Khmer Rouge | Communpedia, the communist encyclopedia | Fandom powered by Wikia Share The Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea , who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The regime led by the Khmer Rouge was known as the Democratic Kampuchea . In 1981, the Khmer Rouge officially renounced communism [1] and somewhat moved their ideological emphasis to nationalism and anti-Vietnamese rhetoric instead. However, some analysts argue that this change meant little in practice, because, as historian Kelvin Rowley puts it, "CPK propaganda had always relied on nationalist rather than revolutionary appeals". [2] The Khmer Rouge were heavily influenced by the ideas of Khmer racial superiority, [3] and the regime has been labeled as National Socialist , or fascist. [4] [5] Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was backed by the United States , the United Kingdom , and most Western countries [6] , when a civil war against leftists who disagreed with the Khmer Rouge broke. The anti-Khmer Rouge communists were backed by Vietnam and the Soviet Union . The U.S.

and its allies voted in favour of Democratic Kampuchea retaining Cambodia's seat in the UN. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated that "there are amongst the Khmer Rouge some very reasonable people and they will have to take part in a future government in Cambodia". See also References ↑ ↑ Pilger, John. 2004. In Tell me no lies", Jonathan Cape Ltd ↑ (1983) David Chandler & Ben Kiernan Revolution and its Aftermath. ↑ Becker, Elizabeth. 1986. When the War Was Over. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986, p.136. ↑ Helen Fein. Revolutionary and Antirevolutionary Genocides: A Comparison of State Murders in Democratic Kampuchea, 1975 to 1979, and in Indonesia, 1965 to 1966. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp.

796–823 ↑ Natalino Ronzitti, Rescuing nationals abroad through military coercion and intervention Communist Party of Kampuchea C Communist Party of Kampuchea The Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as Kampuchean (or Khmer) Communist Party (KCP), was a communist party in Cambodia . Its followers were generally known as Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers). History Foundation of the party; first divisions The party was founded in 1951, when the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) was divided into separate Cambodian, Lao, and Vietnamese communist parties. The decision to form a separate Cambodian communist party had been taken at the ICP congress in February the same year. Different sources claim different dates for the exact founding and the first congress of the party. The party congress did not elect a full Central Committee, but instead appointed a 'Party Propagation and Formation Committee'. At the time of its formation, the Cambodian party was called Khmer People's Revolutionary Party. The Indochinese Communist Party had been heavily dominated by Vietnamese, and the KPRP was actively supported by the Vietnamese party during its initial phase of existence.

Due to the reliance on Vietnamese support in the joint struggle against French colonial rule, the history of the party would later be rewritten, stating 1960 as the year of foundation of the party. According to Democratic Kampuchea's version of party history, the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a "Long March" into North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Krom Pracheachon, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's Sangkum.

Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. It is speculated that the decision of Pracheachon to file candidates for the election had not been approved by the WPK. Sihanouk habitually labeled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, and their associates. During the mid-1950s, two KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth), and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line, endorsed by North Vietnam, recognized that Sihanouk, by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French, was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. Champions of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right wing and to adopt leftist policies.

The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the "feudalist" Sihanouk. In 1959 Sieu Heng defected to the government and provided the security forces with information that enabled them to destroy as much as 90 % of the party's rural apparatus. Although communist networks in Phnom Penh and in other towns under Tou Samouth's jurisdiction fared better, only a few hundred communists remained active in the country by 1960. The Paris students' group During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement, which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Sihanouk and Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975, and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.

Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, was born in 1928 (some sources say in 1925) in Kampong Thum Province, northeast of Phnom Penh. He attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for printers and typesetters and also studied civil engineering). Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary. He was a Chinese-Khmer born in 1930 in South Vietnam. He attended the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (more widely known as Sciences Po) in France. Khieu Samphan, considered "one of the most brilliant intellects of his generation," was born in 1931 and specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. In talent he was rivaled by Hou Yuon, born in 1930, who studied economics and law.

Son Sen, born in 1930, studied education and literature; Hu Nim, born in 1932, studied law. Most members of the Paris student group came from landowner or civil servant families. Three of the Paris group forged a bond that survived years of revolutionary struggle and intraparty strife, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng Thirith), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party. In 1951 the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (and whom they subsequently judged to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution.

