"Pol Pot became the de facto leader of which country in mid-1975, forcing city dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects, toward a goal of ""restarting civilization"" in ""Year Zero"", which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people, approximately 21% of the population?"
Pol Pot party secretary. To avoid state repression, he relocated in 1962 to a Việt Cộng encampment in the jungle before visiting Hanoi and Beijing. In 1968, he re-launched the war against Sihanouk. Renaming the country Democratic Kampuchea and seeking to create an agrarian socialist society, Pol Pot's government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside to work on collective farms. Those regarded as enemies of the new government were killed. These mass killings, coupled with malnutrition, strenuous working conditions, and poor medical care, killed between 1.5 to 3 million people of a population of roughly 8 million (about 25%), a
Pol Pot to this by adding the names of everyone involved in the Supreme National Council onto his post-victory death list. Government resistance finally collapsed on 17 April 1975. The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. As the leader of the Communist Party, Sâr became the "de-facto" leader of the country. He adopted the title "brother number one" and used the "nom de guerre" Pol Pot. Philip Short offered an explanation for the origin of Pol Pot's name, stating that Sâr announced that he was adopting the name in July 1970. Short suspects that it derives from "pol" as