Pol Pot



"We will burn the old grass and the new will grow."

- Pol Pot

"Exterminate the 50 million Vietnamese...and purify the masses of the Cambodian people"

- Pot on a radio broadcast

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sar, May 19, 1925 – April 15, 1998) was the dictator of Cambodia (which he called Kampuchia) from 1975 to 1979, known for his large scale war crimes against his own country and its neighbors. He was an extreme Communist and probably the worst example of all time.

Villainy
After consolidating his power, Pol Pot utterly ruined his country economically and socially to the point of which it is still recovering today. Though Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong killed a lot more people than Pol Pot, he is sometimes considered worse because, in less than 4 full years, he brought about the deaths of a quarter of his country's population (approx. 2 million victims out of a population of 8 million) without a war and in a particularly gruesome manner. Pol Pot was eventually overthrown and although brought to justice died under house arrest.