They transformed the Khmer Students' Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas. Inside the KSA and its successor organizations was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste. The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952 Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary, and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy." A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA. In 1956, however, Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish a new group, the Khmer Students' Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste. The doctoral dissertations written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that were later to become the cornerstones of the policy adopted by Democratic Kampuchea.

The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization, which challenged the conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development, was that the country had to become self-reliant and end its economic dependency on the developed world. In its general contours, Khieu's work reflected the influence of a branch of the "dependency theory" school, which blamed lack of development in the Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations. Clandestinity in Phnom Penh After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham). After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee" where he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement.

His comrades, Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon, became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing, French-language publication, L'Observateur. The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Khieu by beating, undressing and photographing him in public--as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget." Yet the experience did not prevent Khieu from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. As mentioned, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government.

On September 28-September 30, 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. It is estimated that 14 delegates represented the 'rural' faction and seven the 'urban' faction. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention (and considerable historical rewriting) between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. At the meeting the party was renamed as the Workers Party of Kampuchea (WPK). The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. A new party structure was adopted. For the first time since, a permanent Central Committee was appointed with, Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, as the general secretary of the party. His ally, Nuon Chea (also known as Long Reth), became deputy general secretary; however, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Central Committee to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the party hierarchy. Another committee member was veteran communist Keo Meas.

In Democratic Kampuchea, this meeting would later be projected as the founding date of the party, consciously downplaying the history of the party prior to Pol Pot's ascent to leadership. On July 20, 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. In February 1963, at the WPK's second congress, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Tou's allies, Nuon Chea and Keo Meas, were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet. From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from his Paris student days controlled the party center, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese. Insurgency in rural Cambodia In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of thirty-four leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country.

Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police. In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 100. The region Pol Pot and the others moved to was inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. He probably received some training in China, which must have enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's liberated areas. Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk. In September 1966, the party changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret.

Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later (when Pol Pot revealed the identity of the "Angkar" on September 29, 1977). The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In 1967, several small-scale attempts at insurgency were made by the CPK but they met with little success. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge launched a national insurgency across Cambodia. Though North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. The guerrilla forces of the party were baptized as the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea. Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the ineffective and poorly-motivated Royal Cambodian Army to effectively counter it. Rise to power The political appeal of the Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970. Premier Lon Nol, with the support of the National Assembly, deposed Sihanouk.

Sihanouk, in exile in Beijing , made an alliance with the Kampuchean Communist Party and became the nominal head of a Khmer Rouge-dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym, GRUNK) backed by the People's Republic of China . Sihanouk's popular support in rural Cambodia allowed the Khmer Rouge to extend its power and influence to the point that by 1973 it exercised de facto control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population. Historians have often cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign, spanning from 1965-1973 as a significant factor leading the Cambodian peasantry to increasing support of the Khmer Rouge. Not only were the massive bombings of rural areas considered unjust by vast sections of the local population, the destruction of villages disrupted the traditional rural lifestyle and facilitated the collective agrarian reorganization of the peasantry by the CPK. When the U.S. Congress suspended military aid to the Lon Nol government in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country, completely overwhelming the FANK.

On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and overthrew the Khmer Republic, executing all its officers. The Khmer Rouge in power The leadership of the Khmer Rouge was largely unchanged between the 1960s and the mid-1990s. The Khmer Rouge leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities.

The Standing Committee of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee ("Party Center") during its period of power consisted of: Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) "Brother number 1" the effective leader of the movement, General Secretary from 1963 until his death in 1998 Nuon Chea (Long Bunruot) "Brother number 2" Prime Minister Ieng Sary "Brother number 3" Deputy Prime Minister (Pol Pot's brother-in-law) Ta Mok (Chhit Chhoeun) "Brother number 5" Final Khmer Rouge leader, Southwest Regional Secretary (died in custody awaiting trial for genocide , July 21, 2006) Khieu Samphan "Brother number 4" President of the Khmer Rouge Son Sen - Defense Minister, murdered on orders of Pol Pot 1997 Yun Yat Ke Pauk "Brother number 13" Former secretary of the Northern zone Ieng Thirith In power, the Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from foreign influence, closing schools, hospitals and factories, abolishing banking , finance and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property

 and relocating people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labor was widespread.

