access to Pol Pot after he was arrested and tried in 1997. It was a long process of years of accessing sources within the Khmer Rouge, within the Thai military – a variety of other sources that slowly I built relationships with the Khmer Rouge from the bottom up. RFA: What was your impression of when you met him firsthand? Thayer: He was strikingly charming with a gentle, soft voice, very charismatic; very likable -- until we began to talk. And what he said was that essentially he had no remorse for anything that he had done in Cambodia, that he had do...

After 30 years of solemnly pledging "never again," the world stood by and watched in horror as another genocide unfolded — this time in Cambodia under Pol Pot. On the evening of April 15, 1998, news source Voice of America announced that General Secretary of the Khmer Rouge and wanted war criminal Pol Pot was scheduled for extradition. He would then face an international tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity. Shortly after the broadcast, at around 10:15 PM, the former leader’s wife found him sitting upright in his chair next to the radio, dead from a possible overdose of prescription drugs. Omar Havana/Getty Images A young Cambodian woman looks at the main stupa in Choeung Ek Killing Fields, which is filled with thousands of skulls of those killed during the reign of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. Despite the Cambodian government’s request for an autopsy, Pol Pot’s body was cremated and the ashes interred in a wild part of northern Cambodia, where he had led his defeated troops against the outside world for almost 20 years following the collapse of his regime. Pol Pot’s Early Life AFP/Getty Images An undated photo of genocidal leader Pol Pot (left) with former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary (center). The man on the right is unidentified. Though he later claimed to have risen from poor peasant stock, Pol Pot was actually quite a well-connected young man. Born Saloth Sâr on May 19, 1925, in the small village of Prek Sbauv, he was lucky enough to be a first...

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