[Buddha-l] Was Mr. Pol Pot a Buddhist?

[Dan Lusthaus]

> Mention of Ian Harris piqued my brain so I visited amazon and found a 
> recent
> title not yet released:   _Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks Under 
> Pol
> Pot_ .
> Might answer a lot of questions along with the publication Dan mentions.
>
> JK

There is also the following (a Word doc that downloads when you click the 
link), which I posted previously:

--
See
http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/Cambodia_09_06_xx_Buddhism_Under_Pol_Pot.doc

which begins:

Buddhism Under Pol Pot

Ian Harris, Documentation Center of Cambodia

June 2009

This pioneering study of the fate of Buddhist monks and their pagodas during
the communist period in Cambodia is based on the analysis of interview
transcripts and a large body of contemporary manuscript material, much of
which is held at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh [DC Cam].

It represents the first sustained attempt to cross-examine the widely- held
assumption that Angkar, the revolutionary organization (angkar padevat) at
the heart of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, had a centralized plan to
liquidate the entire monastic order (sangha) during the Democratic Kampuchea
period.

While not seeking in any way to minimize the horrific monastic death toll
and collateral damage to Buddhist spiritual, intellectual and material
culture the book indicates that while compelling evidence exists to suggest
that senior Khmer Rouge leaders were determined to track down and "smash"
senior members of the pre-1975 ecclesiastical hierarchy, structural reasons
related to the economy of Theravada sangha also made it difficult for
institutional Buddhism to survive conditions in which the lay population
were strongly discouraged from providing its necessary material support.

The very rapid diminution in sangha membership and vigour from the beginning
of the communist insurgency in 1970 to its almost complete annihilation by
the end of 1977 was the consequence of a number of factors - militant
anti-clericalism among some high-ranking cadre, the effects of high levels
of coercion in the population as a whole, mind-numbing levels of economic
mismanagement, the impact of war, famine and disease, plus the traditionally
fragile relationship between Buddhist ecclesiastics and their lay
supporters. For these reasons the author expresses some uncertainty over
whether there was a centralized plan for the complete suppression of
religion, and asks whether the perfectly understandable desire to find
someone to blame for the horrific state of affairs that pertained at the end
of the decisively failed Democratic Kampuchea experiment is likely to be
successful given our present understanding of the evidence...
--

Dan