The purpose of this policy was to turn Cambodians into "New People" through agricultural labor. These actions resulted in massive deaths through executions, work exhaustion, illness, and starvation. In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would be moved only about "two or three kilometers" outside the city and would return in "two or three days." Some witnesses say they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned. These were not the first evacuations of civilian populations by the Khmer Rouge. Similar evacuations of populations without possessions had been occurring on a smaller scale since the early 1970s. The Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population into agricultural communes. The entire population was forced to become farmers in labour camps . During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing selected groups who had the potential to undermine the new state (including intellectuals) and killing many others for even minor breaches of rules.

Through the 1970s, and especially after mid-1975, the party was also shaken by factional struggles. There were even armed attempts to topple Pol Pot. The resultant purges reached a crest in 1977 and 1978 when thousands, including some important CPK leaders, were executed. The older generation of communists, suspected of having links with or sympathizes to Vietnam were targeted by the Pol Pot leadership. The Angkar On September 29 1977, Pol Pot publicly declared the existence of the CPK in a five-hour long speech. He revealed the true character of the "angkar" ( Khmer : អង្គការ; pronounced ahngkah; meaning 'The Organization'), the supreme authority in Cambodia, an obscure ruling body that had been kept in occlusion. The CPK had been extremely secretive throughout its existence. Before 1975 the secrecy was needed for the party's survival and Pol Pot and his cronies had relied on continuing the extreme secrecy in order to consolidate their position against those they perceived as internal enemies during their first two years of power.

The revelation of the CPK's existence shortly before Pol Pot was due to travel to Peking disclosed pressure from China on the Khmer Rouge leaders to acknowledge their true political identity at a time that they increasingly depended for China's assistance against the threats from Vietnam. Accordingly, Pol Pot in his speech claimed that the CPK's foundation had been in 1960 and emphasized its separate identity from Vietnamese communism. Fall of the Khmer Rouge By December 1978, because of several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Cambodia, relations between Cambodia and Vietnam deteriorated. Pol Pot, fearing a Vietnamese attack, ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages. Despite American and Chinese aid, these Cambodian forces were repulsed by the Vietnamese. In early 1979, a pro-Vietnamese group of CPK dissidents led by Pen Sovan held a congress (which they saw as the '3rd party congress', thus not recognizing the 1963, 1975 and 1978 party congresses as legitimate) near the Vietnamese border.

Effectively the CPK was divided into two, with the Pen Sovan-led group constituting a separate party. The Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. The Pen Sovan-led party was installed as the governing party of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea. The CPK led by Pol Pot withdrew its forces westwards, to an area near the Thai border. With unofficial protection from elements of the Thai Army, it began guerrilla warfare against the PRK government. The party founded the Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea as a united front in September 1979 to fight the PRK and the Vietnamese. The Front was led by Khieu Sampan. In December 1979 the armed forces under the command of the party, what remained of the erstwhile People's National Liberation Armed Forces of Kampuchea, were renamed National Army of Democratic Kampuchea. In 1981 the party was dissolved, and substituted by the Party of Democratic Kampuchea . (Wikipedia) The Red Khmer - khmer Rouge - YouTube The Red Khmer - khmer Rouge Want to watch this again later?

Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Nov 14, 2009 These is a documentary over the Genozid in Cambodia in the time of 1975 till 1979.The Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan. The regime led by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 was known as the Democratic Kampuchea. This organization is remembered primarily for its policy of social engineering, which resulted in genocide.Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the deaths of thousands from treatable diseases (such as malaria).

Brutal and arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1976 and 1978, are considered to have constituted a genocide. The clandestine Communist Party of Kampuchea itself constituted the secret leadership of the Khmer Rouge, as its official name was known only to a few insiders: it called itself the Angkar (the organization) and only announced officially its existence in 1977, almost two years after the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, the organization's remaining guerrilla forces became known as the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea. In 1981 the party itself was dissolved, and substituted by the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. Category About Cambodia skip to main | skip to sidebar About Cambodia About Cambodia Pre-1975 until Present,It have Khmer rouge, and Khmer History, and Kingdom of Cambodia and another Ceremony in Cambodia.

