In 1977-1978 the terms by which Pol Pot was known in confessions became more rarefied. From “Brother Pol” or “Brother Number One,” the prime minister (never referred to by that title) became known as “Uncle Secretary” (om lekha), “the party center” (mocchim pak), “the leading apparatus” (kbal masin), and “the organization” (angkar). By the middle of 1978, large photographs of Pol Pot were put up in communal dining halls throughout the country—and his own brothers discovered that little Sar, whom they had last seen in the 1950s, was in charge of the country. In some documents, references to his “clear-sighted leadership” began to replace those that attributed leadership to the party.26

The cult of personality never became full-blown, however, because selfadvertisement did not come easily to Pol Pot and the frequent exposure that such a cult would have entailed would have compromised his obsession with security. Conceivably, he felt that a certain amount of visibility had tactical advantages in uniting the country against Vietnam. These may have been pointed out to him by Chinese and North Korean advisers, who came from societies where hero worship was the norm.

The most concrete evidence for a cult of personality are the oil portraits of Pol Pot found at S-21 in early 1979. Some of these are head and shoulder portraits; one, copied from a photograph taken in 1973, shows him with his back to a waterfall. According to Ong Thong Hoeung, who worked at the Genocide Museum established on the site, the portraits had been painted from photographs by a prisoner who was held at S-21 for more than two years before he “escaped” in January 1979. Visitors to the prison in 1979 also found molds for concrete busts of Pol Pot. At least one of these busts—all of which were slightly larger than life size—was cast in silver. According to the Australian journalist John Pilger, the busts were designed by another survivor at Tuol Sleng.27

Speaking to David Ashley in 1996, the S-21 survivor Vann Nath, who had painted several portraits of Pol Pot from photographs while still a prisoner, recalled that toward the end of 1978 there were plans for a more grandiose sculpture in Pol Pot’s honor:

We had to design a revolutionary monument with the design first taken to Nuon Chea who approved it and it was then supposed to be taken to Pol Pot for his approval. The monument was like those in China and Korea and featured Pol Pot in front of a line of people with his right hand stretched skywards and his left arm grasping a copy of the revolutionary works, the red book. Pol Pot was the only figure depicted as a particular individual. Behind him were a number of people indicating the progress of the revolutionary struggle, beginning with axes and knives and ending with abundance, with guns and B-40s [rocket launchers]. [The administrator of S-21] said that the plan was to destroy the temple at Wat Phnom and replace it with the monument. If the Vietnamese hadn’t invaded, I think that’s what would have happened.28