Tiv Ol

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Tiv Ol (Khmer: ទីវ អុល) was a Cambodian teacher and communist politician. He joined the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party in autumn 1959 and became a leading figure among radical teachers in Phnom Penh. On 8 March 1963, he was named as one of 34 "subversive" leftists by Prince Sihanouk. From 1965 to 1967 he was a prominent member of the Khmer-Chinese Friendship Association.

In 1967 his group of leftist teachers moved from the capital to the countryside to escape repression; Tiv Ol left Phnom Penh in November 1967 and joined the clandestine CPK Party Centre. Vorn Vet later claimed to have organized this exodus. Around 1970 he was appointed chief of the CPK’s Kratie provincial organization. After the area came under communist control, he helped reopen the local school and hospital and began agrarian reforms.

Within the CPK’s Eastern Zone, he and others held ambivalent views on the Cambodian–Vietnamese relationship. In 1973 he said Vietnam was an ally of Cambodian liberation but not a wholly reliable one. He visited Hanoi in 1974 and wrote a poem praising Indochinese unity, which was published in a Vietnamese magazine and reportedly angered Pol Pot. In 1977 he was purged, arrested on 6 June, and executed later that year. He was married to Leng Sim Hak, a fellow teacher.