Sunday, January 24, 2010 Aing Sary or Leng Sary Ieng Sary (Khmer: អៀង សារី, born October 24, 1924 Loeung Va, Tra Vinh) was a powerful figure in the Khmer Rouge. He was the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979 and held several senior positions in the Khmer Rouge until his defection to the government in 1996. Posted by Khmer Rouge In 1975-1979 The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ខ្មែរក្រហម) was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the totalitarian ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan. The regime led by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 was known as the Democratic Kampuchea.

This organization is remembered primarily for its policy of social engineering and the genocide this caused. Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the deaths of thousands from treatable diseases (such as malaria). Brutal and arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1976 and 1978, are considered to have constituted a genocide. Khmer Rouge means 'Red Khmer' in French, the administrative language of colonial-era Cambodia (the Khmer people are the major ethnic group in Cambodia).The term was originally coined by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian Head of State between 1955 and 1970, to describe the Cambodian left. Prior to their 1975 victory, the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces were officially known as the Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces (CPNLAF). After the fall of Phnom Penh, they were renamed Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea (RAK).

The clandestine Communist Party of Kampuchea itself constituted the secret leadership of the Khmer Rouge, as its official name was known only to a few insiders: it called itself the Angkar (the organization) and only announced officially its existence in 1977, almost two years after the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, the organization's remaining guerrilla forces became known as the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea. In 1981 the party itself was dissolved, and substituted by the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. 1. Pol Pot or He known as Sarloth Sar Saloth Sar (May 19, 1928 – April 15, 1998), better known as Pol Pot, (Khmer: ប៉ុល ពត), was the leader of the Cambodian communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge[7] and was Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976–1979.

Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia in mid-1975.[2] During his time in power, Pol Pot imposed a version of agrarian collectivization, forcing city dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects, toward a goal of "restarting civilization" in a "Year Zero". The combined effects of slave labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people, approximately 21% of the Cambodian population.[8] In 1979, after the invasion of Cambodia by neighbouring Vietnam in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, Pol Pot fled into the jungles of southwest Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed.[9] From 1979 to 1997 he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated from the border region of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung to power and United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot died in 1998 while held under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge. Since his death, rumours that he was poisoned have persisted.

Posted by Cambodia | CJA Cambodia Khmer Rouge Trials From 1975 until 1979, Cambodia witnessed the most violent and deadly years in its history. Under the repressive rule of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian people experienced one of the most brutal genocides of the 20th century. Estimates of the death toll range from 1.5 to 2.2 million people out of a total population of 7 million. The Khmer Rouge committed human rights abuses on an almost unprecedented scale. Families were torn apart so that everyone, including young children, could be forced into labor camps. People were forced to toil in the fields from early morning until late at night with insufficient food to eat. Many of them died of starvation and malnutrition. Almost every Cambodian lost at least one member of their family, and many were left homeless, disabled, traumatized, and with no other option than to flee their home country. Pre-Khmer Rouge Period Cambodia, today a country of more than 14 million people, has a long and rich history dating back to the Stone Age.

Between the 9th and 15th centuries, Cambodia witnessed the rise and fall of the mighty Khmer Empire with Angkor as its center of power. During that period, widespread conversion to Theravada Buddhism—a religion that the majority of Cambodians practice today—took place. The centuries that followed are sometimes described as the dark ages in Cambodia’s history due to the wars with neighboring Ayutthaya Kingdom (centering on what we know today as Thailand) and Vietnam. Yet, it was also the time when some of the great masterpieces of Khmer literature, including Chbap and Raemker, were written. From 1887 until 1953 Cambodia was under French rule as a part of French Indochina. The Khmer Rouge regime, which adopted the radical ideas of the communist movement, emerged from the struggle against French colonization. When Cambodia gained its independence from France, Prince Norodom Sihanouk assumed the role of Head of State. He remained in this position until he was displaced by a 1970 coup organized by Marshal Lon Nol with support from pro-American associates.

