The New Pol Pot
The traditional Cambodian
shawl is still wrapped around Pol Pot's neck, but the hair is grayer and
sparser and the round face is lined with wrinkles. He needs a cane to walk and
oxygen to breathe. He is nearly blind in the left eye, and he can't stand the
mosquitoes that swarm around his hut. He is older now, and he is wiser.
The man
critics once maligned as a genocidal maniac is living quietly--dying
quietly--in the jungles of his native Cambodia. With age has come
introspection; with introspection has come regret. "Our movement made
mistakes," he admits softly, sincerely, in his first interview in nearly two
decades. After 72 long, hard years, Pol Pot has made peace with himself.
Once upon a time, way back in the early '70s, Pol Pot was
the fieriest of revolutionaries--"Brother No. 1," "the Original Cambodian." He
was enthusiastic--too enthusiastic, he realizes now--to bring glorious Marxism
to his suffering people, to free Cambodia from the yoke of Vietnamese invaders,
to abolish the twin evils of Western materialism and class privilege. Pol Pot
dreamed of a society of equals, a grand new Cambodia. And so he made
errors--the errors that young, eager men everywhere make.
The '70s,
of course, were a difficult decade. We all did things we have come to regret,
and Pol Pot is no exception. A million or two of his countrymen lost their
lives because of his mistakes. Starvation was epidemic. Cannibalism was common.
Pol Pot abolished religion, education, medicine, commerce, money. He drove city
dwellers into the countryside, and he forced them to farm. Tens of thousands of
his subjects were tortured and murdered at his behest. Some critics said he
returned Cambodia to the Dark Ages. Others called him names: "bloodthirsty,"
"barbaric," "cruel" ...
To hear those words today pains Pol Pot. "I
came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people," he says, a look of
melancholy shadowing his face. "Even now, and you can look at me, am I a savage
person?" The plaintive question echoes in the moist, warm air of the
jungle.
Several
months ago, the Khmer Rouge sentenced Pol Pot to life under house arrest--hut
arrest, really--for the murder of Son Sen, an old friend and colleague who
plotted a coup against him this spring. Fourteen of Son Sen's family members,
including infant grandchildren, also were killed. Pol Pot regrets the murders.
They, too, were a "mistake," he says, his voice filled with pain. So Pol Pot
can accept his arrest. What he can't accept is his betrayal at the hands of his
friends. The men who tried and sentenced him are his oldest comrades, the
soldiers he led through good times and bad.
Who is Pol Pot? He is a man who has always had difficulty
telling others about himself. "I'm quite modest. I don't want to tell people
I'm a leader," he says. Other revolutionaries have courted the press: Castro
practically lives for sound bites, and the Zapatistas are better at planning
press conferences than battles. But Pol Pot has never had the gift of the gab,
especially around the camera, and he has never learned how to play to the
press. Reporters saw him only as a cold-blooded killer; they missed his pensive
side. The adulation that journalists showered on Castro and Marcos and Hafez
al-Assad passed Pol Pot by. So, too, did the personal wealth that other
dictators amassed. Pol Pot has never believed in greed. Not for him the
diamonds of Mobutu, the snazzy clothes of Duvalier, the shoes of Marcos, the
Swiss bank accounts of them all. When Pol Pot fell from power, he walked into
the jungle with nothing but the clothes on his back.
But that's all in the past.
The new Pol Pot is about the future. He wants to make the most of his golden
years. His politics have mellowed. Today, the elder statesman advises
Cambodia's leaders to seek rapprochement with the West. "When I die, my only
wish is that Cambodia remain Cambodia and belong to the West," he says. "It is
over for communism, and I want to stress that."
The old
Pol Pot worked tirelessly on the revolution, neglecting his health, his
friends, his family. The new Pol Pot is a family man. His wife and their
charming 12-year-old daughter--the apple of his eye--share his captivity. Pol
Pot rests quietly during the day while his daughter goes to school and his wife
hoes the vegetable patch. In the evenings, they share a modest meal, and Pol
Pot asks his daughter about what she learned that day. In captivity, he has
fulfilled a lifelong dream. He has found the very thing he sought to give his
fellow Cambodians during the '70s: a quiet life on a country farm. To see Pol
Pot today is to be reminded of Voltaire: "We must cultivate our ..."
OK, OK, I give up. It won't work, not even as
parody. The re-emergence of Pol Pot is a landmark moment in celebrity culture:
At last, someone who cannot be forgiven.
As
Matthew Cooper wrote in the latest Newsweek , there is a standard
forgiveness ritual for sinning celebrities. After they're caught, they
disappear for awhile, then re-emerge, apologize for their venality (usually to
Larry King), and retake their place in the pantheon. Dick Morris managed this
in a matter of days. Michael Milken got sick and became a beloved
philanthropist. ("Cancer. Superb," Larry King told Newsweek .) Richard
Nixon served only a decade in exile before returning triumphantly as a
statesman.
So the rejection of Pol Pot is heartening. One
person--perhaps only one person--exists in the world whose evil is so great
that it cannot be neutered. Pol Pot is in captivity; he is sick; and he is
(mildly) apologetic. Yet not a single word has been murmured on his behalf. Any
other infamous person--O.J., the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh--could rescue a
damaged reputation. But Pol Pot is irredeemable. Can you imagine a ?
There is one irony in the
rejection of Pol Pot. In making him a pariah, the world is legitimizing men who
are almost as awful. The man who imprisoned Pol Pot is a one-legged Khmer Rouge
general named Ta Mok. His nickname is "the Butcher," and he carried out many of
the brutal massacres ordered by Pol Pot. Yet Ta Mok is being feted for having
captured his old mentor. He has received favorable press coverage for opening
schools and permitting markets in his remote northern stronghold. Ta Mok has
even been given credit for putting Pol Pot on trial and sentencing him to life
under house arrest--as opposed to summarily shooting him in the head, which is
the Khmer Rouge's usual idea of justice. Some writers hint that the only reason
Ta Mok bothered with the trial and the life sentence is to burnish the Khmer
Rouge's bloody image. If so, it seems to have worked.
As for the supreme villain,
he is unlikely to appear again in public. The remarkable interview Pol Pot gave
Nate Thayer of the Far Eastern Economic Review last month was his first
in 18 years, and it will undoubtedly be his last. According to Thayer, Pol Pot
is very near death. Survivors of his terror can take some satisfaction in this:
Pol Pot is bound for the death that you would wish on a tyrant, the death that
Hitler and Stalin managed to duck. He is going to die slowly, a captive who is
impoverished, in great pain, betrayed by his friends, and unredeemed by a world
that would redeem anyone else.
