Characters

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

Born Saloth Sar on May 19, 1925, in Prek Sbauv village, Kampong Thom province, Pol Pot grew up in a family with court connections — his cousin was a royal dancer. As a young man he traveled to Paris on a scholarship to study radio electronics, failing his exams repeatedly but immersing himself in French Communist Party circles and the radical anti-colonial thought that would shape his ideology. He returned to Cambodia in 1953, joined the Indochinese Communist Party, and over the following two decades built a clandestine revolutionary movement in the jungle, drawing on Maoist agrarian radicalism, Khmer nationalism, and a personal vision of returning Cambodia to the glory of the Angkor empire by eliminating every trace of modernity. His identity as 'Pol Pot' was not publicly revealed until 1977 — for years, even his own cadres knew him only as 'Brother Number One' or 'the Organization.' In power from 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot oversaw a system that killed between 1.5 and 2 million people through execution, starvation, and forced labor — roughly a quarter of Cambodia's population. His paranoid purges ultimately destroyed his own movement; by the time Vietnam invaded, the Khmer Rouge's most experienced commanders had been tortured and executed on his orders. He fled to the Thai border, continued leading the movement with Chinese and implicit American support through the 1980s and 1990s, and spent his final years in a jungle compound conducting internal purges. He was never tried. He died on April 15, 1998, in Anlong Veng near the Thai border, reportedly of heart failure, hours after a Voice of America broadcast announced he would be handed to an international tribunal. He was cremated within 24 hours.

"Those who are not with us are against us and must be crushed."

Born in October 1925 in Kep, Cambodia (of Chinese-Khmer descent), Ieng Sary met Pol Pot in Paris in the early 1950s and became his closest political ally and later his brother-in-law — both married sisters from a prominent Cambodian family. He was one of the founding ideologues of the Cambodian communist movement and served as Democratic Kampuchea's Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. In this role he was responsible for conducting the Khmer Rouge's diplomatic relations, including its alliance with China, which provided weapons, advisors, and $1 billion in aid during the genocide years. He also oversaw the recall and purge of Cambodian embassy staff abroad — many of whom were tortured at S-21 — and personally signed execution orders. After the Vietnamese invasion, Ieng Sary continued as a Khmer Rouge leader on the Thai border, eventually defecting with his faction in 1996 under a royal amnesty granted by King Sihanouk — an amnesty that outraged genocide survivors. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) indicted him in 2007 for crimes against humanity and genocide. His trial began in 2011 but Ieng Sary died on March 14, 2013, at age 87, before a verdict could be delivered. He spent his final years in comfortable accommodations in Phnom Penh, attended by family.

"Everything I did, I did for my country."

Born on July 7, 1926, in Prey Veng province, Nuon Chea was the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologist and 'Brother Number Two' — second only to Pol Pot in the movement's hierarchy. He studied law in Bangkok before joining the Indochinese Communist Party in 1950 and dedicating his life to the revolutionary cause. While Pol Pot was the charismatic face of the movement, Nuon Chea was its ideological engine — he designed the political education programs, the class enemy categories, and the internal security apparatus that became S-21. He was responsible for the systematic execution of perceived class enemies and for the purges that swept through the Khmer Rouge's own ranks. After the fall of Democratic Kampuchea, Nuon Chea remained on the Thai border with the Khmer Rouge until surrendering to the Cambodian government in 1998. He was arrested in 2007 and faced trial at the ECCC on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In November 2018, he and co-defendant Khieu Samphan were convicted of genocide against Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minorities and sentenced to life imprisonment — the first genocide conviction at the tribunal. Nuon Chea died on August 4, 2019, in Phnom Penh while serving his life sentence, age 93. He maintained until the end that his actions were necessary to protect Cambodia.

"I am responsible for the killing of about 12,000 people. I am very sorry."

Born Kaing Guek Eav on November 17, 1942, in Kampong Thom province, Duch was a mathematics teacher before joining the Khmer Rouge. He was appointed commander of the S-21 security prison in 1975 — a facility he ran with meticulous, bureaucratic precision, keeping detailed files on every prisoner, overseeing systematic torture protocols, and personally editing confession documents extracted under duress. He was directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 12,000–17,000 people. Among the methods used at S-21: waterboarding, electric shock, nail removal, and hanging prisoners by their arms tied behind their backs. Duch reviewed confession transcripts and determined the fate of prisoners — usually death at Choeung Ek killing fields. After Vietnam's invasion, Duch disappeared, converted to Christianity, and worked for a Christian NGO under a false name for nearly two decades. He was discovered in 1999 by journalist Nic Dunlop, who recognized him from historical photographs. He was arrested, and his trial at the ECCC began in 2009. He was the first Khmer Rouge leader to be convicted — found guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2010 and genocide on appeal in 2012. His sentence was ultimately extended to life imprisonment. He died in Phnom Penh on September 2, 2020. His cooperation with the tribunal and apparent remorse were genuine enough to make him a complex and disturbing figure — a perpetrator who understood exactly what he had done.