Lon Nol and his allies, however, did not stay in power for long as the majority of Cambodian people refused to support Lon Nol’s American-backed Khmer Republic. The Khmer Rouge took advantage of this sentiment and, by allying itself with Prince Sihanouk, motivated thousands of people to join the regime. In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge defeated Lon Nol’s forces and took over the rule of Cambodia. Rule of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) Khmer Rouge is the name by which the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) became known in the 1960s. The regime ruled Cambodia, which was renamed Democratic Kampuchea, from April 17, 1975 until January 6, 1979.

Inspired by radical Maoist and Marxist-Leninist ideas, the Khmer Rouge fomented a revolution to turn Cambodia into “a rural, classless society in which there were no rich people, no poor people, and no exploitation.” In order to achieve its goals, the regime forced people out of the cities to the countryside, took away their private property, destroyed everything from schools and universities to churches and traditional Khmer culture. Agricultural work, which was expected to result in unrealistically high quantities of rice, vegetables and other products, became one of the highest national priorities. This demand for high agricultural output, which had to be fulfilled under extremely poor working and living conditions, had devastating effects on the Cambodian population. Hundreds of thousands of people died from overwork and lack of food. As only “pure” people were qualified to be part of the revolution, people who did not belong to that category, such as the supporters of the former Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic and civilians who were opposed to the regime, were arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and executed. As the regime did not value education, intellectuals were considered enemies and became subject to persecution.

Ethnic minorities in general, and Vietnamese and the Cham in particular, were popular targets of the regime. Buddhists were also singled out for persecution with many monks being disrobed, tortured, and executed. As the capacity of the Cambodian population diminished and the purges within the CPK became more extensive, the Khmer Rouge started to lose its power. The Khmer Rouge regime completely fell after Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia and took control of its capital city Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. The fall of the Khmer Rouge was followed by a civil war, which continued until the late 1990s when the political and military structures of the Khmer Rouge were finally dismantled. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) As part of the transitional justice effort to hold senior Khmer Rouge leaders accountable, the Cambodian Government and the United Nations (UN) formed the The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a Cambodian national court. A hyrbid national-international tribunal, the ECCC applies Cambodian and international law and features Cambodian as well as international judges and counsel.

The international element was included to assist Cambodia’s legal system in handling these cases, which involve crimes of international nature. The ECCC’s jurisdiction covers serious human rights violations, including genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and offences under the Cambodian Criminal Code of 1956 which include murder, torture and religious persecution committed between April 17, 1975 and January 7, 1979. » Read more on the structure of the ECCC. Case No. 001: “Duch,” Notorious Torturer of Tuol Sleng Kaing Guek Eav (alias “Duch”) was the first Khmer Rouge leader brought to justice by the ECCC in Case No. 001. As a former head of the notorious Tuol Sleng security center or “S-21,” in which more than 15,000 prisoners were executed or died from torture and/or poor detention conditions, Kaing Guek Eav was indicted and tried for serious human rights violations including crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Unlike the four Khmer Rouge leaders indicted by the ECCC in Case No. 002, Kaing Guek Eav confessed to his charges and made a public apology to the victims’ relatives. Yet he also argued that he was acting under duress: he was following orders and trying to protect his own life. During the 77 days of trial, nine expert witnesses, 17 fact witnesses, seven character witnesses and 22 Civil Parties were heard before the Trial Chamber. The proceedings were followed by more than 31,000 people at the court building. On July 26, 2010, the ECCC found Kaing Guek Eav guilty of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and sentenced him to 35 years of imprisonment. The 35 year sentence, less than the maximum life sentence, amounted to only 19 years in prison because the Court found that Kaing Guek Eav could get credit for time served in detention.

