It is with deep sorrow that we learned that Pol Pot died in Cambodia on April 15, 1998 at 23:15 (local time), according to a heart attack. For years he had been seriously ill with malaria, yet he continued to be among his people, in the jungle, fighting for the freedom and independence of his country, never allowing himself to be tempted to flee his country and people to seek treatment elsewhere. His death leaves a great void in the hearts of all the authentic revolutionaries and anti-imperialists of the whole world as well as the Marxist-Leninists.

We will forever remember him as a shining example of a revolutionary leader loyal to his people and an indomitable champion of the struggle for independence and national liberation. He was always at the forefront of his people against colonialism, imperialism and social imperialism, which wanted to subjugate and destroy Cambodia by force of arms; one of the best sons of the Cambodian people, for whose interests he sacrificed his life, all of himself.

We are deeply grateful to him because he showed how a small and unarmed people can make imperialism eat dust as long as it is animated and guided by a just revolutionary, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist line; We are grateful to him for having earlier liberated his country from American imperialism and the Lon Nol clique, for having prevented the Vietnamese revisionists from swallowing Cambodia in one gulp, and for having always refused to sell out the guerrillas and surrender to the Phnom Penh regime, even at the cost of being subjected to the humiliation of a sham public trial, arrest and betrayal of a false Khmer Rouge.

We remember him as Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from April 17, 1975, the day of liberation, until January 7, 1979, the day the Vietnamese revisionist army led by the imperialist USSR invaded the country.

We also want to recall the message that Pol Pot, as secretary of the CC of the CPK, sent on January 24, 1978 to Comrade Giovanni Scuderi, Secretary General of The Italian Marxist–Leninist Party, in which he said, among other things, "We are very happy to formulate our best wishes for health and victories to you and to the PMLI. May the relations of revolutionary friendship between our two parties continue to develop and consolidate". Relations that could not develop later because of the revisionists who stood in the way.

The figure and the story of Pol Pot can rather be defined as that of a faithful and generous son of the Kampuchean people. Faithful because he dedicated his entire life to the cause of independence for his country and the liberation of his people. Liberation from the occupying armies and liberation from colonialism and capitalist exploitation. Generous because he did not spare any energy in the service of the cause of Kampuchea, of the Kampuchean revolution, of the construction of socialism.

The son of a peasant family, he was born in Kompong Thom, in the central part of the country. As was customary, he lived in the pagoda for six years to learn to read and write. He is also a monk for two years. He then went to primary and secondary school, where he took a technical course. After passing his exams, he received a scholarship to continue his studies abroad, in France. There he became active in the progressive student movement, to which he devoted much of his time, neglecting his studies. The authorities withdrew his scholarship and he returned to his homeland, where he joined the underground movement in Phnom Penh; later he joined the partisans to take part in the fight against French colonialism.

After the Geneva Accords of 1954, which established the withdrawal of French colonial troops from the country, the end of the colonial regime and the independence of Cambodia, he returned to the capital and continued his clandestine activities against the government in power. He soon became the regional leader of the opposition movement in Phnom Penh and in charge of links with the campaign. In public life, he appears as a teacher of history, geography and civics and teaches in a private school.

The founding congress of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) was held in the capital on September 30, 1960, at the end of preparatory work begun in 1957. Pol Pot was elected to the Central Committee and the Standing Committee of the Central Committee. In 1977, during a public demonstration on the occasion of the 17th anniversary of the founding of the party, Pol Pot officially announced its existence and declared: "This congress marks a historic turning point for our nation, our people, our revolution and the working class of Kampuchea. It marks the day when the Communist Party of Kampuchea, a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, was truly born".

After analyzing the situation of the country, which was so dependent on American imperialism that it was a semi-colony, the CPK set itself the task of uniting all the forces of the people to oust American imperialism. It set the tasks for the democratic revolution, which aims to liberate all the people, composed of 85% of peasants. A courageous and daring project, but by uniting the workers and peasants with the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie, with progressive and patriotic personalities, it will allow victory in the war against the fascist regime of Lon Nol and American imperialism. The entire party worked diligently on the project and began to gradually transfer the members of the Central Committee from Phnom Penh to the countryside in order to directly mobilize the peasant masses and escape the increasingly zealous control of the government police.

Pol Pot left the capital in 1963 and settled in the outlying regions of the country, traveling far and wide to share the lives of the peasant masses. His support base was in a region inhabited by national minorities in the northeast.

In 1961, Pol Pot was elected Deputy Secretary of the Standing Committee and in 1963, at the Second Party Congress, he was elected Secretary of the Central Committee.

