In late July this year, international television networks flashed pictures of a sensational ´show trial´ of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot being conducted by his own mutinous troops. As the world watched, his former comrades in arms denounced Pol Pot, now old and frail, accusing him of treason. He was sentenced to lifelong house arrest. It was easily the kindest ´punishment´ ever meted out to anybody in the nearly five-decade-long history of the extremist group, notorious for its barbaric methods of executing both enemies and old friends. Many observers suspect that the entire trial, willingly lapped up by the international media, was a farce – probably the brainchild of Pol Pot himself and meant to assist the Khmer Rouge in its efforts to re-enter mainstream Cambodian politics. By publicly distancing themselves from their leader, who led the Khmer Rouge´s genocidal spree in the mid-seventies, the group stands a better chance of being accepted back into the fold by ordinary Cambodian citizens.
Over two decades ago, in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge came to power by routing US troops during the Indochina war, many within war weary Cambodia welcomed them as harbingers of peace and stability. Their hopes were dashed bizarrely when the Khmer Rouge launched a programme of abolishing cities, executing intellectuals (often identified as such because they wore spectacles), and turning the country into one large agrarian commune.
In the words attributed to one of the Khmer Rouge leaders at that time, Pol Pot´s attempt was to "outdo even Comrade Mao". The results were horrendous, as tens of thousands of urban Cambodians perished in the countryside due to starvation, hard labour and torture. In its last days, before a group of Khmer Rouge defectors backed by Vietnamese troops overthrew it, the Pol Pot regime executed hundreds of its own cadre suspected of turning against the leadership.
Though the media popularly likes to call the Khmer Rouge ´communist´ or even ´Maoist´, the group´s ideology (if one can call it that) was in a league of its own. Though initially part of the larger Indochina Communist Party under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh during the 1940s and 1950s, the Khmer Rouge broke away accusing the Vietnamese of promoting their own interests over Cambodian concerns. In the 1960s, the group did move closer to Mao´s China, where it found patronage and even ideological inspiration, but under Pol Pot´s leadership the Khmer Rouge developed a dubious ideology of extreme nationalism (particularly anti-Vietnamese), combined with utopian ideas of forming a moneyless, cityless and ideologically pure peasant society.