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One of the world's most murderous dictators was Pol Pot. As leader of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, it is estimated his regime was responsible for the deaths of up to 2 million people. They died through mass killings or starvation during the 1970s. Under the Khmer Rouge's extreme form of communism, they embarked on a ruthless social engineering project- a so-called agrarian revolution. Their vision was of a classless farming society. In reality, it meant that people were marched out of the capital Phnom Penh to tend rice fields in the countryside. Intellectuals were killed, books were destroyed.

During the peak of the violence, journalists were barred from reporting from Cambodia. But in 1978, American journalist Elizabeth Becker was suddenly granted permission to interview Pol Pot. Hear her extraordinary account of that time, speaking to Newshour's Jon Donnison.

(Photo: The 1970s Cambodian press pass of American journalist, Elizabeth Becker. Credit: Elizabeth Becker)