"I am the servant of my people. That has always been and will remain my guiding principle."

Born on October 31, 1922, in Phnom Penh, Norodom Sihanouk was crowned king in 1941 at age 18 by French colonial administrators who thought him pliant. He surprised them — leading Cambodia to independence in 1953 and steering a 'neutralist' course through the Cold War as head of state (he abdicated kingship to enter politics). His government was overthrown in a 1970 coup while he was abroad by the US-backed General Lon Nol. From exile in Beijing, Sihanouk aligned himself with the Khmer Rouge — his lifelong enemies — because they represented resistance to what he saw as American imperialism. His name and royal prestige gave the Khmer Rouge legitimacy they could never have achieved on their own, drawing peasant support from a population that revered him. When the Khmer Rouge took power, they kept Sihanouk under comfortable house arrest in Phnom Penh's royal palace — a golden prisoner. He was allowed out briefly to address the UN in 1975 to present Democratic Kampuchea's case; he did so, then returned to captivity. He was spared execution only because China's Zhou Enlai personally intervened with Pol Pot. After the Vietnamese liberation, Sihanouk eventually returned to Cambodia and was restored as constitutional king in 1993 under a UN-supervised peace agreement. He abdicated again in 2004 in favor of his son, and died in Beijing on October 15, 2012.

"The people of Cambodia were rescued from genocide. We will never allow it to happen again."

Born in 1934 in Prey Veng province, Heng Samrin was a Khmer Rouge military commander who led forces in the Eastern Zone — the region bordering Vietnam. He rose through the ranks of the movement during the civil war, but became increasingly alarmed by Pol Pot's paranoid purges and the suicidal policy of cross-border raids against Vietnam. In 1978, as Pol Pot's Southwest Zone forces massacred Eastern Zone cadres, Heng Samrin and other Eastern Zone commanders fled across the border to Vietnam. They became the nucleus of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation — the Cambodian exile force that joined Vietnam's December 1978 invasion. When Vietnamese forces liberated Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979, Heng Samrin was installed as head of state of the People's Republic of Kampuchea — a Vietnamese-backed communist government that would rule Cambodia until 1989. His government was internationally isolated due to Cold War politics; the UN seat remained with the Khmer Rouge coalition until 1982. Within Cambodia, his government began the enormous task of rebuilding a country where a quarter of the population had been killed, all currency was worthless, and almost all educated professionals were dead. Heng Samrin remained a significant political figure in Cambodia for decades, serving as president of the National Assembly.

"I survived because I could paint. My wife was not so lucky."

Born in 1944, Bou Meng was a painter and artist working in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge came to power. In 1977, he and his wife Ma Yoeun were arrested on suspicion of being CIA agents — a common pretext — and brought to S-21. His wife was taken away immediately; he never saw her again. Bou Meng was prepared for execution, but a Khmer Rouge guard discovered he was a painter. He was spared to paint portraits of Pol Pot and other regime leaders. For months he painted under guard, knowing that completing his usefulness meant death. He survived through a combination of his skills, extraordinary luck, and the chaos of the Vietnamese invasion, which caused his guards to flee before he could be executed. Bou Meng emerged from S-21 as one of only seven survivors from an estimated 17,000 prisoners. For decades after the genocide he carried the trauma largely alone. In 2009 he testified at the ECCC trial of Duch, confronting his torturer face-to-face in court — one of the most powerful moments in the entire tribunal process. He sat in the public gallery as the evidence of what had been done to him, his wife, and thousands of others was documented in legal proceedings. He co-authored a memoir about his survival, advocated tirelessly for justice, and became a living bridge between the world of the dead and the world of the living.

"Even in the darkest of times there are those who shed light. My family shone very bright."

Born in 1970 in Phnom Penh, Loung Ung was the daughter of a Royal Cambodian Army captain — a fact that would have meant her entire family's immediate execution if discovered. When the Khmer Rouge ordered the city's evacuation on April 17, 1975, five-year-old Loung fled with her parents, brothers, and sisters. For four years, her family disguised their identities and moved between villages, surviving on starvation rations, hiding her father's military background. She watched her father, mother, and two sisters die — executed, starved, or killed in attacks — while she and her surviving siblings struggled to stay alive. At age nine she was recruited as a child soldier by the Vietnamese-backed resistance. After surviving the genocide, Loung Ung eventually made it to the United States in 1980 as a refugee, settling in Vermont with her brother and his wife. She later wrote her memoir 'First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers' (2000), which became an international bestseller and a critically acclaimed film directed by Angelina Jolie (2017), filmed in Cambodia with a cast of non-professional actors, many of them genocide survivors and their descendants. Loung Ung became a spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World and an activist for Cambodian survivors. Her life represents the trajectory of an entire generation: child of the genocide, refugee, American immigrant, and witness to the world.