Tiv Ol

Who was Tiv Ol?

Tiv Ol was a Cambodian teacher and communist politician. Tiv Ol joined the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party in the autumn of 1959.

Tiv Ol was the leading figure in a grouping of radical teachers on Phnom Penh. On March 8, 1963, Tiv Ol was included in the list of 34 'subversive' leftists, published by Prince Sihanouk. During the period of 1965-1967 Tiv Ol also a prominent member of the Khmer-Chinese Friendship Association.

In 1967, the Tiv Ol-led group of leftist teacher began to shift to the countryside, to escape state repression. Tiv Ol himself left the capital in November 1967, and made his way to the clandestine CPK Party Centre. Vorn Vet later claimed to have been the organizer of this exodus.

Around 1970 Tiv Ol was appointed the chief of the CPK party organization in Kratie. After communist forces took control over the area, Tiv Ol organized the re-opening of the local school and hospital as well as initiating some agrarian reforms.

Tiv Ol, like others in the CPK Eastern Zone, represented a sector within the party which held ambivalent views on the relation between Vietnamese and Cambodian communists. In 1973 Tiv Ol expressed that Vietnam was an ally of the Cambodian liberation, but an unreliable ally. In 1974 Tiv Ol visited Hanoi. During his stay in Hanoi, he wrote a poem saluting Indochinese unity. The poem was published in a Vietnamese magazine. It is said that the publication had angered Pol Pot.