View source for Khmer Rouge

{{Short description|Members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2021}}
{{Infobox war faction
| name             = Khmer Rouge
| logo             = Flag of Democratic Kampuchea.svg
| caption          = The [[flag of Democratic Kampuchea]], whose design was used by Khmer guerrillas since the 1950s with the building design varying
| native_name      = {{lang|km|ខ្មែរក្រហម}}
| native_name_lang = km
| other_name       = 
| leader_title     = [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea|CPK General Secretary]]
| leader           = [[Pol Pot]]
| founder          = [[Tou Samouth]] (1960-1962)
| dates            = {{nowrap|{{start date|1951|06|28|df=y}} – {{end date|1999|02|09|df=y}}}}
* 1951–1968 ([[Communist Party of Kampuchea|political party]])
* [[Cambodian Civil War|1968–1975]] (insurgency)
* 1975–1979 ([[Democratic Kampuchea|government]])
* [[Cambodian–Vietnamese War|1979]]–[[Cambodian_conflict_(1979–1998)|1999]] (insurgency)
| merger           = 
| split            = 
| predecessor      = 
| merged           = 
| successor        = 
| motives          = 
| area             = 
| size             = 
| headquarters     = [[Phnom Penh]], Cambodia
| ideology         = {{ubl|[[Communism]]<ref name="Kiernan 2004" /><ref name="Cook 2017" />|[[Autarky]]<ref name="Kiernan 2004">{{cite book|author-link=Ben Kiernan|last=Kiernan|first=Ben|title=How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0300102628|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/howpolpotcametop00kier_0}}</ref>|[[Khmer nationalism]]<ref name="Kiernan 2004" /><ref name="Cook 2017">{{cite book|last1=Cook|first1=Susan|last2=Rowley|first2=Kelvin|title=Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda: New Perspectives|publisher=Routledge|year=2017|url=https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/46657/GS24.pdf|isbn=9781351517775|access-date=13 May 2018|archive-date=11 August 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220811160842/https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/46657/GS24.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>}}
| position         = [[Far-left politics|Far-left]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Martin|first1=Gus|title=Essentials of Terrorism: Concepts and Controversies|publisher=SAGE Publications, Inc.|date=2008|page=80|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7-GiXqccL1IC|isbn=978-1412953139}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Hartman|first1=Tom|title=A World Atlas of Military History, 1945–1984|date=1985|publisher=Hippocrene Books|isbn=0870520008|page=81|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CwSn83AgqEYC}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |journal=Ethical Theory and Moral Practice |year=2023 |volume=26 |issue=1 |doi=10.1007/s10677-023-10370-8 |title=Analysing Extremism |first=Finlay |last=Malcolm |page=322 |publisher=[[Springer Publishing|Springer]] |quote="For instance, an extreme form of communism, such as the Khmer Rouge, would be placed on the extreme left-wing of this spectrum, whereas forms of ultra-nationalism could be placed on the extreme right-wing."|doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Jean-Germain |last=Gros |year=1996 |title=Towards a taxonomy of failed states in the New World Order: Decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti |journal=Third World Quarterly |volume=17 |issue=3 |doi=10.1080/01436599615452 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=462 |quote="The lack of a middle class of some significance in failed states, which therefore forces the rich and the poor to confront each other directly and violently, is often reflected in the nature of politics, which is usually dominated either by parties of the extreme right (eg. ARENA in El Salvador) or the extreme left (eg. the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia)."}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Psychology of Conspiracy: A Festschrift for Mirosław Kofta |first1=Michał |last1=Bilewicz |first2=Aleksandra |last2=Cichocka |first3=Wiktor |last3=Soral |first4=Jan-Willem |last4=van Prooijen |first5=André P. M. |last5=Krouwe |quote="Another (potentially even more pernicious) illustration of such extreme-left paranoia is the radically communist Khmer Rouge regime that enforced a bloody rule over Cambodia during the late 1970s." |page=82 |year=2015 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-315-74683-8}}</ref>
| partof           = 
| battles          = {{ubl|[[Cambodian Civil War]]|[[Third Indochina War]]|[[Cambodian–Vietnamese War]]|[[Cambodian conflict (1979–1998)|Cambodian conflict]]}}
| flag             = 
| module           = 
}}
{{Communism sidebar}}
{{Contains special characters|Khmer}}'''Khmer Rouge'''{{efn|{{IPAc-en|k|ə|ˌ|m|ɛər|_|ˈ|r|uː|ʒ}}; {{IPA|fr|kmɛʁ ʁuʒ|lang}}; {{langx|km|ខ្មែរក្រហម|Khmêr Krâhâm|Red Khmer}} {{IPA|km|kʰmae krɑːhɑːm|}}}} is the name that was popularly given to members of the [[Communist Party of Kampuchea]] (CPK), and by extension to [[Democratic Kampuchea]], which ruled [[Cambodia]] between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by [[Norodom Sihanouk]] to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after the [[1970 Cambodian coup d'état]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Khmer Rouge |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/southeast-asia-history/khmer-rouge |website=Encyclopedia.com |access-date=17 January 2021 |archive-date=26 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025312/https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/southeast-asia-history/khmer-rouge |url-status=live }}</ref>

