Word: pols
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pol Pot ever said was that he was creating a "pure" communist society and whatever he did was done for his country. "My conscience is clear," he told journalist Nate Thayer in a rare interview last October, never admitting his appalling conduct, never regretting the countless executions, the million more dead of starvation and overwork, the living population maimed in body or mind, the entire country reduced to Stone Age survival. Nineteen years after the hated Vietnamese drove him back into the jungle, the evil that he did lives on in Cambodia's traumatized society, poisoned politics, governmental misrule...
Last year a power struggle in the leadership in Anlong Veng led to the arrest and show trial of Pol Pot, but he was replaced by Ta Mok, another hard-liner impervious to change. Mok, a one-legged man known widely as "the Butcher," resisted the March 24 mutiny, and by last week he had clawed back some territory in Anlong Veng. But with the Khmer Rouge's having lost so many civilians, observers say, it is just a matter of time before its final rump--estimated at 500 to 1,000 soldiers--is dissolved. "Ta Mok has painted himself...
Last week two more people were added to the list of Pol Pot's victims. In March 1996, British mine clearer Christopher Howes and his interpreter, Houn Hourth, were abducted by Khmer Rouge guerrillas near the famous Angkor temples. Their fate had been a mystery, with reported live sightings as recently as last June, plus ransom hoaxes and all the usual false leads attached to a Westerner's missing in Indochina. But Ke Pauk and Yim Panna, two senior Khmer Rouge leaders who had been instrumental in organizing the Anlong Veng mutiny, told TIME in separate interviews that both...
Asked why Howes was killed, Panna said, "That was Pol Pot's rule. He didn't want any foreigners involved in our society." It was of course this hostility to outsiders that kept the Khmer Rouge stuck in the jungle while the rest of Cambodia benefited from rapid economic development fueled in part by foreign investment. And it was resentment at missing out on this progress that prompted the latest, final rebellion in the Khmer Rouge ranks...
...thought this would let them off the hook, they were sadly mistaken. President Clinton pledged Thursday to hold the other Khmer Rouge leaders accountable for the 1975-79 genocide -- which, if all goes well, will mean the same kind of international tribunal intended for Pol Pot. More importantly, Cambodian government forces are closing in. ?We will persuade whoever can be persuaded to defect,? said Khieu Kanharith, a spokesman for the Phnom Penh regieme that already includes a number of Khmer Rouge turncoats. ?But Ta Mok, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, as well as Pol Pot, must be brought to trial...