The liberation struggle began; armed only with knives, axes and sticks, the people began to attack the peripheral garrisons of the government army. In 1967, a spontaneous armed uprising broke out in Samlaut. The CPK judged that conditions were ripe to launch a large-scale armed struggle throughout the country. In January 1968, the first uprising broke out in the northwest; this was the beginning of the people's war which, combining regular warfare and guerrilla warfare, would lead the revolutionary army of Kampuchea to drive out the fascist clique of Lon Nol and the American soldiers who had invaded the country, and to liberate Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, making Kampuchea the first country in Indochina to claim victory over American imperialism.

After successfully completing the phase of national democratic revolution, the CPK began the phase of defending Kampuchea, continuing the socialist revolution and building socialism in the country.

One of the problems was the excessive concentration of the population in the capital, partly made up of war refugees, partly attracted by the Lon Nol regime and attracted by the war economy and the dollars spent by the American occupiers. It would have been impossible for the new government led by Pol Pot to guarantee a dignified life for the great mass of Phnom Penh's inhabitants in a country starved and plagued by U.S. bombing. That's why the government supported and favored the transfer of some of the inhabitants to work in the countryside.

The policy of the new Democratic Kampuchea government was outlined by Pol Pot in 1977: "We will take agriculture as a fundamental factor and use the capital accumulated through agriculture to gradually build industry and rapidly transform Kampuchea into a modern agricultural country, then into an industrial country, firmly adhering to the line of independence and sovereignty and fundamentally relying on our strengths. (...) Our goal is to establish, consolidate and progressively develop large, medium and small industrial and artisanal complexes in Phnom Penh, other areas, regions, districts and cooperatives. (...) In the immediate future, our main goal (in education, ed) is the elimination of illiteracy. In the old society, there were schools and high schools and a certain number of faculties, but in the countryside, 75% of the population, especially the poor and middle peasants, could neither read nor write, and even in the city, 60% of the workers were illiterate. Today, only two years after liberation, only 10% of the population is illiterate (today it is 50% again, ed.). (...) We have developed and will develop health networks by creating hospital centers and drug production centers in all the cooperatives and in the capital. (...) The health of our people has improved considerably. We have definitively eliminated social diseases and drug addiction. Committed to improving their living conditions, the people of Kampuchea want to live in peace and friendly relations with all peoples and countries."

Pol Pot's government is pursuing a correct policy of non-interference and respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries, a policy of peace and non-alignment. But the work of building and constructing socialism was brutally nipped in the bud after a series of provocations that began in 1977 saw attacks by the Vietnamese, who, driven by the then Soviet social imperialists, invaded Kampuchea in January 1979.

The Kampuchea government, in a state of severe military inferiority, abandoned the capital and fled to the countryside, from where it waged a prolonged war of resistance.

The harsh Vietnamese occupation will cause more mourning and massacres to the Kampuchean people; the Hanoi regime, supported by social imperialism and imperialism, will denounce the alleged massacres of the legitimate Kampuchean government to cover up its own and try to justify the aggression. The reality is that if the Kampuchean people were really victims of Pol Pot's government, they would certainly not be making a decisive contribution to the long war of resistance against the aggressors. A war that Kampuchea is waging practically alone, with its own forces.

In order to facilitate the formation of a broad resistance front, Pol Pot resigned as prime minister in 1980, facilitated the formation of a national coalition government, and became commander-in-chief of the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea. He led the anti-Vietnamese resistance that prevented the Hanoi regime from controlling and annexing the country until 1985, when he retired at the suggestion of the coalition government, which appointed him director of the High Institute of National Defense, his last official post. He gave a great example of generosity and devotion to the cause of Kampuchea and its people, for whose good he placed himself in the background.

The Paris Accords of 1991 will lead to the withdrawal of the Vietnamese occupation army and "free" elections under UN supervision in 1993; elections denounced as a farce by the Khmer resistance, which boycotted them and refused to hand over their weapons. The coalition government of Prince Norodom Ranariddh and the former puppet of the Vietnamese aggressors, Hun Sen, was soon characterized by corruption, arms and drug trafficking, and child prostitution, which plunged the country back into the darkness of the past under imperialist domination from which Pol Pot had managed to emerge.

The fake Khmer Rouge betray Pol Pot, sell out the guerrillas to save their lives and for a place in the government through the deal with Ranariddh. Hun Sen responded with the coup of July 5, 1997, which gave him full power in Phnom Penh.

Later, the fake Khmer Rouge subjected Pol Pot to a sham trial and life imprisonment to prove their treason to the world. In a later and final interview with an American journalist, Pol Pot reaffirmed his motives and his loyalty to the cause he had fought for all his life: "I acted for the good of the people, not to exterminate them, and I have a clear conscience... I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country." May Pol Pot live forever and may his name become a symbol of the anti-imperialist struggle.

1998

Show Honor to Comrade Pol Pot!