The [[Kampuchea Revolutionary Army]] was slowly built up in the forests of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the [[People's Army of Vietnam]], the [[Viet Cong]], the [[Pathet Lao]], and the [[Chinese Communist Party]] (CCP).<ref name="Chandler 2018">{{Cite book|last=Chandler|first=David P.|title=Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot|publisher=Routledge|year=2018|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mTlMDwAAQBAJ&q=Maha+lout+ploh&pg=PT77|isbn=978-0-429-98161-6}}</ref><ref name="Strangio 2020">{{cite web |url=https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chinas-aid-emboldens-cambodia |last=Strangio |first=Sebastian |title=China's Aid Emboldens Cambodia |website=Yale Global Online |access-date=12 April 2020 |archive-date=17 December 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201217133253/https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chinas-aid-emboldens-cambodia |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Wilson Center 2018">{{cite web|url=https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-chinese-communist-partys-relationship-the-khmer-rouge-the-1970s-ideological-victory|title=The Chinese Communist Party's Relationship with the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s: An Ideological Victory and a Strategic Failure|date=13 December 2018|publisher=Wilson Center|access-date=26 November 2019|archive-date=26 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025336/https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-chinese-communist-partys-relationship-the-khmer-rouge-the-1970s-ideological-victory|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Hood 1990">{{Cite journal|last=Hood|first=Steven J.|date=1990|title=Beijing's Cambodia Gamble and the Prospects for Peace in Indochina: The Khmer Rouge or Sihanouk?|journal=Asian Survey|volume=30|issue=10|pages=977–991|doi=10.2307/2644784|issn=0004-4687|jstor=2644784}}</ref> Although it originally fought against Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge changed its position and supported Sihanouk following the CCP's advice after he was overthrown in a 1970 coup d'état by [[Lon Nol]] who established the pro-American [[Khmer Republic]].<ref name="Hood 1990" /><ref name="RFA 2019-11-26">{{cite web|url=https://www.rfa.org/english/news/special/chinacambodia/relation.html|title=China-Cambodia Relations|publisher=[[Radio Free Asia]]|access-date=26 November 2019|archive-date=26 March 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326025422/https://www.rfa.org/english/news/special/chinacambodia/relation.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Despite a massive American bombing campaign ([[Operation Freedom Deal]]) against them, the Khmer Rouge won the [[Cambodian Civil War]] when they [[Fall of Phnom Penh|captured the Cambodian capital]] and overthrew the Khmer Republic in 1975. Following their victory, the Khmer Rouge—who were led by [[Pol Pot]], [[Nuon Chea]], [[Ieng Sary]], [[Son Sen]], and [[Khieu Samphan]]—immediately set about forcibly evacuating the country's major cities. In 1976, they renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.