The verdict prompted appeals from both Co-Prosecutors, who stated that the sentence was inadequate, and the Defendant, who maintains he was just following superior orders and was merely a witness to the events of 1975-1979. On February 3, 2011, the Supreme Court Chamber issued a decision partially confirming the judgment but overturning the Trial Chamber sentence. The Supreme Court Chamber decision stated that the Trial Chamber had erred in law by attaching insufficient weight to the gravity of the crimes committed by Comrade Duch and did not adequately consider the aggravating circumstances in the case. In addition, the decision erred by providing too much weight to the mitigating circumstances in the case. As a result, the Supreme Court Chamber imposed the maximum sentence of life imprisonment on Duch. The appeals decision also granted the appeal of 10 civil party applicants that had previously been rejected by the Trial Chamber and affirmed the Trial Chambers decision to compile and post all statements of apology and acknowledgement of responsibility made by Duch during the ECCC proceedings. The statements of apology are available here . Duch is currently serving out his life sentence in Kandal prison in Cambodia. Case No.

002: Senior Khmer Rouge Officials The second case before the ECCC began in November 2011 and is currently against two senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime: Nuon Chea (former Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea and second in command under Pol Pot) and Khieu Samphan (former Head of State of Democratic Kampuchea). Both individuals are accused of designing and implementing Khmer Rouge policies that resulted in approximately two million innocent deaths. Khmer Rouge - ARRSEpedia The British Military Open Encyclopedia - ARRSE-Pedia. Back to British Army Rumour Service Home Khmer Rouge Jump to: navigation , search The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ខ្មែរក្រហម — “Khmer Krahom” in Khmer) was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot , Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan. The regime led by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979 was known as the Democratic Kampuchea.

This organization is remembered primarily for its policy of social engineering, which resulted in genocide.[1] Its attempts at agricultural reform led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, even in the supply of medicine, led to the deaths of thousands from treatable diseases (such as malaria). Brutal and arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1976 and 1978, are considered to have constituted a genocide.[2] The clandestine Communist Party of Kampuchea itself constituted the secret leadership of the Khmer Rouge, as its official name was known only to a few insiders: it called itself the Angkar (the organization) and only announced officially its existence in 1977, almost two years after the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, the organization's remaining guerrilla forces became known as the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea.

In 1981 the party itself was dissolved, and substituted by the Party of Democratic Kampuchea, which was succeeded in the 1993-1994 period by the Cambodian National Unity Party.[3] In 1996 the Democratic National Union Movement of Ieng Sary split from the Khmer Rouge while in 1997 the Khmer National Solidarity Party was founded as a successor to the CNUP by Khieu Samphan. communist party of kampuchea : definition of communist party of kampuchea and synonyms of communist party of kampuchea (English) History Foundation of the party; first divisions The party was founded in 1951, when the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) was divided into separate Cambodian, Lao , and Vietnamese communist parties. The decision to form a separate Cambodian communist party had been taken at the ICP congress in February the same year. Different sources claim different dates for the exact founding and the first congress of the party. The party congress did not elect a full Central Committee , but instead appointed a 'Party Propagation and Formation Committee'.

[2] At the time of its formation, the Cambodian party was called Khmer People's Revolutionary Party. The Indochinese Communist Party had been heavily dominated by Vietnamese, and the KPRP was actively supported by the Vietnamese party during its initial phase of existence. Due to the reliance on Vietnamese support in the joint struggle against French colonial rule, the history of the party would later be rewritten, stating 1960 as the year of foundation of the party. [3] According to Democratic Kampuchea's version of party history, the Viet Minh 's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a "Long March" into North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Krom Pracheachon, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections.

In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's Sangkum. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. It is speculated that the decision of Pracheachon to file candidates for the election had not been approved by the WPK. [3] Sihanouk habitually labeled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot , Nuon Chea , Ieng Sary , Khieu Samphan , and their associates. During the mid-1950s, two KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth ), and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng ), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines.

The prevalent "urban" line, endorsed by North Vietnam, recognized that Sihanouk, by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French, was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. Champions of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right wing and to adopt leftist policies. The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the " feudalist " Sihanouk. In 1959 Sieu Heng defected to the government and provided the security forces with information that enabled them to destroy as much as 90 % of the party's rural apparatus. Although communist networks in Phnom Penh and in other towns under Tou Samouth's jurisdiction fared better, only a few hundred communists remained active in the country by 1960. The Paris students' group During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement, which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland.

