Khmer Rouge’s Last Bastion Calls on Spirits for Luck

ANLONG VENG, Cambodia The site of Pol Pot’s cremation on this barren mountainside eight years ago is collapsing from neglect, its small fence broken, its low metal roof rusting and curling. But Pol Pot, who as the Khmer Rouge leader was one of the most brutal mass murderers of the last century, has become a sort of bookie for those who pray to him for numbers.

For many here in this former Khmer Rouge stronghold, he is the guardian spirit of the Dangrek Mountains, curing ailments and dispensing lottery numbers. People who live here say visitors have plucked the last bits of bone from among the cinders over the years and carried them home for good luck. A casino is being built nearby to capitalize on this spiritual bounty.

In July formal proceedings began in preparation for a trial of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, who were responsible for the deaths of about 1.7 million Cambodians — nearly a quarter of the population — from 1975 to 1979.

Here, in one of the last strongholds of the Khmer Rouge before the movement finally collapsed as a guerrilla army in 1998, some of its most reviled leaders are remembered with loyalty and affection.

“The way I see it, he wasn’t a bad guy,” said Ms. Loan Pheap, 46, who served under Pol Pot in a women’s military brigade and now sells gasoline and plants from her house beside the cremation site.