The Khmer Rouge regime was highly [[Autocracy|autocratic]], [[Totalitarianism|totalitarian]], and [[Political repression|repressive]]. Many deaths resulted from the regime's [[Social engineering (political science)|social engineering]] policies and the "Moha Lout Plaoh", an imitation of China's [[Great Leap Forward]] which had caused the [[Great Chinese Famine]].<ref name="Chandler 2018" /><ref name="McLellan 1999">{{cite book|title=Many Petals of the Lotus: Five Asian Buddhist Communities in Toronto|last=McLellan|first=Janet|date=1 April 1999|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=978-0-8020-8225-1|edition=1st|page=137|chapter=5|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NMm024458s4C&q=Khmer+Roug+social+engineering&pg=PA137}}</ref><ref name="Chandler 2007">{{cite book|last=Chandler|first=David|title=A History of Cambodia|publisher=Routledge|year=2007|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xZSpDwAAQBAJ&q=Maha+lout+ploh&pg=PA334|isbn=978-1578566969}}</ref> The Khmer Rouge's attempts at [[Land reform|agricultural reform]] through [[collectivisation|collectivization]] similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute [[Self-sustainability|self-sufficiency]], including the supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases, such as [[malaria]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Guillou |first=Anne Yvonne |date=9 October 2008 |title=Medicine in Cambodia during the Pol Pot Regime (1975-1979): Foreign and Cambodian Influences |url=https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00327711/document |access-date=8 December 2023 |website=HAL Open Science |archive-date=7 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231107194458/https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00327711/document |url-status=live }}</ref>

The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived [[political opponent]]s, and their [[Racism|racist]] emphasis on national purity resulted in the [[genocide]] of Cambodian minorities. Its cadres [[Summary execution|summarily executed]] and tortured perceived subversive elements, or they killed them during genocidal [[purge]]s of their own ranks between 1975 and 1979.<ref name="Ratner 2001">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4oEix673qakC&q=The+Khmer+Rouge&pg=PA268|title=Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy|last1=Ratner|first1=Steven R.|last2=Abrams|first2=Jason S.|date=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-829871-7|edition=2nd|page=272}}</ref> Ultimately, the [[Cambodian genocide]] which took place under the Khmer Rouge regime led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2&nbsp;million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population.

In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge was largely supported and funded by the CCP, receiving approval from [[Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party|CCP Chairman]] [[Mao Zedong]]; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China.{{efn|See:<ref name="Chandler 2018" /><ref name="Strangio 2020" /><ref name="RFA 2019-11-26" /><ref name="NYT 2015-03-30">{{Cite web|url=https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/cambodian-historians-call-for-china-to-confront-its-own-past/|title=China Is Urged to Confront Its Own History|last=Levin|first=Dan|date=30 March 2015|website=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=26 November 2019|archive-date=20 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220520075847/https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/cambodian-historians-call-for-china-to-confront-its-own-past/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Kiernan 2008" >{{Cite book|last=Kiernan|first=Ben|title=The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–79|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0300142990}}</ref><ref name="Southgate 2019">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=54iUDwAAQBAJ&q=By+mid-september+China+was+prepared+to+extend+to+Cambodia+a+total+of+US$1+billion&pg=PA84|title=ASEAN Resistance to Sovereignty Violation: Interests, Balancing and the Role of the Vanguard State|last=Laura|first=Southgate|date=8 May 2019|publisher=Policy Press|isbn=978-1-5292-0221-2}}</ref>}} The regime was removed from power in 1979 when [[Cambodian–Vietnamese War|Vietnam invaded Cambodia]] and quickly destroyed most of its forces. The Khmer Rouge then fled to Thailand, whose government saw them as a buffer force against the [[Communist Party of Vietnam]] (CPV). The Khmer Rouge continued to fight against the Vietnamese and the government of the new [[People's Republic of Kampuchea]] until the end of the war in 1989. The [[Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea|Cambodian governments-in-exile]] (including the Khmer Rouge) held onto Cambodia's [[United Nations]] seat (with considerable international support) until 1993, when the monarchy was restored and the name of the Cambodian state was changed to the Kingdom of Cambodia. A year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2011-04-07 |title=Cambodia profile – Timeline |publisher=[[BBC News]] |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13006828 |access-date=2023-07-08 |archive-date=28 November 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181128163358/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-13006828 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1996, a new political party called the [[Democratic National Union Movement]] was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted [[amnesty]], despite his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge, in exchange for his defection and his role in persuading other Khmer Rouge fighters to surrender.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13006828|title=Cambodia profile|publisher=[[BBC News]]|date=17 January 2012|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=15 November 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111115053943/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1244006.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> This move helped to further dissolve the Khmer Rouge organization and was a calculated political decision to end the ongoing civil war by incorporating former resistance leaders. The Khmer Rouge was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999.<ref>{{cite news| url=http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/163/28940.html| work=Harvard International Review| title=No Redemption – The Failing Khmer Rouge Trial By Allan Yang| date=2008| access-date=18 April 2014| archive-date=25 April 2019| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190425181252/https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/163/28940.html| url-status=live}}</ref> Ieng Sary was arrested in 2007 and was charged with crimes against humanity but died of heart failure before the case against him could be brought to a verdict. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by the United Nations-backed [[Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia]], which found them guilty of [[crimes against humanity]] for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign.

