Thailand Official Claims Pol Pot Has Fled Cambodia Both Thailand, China Deny Khmer Rouge Leader Is In Their Countries
The mystery surrounding Pol Pot’s whereabouts deepened Sunday after Thailand’s foreign minister claimed the Khmer Rouge leader had fled Cambodia.
Earlier, Chinese diplomats here denied allegations he had been granted asylum in China. They could not be reached for comment Sunday.
One of modern history’s most secretive figures, Pol Pot was last seen by independent observers in October 1997 at the Khmer Rouge base of Anlong Veng in northern Cambodia.
Breaking an 18-year silence, he denied to a Western reporter that he had orchestrated the killings of as many as 2 million of his countrymen in the mid-1970s.
“Our source said he is not in Cambodia, but I cannot confirm where he is now. Definitely he is not in Thailand,” Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan told the English language daily, The Nation, in Bangkok Saturday. He said he could not confirm Pol Pot had fled to Beijing.
In the past, reports of Pol Pot’s whereabouts have proved wrong. He had been said to be on the verge of death or already dead several times since his ouster from power in 1979.
The most recent speculation surfaced last Thursday when two Cambodian language newspapers - Koh Santepheap (Island of Peace) and Udom Kateak (Khmer Ideal) - said he had escaped to China.
Beijing was the chief backer of the Khmer Rouge when the group unleashed a Maoist-style revolution in 1975. Afterward, they retreated into the jungles in 1979 to wage a guerrilla war in the face of a Vietnamese invasion.
There was speculation that China wanted to harbor Pol Pot to avoid possible embarrassment should the international community ever put Pol Pot on trial for genocide.
Gen. Nhek Bunchhay, a royalist fighting government troops in northern Cambodia, last week said Pol Pot had fled Anlong Veng into Thailand and that Chinese officials had met with Khmer Rouge strongman Tak Mok around the time of the escape.
However, he later said that he was seeking further confirmation of Pol Pot’s flight.
In recent years, Pol Pot presided over a shrinking guerrilla force beset by internal splits, defections and annual offensives launched by the Phnom Penh government.
Last July, Pol Pot was brought before a “people’s tribunal” of his one-time comrades and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering former Khmer Rouge defense chief Son Sen.
The trial was witnessed by American reporter Nate Thayer, who then interviewed Pol Pot in October. Some analysts described the event as a “show trial” aimed at cleaning up the image of the Khmer Rouge.
In the October interview, an ailing Pol Pot denied brutalizing Cambodia during his years in power and blamed neighboring Vietnam for his country’s woes.
“Look at me, am I a savage person? My conscience is clear,” he said.
The hard-core Khmer Rouge, headquartered at Anlong Veng, are continuing their fight against the Phnom Penh government. They formed a loose alliance with royalist troops loyal to deposed First Prime Minister Norodom Ranarridh.
Ranarridh was ousted last July in a bloody power grab by Second Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has vowed to bring Pol Pot to trial.
Pressed against the Thai frontier, the royalists are continuing to hold out against a far superior Hun Sen army.
xxxx Whereabouts One of modern history’s most secretive figures, Pol Pot was last seen by independent observers in October 1997 at the Khmer Rouge base of Anlong Veng in northern Cambodia.