From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Sihanouk and Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975, and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, was born in 1928 (some sources say in 1925) in Kampong Thum Province , northeast of Phnom Penh. He attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for printers and typesetters and also studied civil engineering). Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary. He was a Chinese-Khmer born in 1930 in South Vietnam. He attended the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (more widely known as Sciences Po) in France.

Khieu Samphan, considered "one of the most brilliant intellects of his generation," was born in 1931 and specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. In talent he was rivaled by Hou Yuon, born in 1930, who studied economics and law. Son Sen, born in 1930, studied education and literature; Hu Nim, born in 1932, studied law. Most members of the Paris student group came from landowner or civil servant families. Three of the Paris group forged a bond that survived years of revolutionary struggle and intraparty strife, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng Thirith ), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party . In 1951 the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival . This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development.

Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (and whom they subsequently judged to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students' Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas. Inside the KSA and its successor organizations was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste. The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952 Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary, and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy." A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA. In 1956, however, Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish a new group, the Khmer Students' Union . Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste.

The doctoral dissertations written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that were later to become the cornerstones of the policy adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization, which challenged the conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development, was that the country had to become self-reliant and end its economic dependency on the developed world. In its general contours, Khieu's work reflected the influence of a branch of the " dependency theory " school, which blamed lack of development in the Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations. Clandestinity in Phnom Penh After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham).

After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee" where he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement. His comrades, Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon, became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing, French-language publication, L'Observateur . The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Khieu by beating, undressing and photographing him in public—as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget." Yet the experience did not prevent Khieu from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam.

As mentioned, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government. On September 28-September 30, 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. It is estimated that 14 delegates represented the 'rural' faction and seven the 'urban' faction. [4] This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention (and considerable historical rewriting) between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. At the meeting the party was renamed as the Workers Party of Kampuchea (WPK). The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. A new party structure was adopted. For the first time since, a permanent Central Committee was appointed with, Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, as the general secretary of the party.

His ally, Nuon Chea (also known as Long Reth), became deputy general secretary; however, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Central Committee to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the party hierarchy. Another committee member was veteran communist Keo Meas . In Democratic Kampuchea, this meeting would later be projected as the founding date of the party, consciously downplaying the history of the party prior to Pol Pot's ascent to leadership. [3] On July 20, 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. In February 1963, at the WPK's second congress, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Tou's allies, Nuon Chea and Keo Meas , were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet . From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from his Paris student days controlled the party center, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.

Insurgency in rural Cambodia In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of thirty-four leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country. Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police. In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 100. [5] The region Pol Pot and the others moved to was inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu , whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation ) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. He probably received some training in China, which must have enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's liberated areas.

Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk. In September 1966, the party changed its name to the "Communist Party of Kampuchea" (CPK). [6] The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret. Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later (when Pol Pot revealed the identity of the "Angkar" on September 29, 1977). The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk . In 1967, several small-scale attempts at insurgency were made by the CPK but they met with little success. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge launched a national insurgency across Cambodia. Though North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. The guerrilla forces of the party were baptized as the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea .

Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the ineffective and poorly-motivated Royal Cambodian Army to effectively counter it. Rise to power The political appeal of the Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970 . Premier Lon Nol , with the support of the National Assembly, deposed Sihanouk. Sihanouk, in exile in Beijing , made an alliance with the Kampuchean Communist Party and became the nominal head of a Khmer Rouge-dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym, GRUNK ) backed by the People's Republic of China . Sihanouk's popular support in rural Cambodia allowed the Khmer Rouge to extend its power and influence to the point that by 1973 it exercised de facto control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population. Historians have often cited the U.S. intervention and bombing campaign, spanning from 1965-1973 as a significant factor leading the Cambodian peasantry to increasing support of the Khmer Rouge.

Not only were the massive bombings of rural areas considered unjust by vast sections of the local population, the destruction of villages disrupted the traditional rural lifestyle and facilitated the collective agrarian reorganization of the peasantry by the CPK. [3] When the U.S. Congress suspended military aid to the Lon Nol government in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country, completely overwhelming the Khmer National Armed Forces . On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and overthrew the Khmer Republic , executing all its officers. The Khmer Rouge in power Main article: Democratic Kampuchea The leadership of the Khmer Rouge was largely unchanged between the 1960s and the mid-1990s. The Khmer Rouge leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities .

The Standing Committee of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee ("Party Center") during its period of power consisted of: Yun Yat — Minister of Education , 1975–77; Minister of Information (replaced Hu Nim in 1977) In power, the Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country fro foreign influence, closing schools, hospitals and factories, abolishing banking , finance and currency , outlawing all religions , confiscating all private property and relocating people from urban areas to collective farms where forced labor was widespread. The purpose of this policy was to turn Cambodians into "Old People" through agricultural labor. These actions resulted in massive deaths through executions, work exhaustion, illness, and starvation. In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would be moved only about "two or three kilometers" outside the city and would return in "two or three days." Some witnesses say they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned.

These were not the first evacuations of civilian populations by the Khmer Rouge. Similar evacuations of populations without possessions had been occurring on a smaller scale since the early 1970s. The Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population into agricultural communes through brutal totalitarian methods. The entire population was forced to become farmers in labour camps . During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, at the same time executing selected groups who had the potential to undermine the new state (including intellectuals ) and killing many others for even minor breaches of rules. Through the 1970s, and especially after mid-1975, the party was also shaken by factional struggles. There were even armed attempts to topple Pol Pot. The resultant purges reached a crest in 1977 and 1978 when thousands, including some important CPK leaders, were executed. The older generation of communists, suspected of having links with or sympathies for Vietnam, were targeted by the Pol Pot leadership.

The Angkar On September 29, 1977, Pol Pot publicly declared the existence of the CPK in a five-hour long speech. [2] He revealed the true character of the "angkar" ( Khmer : អង្គការ; pronounced ahngkah; meaning 'The Organization'), the supreme authority in Cambodia, an obscure ruling body that had been kept in seclusion. The CPK had been extremely secretive throughout its existence. Before 1975 the secrecy was needed for the party's survival and Pol Pot and his closest associates had relied on continuing the extreme secrecy in order to consolidate their position against those they perceived as internal enemies during their first two years of power. The revelation of the CPK's existence shortly before Pol Pot was due to travel to Peking resulted in pressure from China on the Khmer Rouge leaders to acknowledge their true political identity at a time that they increasingly depended on China's assistance against the threats from Vietnam. Accordingly, Pol Pot in his speech claimed that the CPK's foundation had been in 1960 and emphasized its separate identity from Vietnamese communism .

[7] Fall of the Khmer Rouge Main article: Third Indochina War By December 1978, because of several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Cambodia, relations between Cambodia and Vietnam deteriorated. Pol Pot, fearing a Vietnamese attack, ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages. Despite American and Chinese aid, these Cambodian forces were repulsed by the Vietnamese. In early 1979, a pro-Vietnamese group of CPK dissidents led by Pen Sovan held a congress (which they saw as the '3rd party congress', thus not recognizing the 1963, 1975 and 1978 party congresses as legitimate) near the Vietnamese border. Along with Heng Samrin , Pen Sovan, was one of the foremost founding members of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (KUFNS or FUNSK), after becoming disillusioned with the Khmer Rouge. [8] Effectively the CPK was then divided into two, with the Pen Sovan-led group constituting a separate party.

[2] The Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia along with the KUFNS, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. The Pen Sovan-led party was installed as the governing party of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea . The CPK led by Pol Pot withdrew its forces westwards, to an area near the Thai border. With unofficial protection from elements of the Thai Army , it began guerrilla warfare against the PRK government. The party founded the Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea as a united front in September 1979 to fight the PRK and the Vietnamese. The Front was led by Khieu Sampan. In December 1979 the armed forces under the command of the party, what remained of the erstwhile People's National Liberation Armed Forces of Kampuchea , were renamed National Army of Democratic Kampuchea . [9] In 1981 the party was dissolved, and substituted by the Party of Democratic Kampuchea . [3] [10] See also

Question: By what name were followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea better known?
Answer: Khmer Rouge