== Etymology ==
The term ''Khmers rouges'', [[French language|French]] for [[Political colour#Red|red]] [[Khmer people|Khmers]], was coined by King [[Norodom Sihanouk]] and it was later adopted by English speakers (in the form of the corrupted version Khmer Rouge).<ref name="Becker 1998">{{cite book|last=Becker|first=Elizabeth|title=When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution|publisher=PublicAffairs|year=1998|isbn=978-1891620003}}</ref>{{rp|100}} It was used to refer to a succession of communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into the [[Communist Party of Kampuchea]] and later the [[Party of Democratic Kampuchea]]. Its military was known successively as the [[Kampuchean Revolutionary Army]] and the [[National Army of Democratic Kampuchea]].<ref name="DeRouen 2007 p231">{{cite book|title=Civil Wars of the World: Major Conflicts Since World War II, Volume 1|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nrN077AEgzMC&q=khmer+rouge+also+known+as+the+Khmer+Communist+Party+and+the+National+Army+of+Democratic+Kampuchea&pg=PA231|first=Karl R.|last=DeRouen|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2007|chapter=Cambodia (1970–1975 and 1979–1991)|page=231|isbn = 9781851099191}}</ref>

Since the deterioration in relations between [[Vietnam]] and [[Democratic Kampuchea]], the Vietnamese government no longer recognize the legitimacy of the Khmer Rouge, and as a result, they call the Khmer Rouge the '''Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique''' ({{langx|vi|Tập đoàn Pol Pot-Ieng Sary}}<ref>{{cite news |title="Pol Pot không chỉ là kẻ thù của Campuchia mà của cả Việt Nam" |url=https://vov.vn/chinh-tri/pol-pot-khong-chi-la-ke-thu-cua-campuchia-ma-cua-ca-viet-nam-861012.vov |accessdate=2023-05-21 |agency=BÁO ĐIỆN TỬ VOV |date=2019-01-07 |archive-date=21 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230521054535/https://vov.vn/chinh-tri/pol-pot-khong-chi-la-ke-thu-cua-campuchia-ma-cua-ca-viet-nam-861012.vov |url-status=live }}</ref>) or the '''Pol Pot-Ieng Sary reactionary clique''' ({{langx|vi|Tập đoàn phản động Pol Pot-Ieng Sary}}<ref>{{cite news |title="Thế giới nợ Việt Nam lời xin lỗi" |url=https://special.vietnamplus.vn/2018/12/27/polpot/ |accessdate=2023-05-21 |agency=VietnamPlus |date=2019-01-07 |archive-date=23 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230523050720/https://special.vietnamplus.vn/2018/12/27/polpot/ |url-status=live }}</ref>).

== Ideology ==
=== Influence of Communist thought ===
[[File:Khmer rouge clothing.jpg|thumb|Khmer Rouge clothing, consisting of a red [[krama]], a black outfit and shoes made of [[Tire|tires]].]]
The movement's ideology was shaped by a power struggle during 1976 in which the so-called Party Centre, which was led by [[Pol Pot]], the [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea|general secretary]] of the [[Communist Party of Kampuchea]], defeated other regional elements of its leadership. The Party Centre's ideology combined elements of [[communism]] with a strongly [[Xenophobia|xenophobic]] form of [[Khmer nationalism]]. Partly because of its secrecy and partly because of changes in how it presented itself, academic interpretations of its political position vary widely,<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|25}} ranging from interpreting it as the "purest" [[Marxist–Leninist]] movement to characterising it as an [[Anti-communism|anti-Marxist]] "peasant revolution".<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|26}} The first interpretation has been criticized by historian [[Ben Kiernan]], who asserts that it comes from a "convenient anti-communist perspective".<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|26}} Its leaders and theorists, most of whom had been exposed to the heavily [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] outlook of the [[French Communist Party]] during the 1950s,<ref name="Jackson 1992">{{cite book|last=Jackson|first=Karl D|title=Cambodia, 1975–1978: Rendezvous with Death|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=1992|isbn=978-0691025414}}</ref>{{rp|249}} developed a distinctive and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that drew on elements of Stalinism, [[Maoism]] and the postcolonial theory of [[Frantz Fanon]].<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|244}} In the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge looked to the model of [[Enver Hoxha]]'s [[People's Socialist Republic of Albania|Albania]], which they believed was the most advanced [[communist state]] which was then in existence.<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|25}}

Many of the regime's characteristics—such as its focus on the rural [[peasant]]ry rather than the urban [[proletariat]] as the bulwark of revolution, its emphasis on [[Great Leap Forward]]-type initiatives, its desire to abolish personal interest in [[Human behavior|human behaviour]]{{what|date=June 2025}}, its promotion of communal living and eating, and its focus on perceived common sense over technical knowledge—appear to have been heavily influenced by [[Maoism|Maoist ideology]];<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|244}} however, the Khmer Rouge displayed these characteristics in a more extreme form.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|244}} Additionally, non-Khmers, who constituted a significant part of the supposedly favored segment of the peasantry, were singled out because of their race.<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|26}} According to Ben Kiernan, this was "neither a communist proletarian revolution that privileged the working class, nor a peasant revolution that favored all farmers".<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|26}}

While the CPK described itself as the "number 1 Communist state" once it was in power,<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|25}} some communist regimes, such as [[Vietnam]], saw it as a Maoist deviation from [[orthodox Marxism]].<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|26}} According to author Rebecca Gidley, the Khmer Rouge "almost immediately erred by implementing a Maoist doctrine rather than following the Marxist–Leninist prescriptions."<ref name="Gidley 2019 p48" /> The Maoist and Khmer Rouge belief that human willpower could overcome material and historical conditions was strongly at odds with mainstream Marxism, which emphasised [[historical materialism]] and the idea of history as inevitable progression toward communism.<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|27}} In 1981, following the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, in an attempt to get foreign support, the Khmer Rouge officially renounced communism.<ref name="Cook 2017" /><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/08/07/why-the-world-should-not-forget-khmer-rouge-and-the-killing-fields-of-cambodia/|title=Why the world should not forget Khmer Rouge and the killing fields of Cambodia|last=Taylor|first=Adam|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=7 August 2014|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=25 April 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190425181241/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/08/07/why-the-world-should-not-forget-khmer-rouge-and-the-killing-fields-of-cambodia/|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Khmer nationalism ===
One of the regime's main characteristics was its form of [[Khmer nationalism]], which combined an idealisation of the [[Khmer Empire]] (802–1431) and the [[Post-Angkor period|late Middle Period of Cambodia]] (1431–1863) with an existential fear for the survival of the Cambodian state, which had historically been liquidated during periods of Vietnamese and Siamese intervention.<ref>{{cite book|title=Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Consequences|first=Albert J.|last=Johnman|publisher=Programma Interdisciplinair Onderzoek naar Oorzaken van Mensenrechtenschendingen|year=1996|chapter=The Case of Cambodia|page=61}}</ref> The spillover of Vietnamese fighters from the [[Vietnam War|Vietnamese–American War]] further aggravated anti-Vietnamese sentiments: the [[Khmer Republic]] under [[Lon Nol]], overthrown by the Khmer Rouge, had promoted [[Austroasiatic languages|Mon-Khmer]] nationalism and was responsible for several anti-Vietnamese [[Pogrom|pogroms]] during the 1970s.<ref name="Jordens 1995">Jordens in Heder and Ledgerwood (eds) (1995) ''Propaganda, Politics and Violence in Cambodia'', M. E. Sharpe, p. 134.</ref> Some historians such as [[Ben Kiernan]] have stated that the importance which the regime gave to [[Race (human categorization)|race]] overshadowed its conceptions of [[Social class|class]].<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|26}}

The Khmer Rouge targeted particular groups of people, among them [[Bhikkhu|Buddhist monks]], ethnic minorities, and educated elites.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge|title=Literacy and Education under the Khmer Rouge|website=gsp.yale.edu|access-date=3 June 2023|archive-date=25 July 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230725104126/https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge|url-status=live}}</ref>
Once in power, the Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted the [[Chinese Cambodians|Chinese]], the [[Vietnamese Cambodians|Vietnamese]], the [[Chams|Cham]] minority and even their partially Khmer offspring.<ref name="Weitz 2005 p156–157, 162–164, 171–172">{{cite book|title=A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation|first=Eric D.|last=Weitz|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2005|chapter=Racial Communism: Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge|pages=156–157, 162–164, 171–172|quote=Someth May was a young Cambodian ... [who] recalls ... when a party cadre addressed a crowd [amidst deportation]: "As you all know, during the Lon Nol regime the Chinese were parasites on our nation. They cheated the government They made money out of Cambodian farmers. ... Now the High Revolutionary Committee wants to separate Chinese infiltrators from Cambodians, to watch the kind of tricks they get up to. The population of each village will be divided into a Chinese, a Vietnamese and a Cambodian section. So, is you are not Cambodian, stand up and leave the group. Remember that Chinese and Vietnamese look completely different from Cambodians." Under the new regime, the Khmer Rouge declared that "there are to be no Chams or Chinese or Vietnamese. Everybody is to join the same, single, Khmer nationality. ... [There is] only one religion – Khmer religion. Similarly, a survivor recalls a cadre saying: 'Now we are making revolution. Everyone becomes a Khmer.'}}</ref> The same attitude extended to the party's own ranks, as senior CPK figures of non-Khmer ethnicity were removed from the leadership despite extensive revolutionary experience and were often killed.<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|26}}

A [[Vietnamese people|Vietnamese]] official called the Khmer Rouge leaders "Hitlerite-fascists", while the General Secretary of the [[Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party]], [[Pen Sovan]], referred to the Khmer Rouge as a "draconian, dictatorial and fascist regime".<ref name="Gidley 2019 p48">{{Cite book|last=Gidley|first=Rebecca|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cbSIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA48|title=Illiberal Transitional Justice and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia|date=2019|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-3-030-04783-2|page=48|access-date=1 February 2022|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183146/https://books.google.com/books?id=cbSIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Economy ===
The goal of Khmer Rouge was to create a communist society through the complete and immediate abolition of money, trade and private property. The new society was to be perfectly egalitarian, which required homogeneity, which Khmer Rouge sought to achieve through the destruction of existing social structures and the uniformisation of the newly emerging socialist society. To this end, the creation of a "new society" that would completely break with the existing traditions and cultural heritage of Cambodia was also considered necessary. One of the Khmer Rouge activists stated: "We must burn the old grass so that new grass can grow." For Khmer Rouge, egalitarianism also included the concept of "levelling down"—Cambodian society was to be brought to the level of the rural poor and develop from there; anything that was inaccessible to the general public was considered bourgeois and a luxury that had to be destroyed.<ref name="tomasiewicz">{{cite journal |title=Maoizm, polpotyzm, dengizm: trzy formy azjatyckiego marksizmu |trans-title=Maoism, Pol Potism, Dengism: three forms of Asian Marxism |language=pl |first=Jarosław |last=Tomasiewicz |author-link=:pl:Jarosław Tomasiewicz |year=2013 |journal=Ideopolityka |pages=6–7 |volume=2 |issue=1}}</ref>

The leading economic theorist of Khmer Rouge, [[Hou Yuon]], distinguished two types of economic systems: "natural" (natural economy) and "commodity" (trade-based); in the agricultural conditions of Cambodia, the "commodity" economy was considered a parasite on the "natural" economy—according to Youn's calculations, rice producers received only 26% of the profits. This formed the basis of Khmer Rouge's hostility towards cities, as urban areas were seen as playing a parasitic role in the pre-industrial society of Cambodia, and even the urban working class was considered a relatively privileged group. Khmer Rouge instead postulated socialism built on agrarianism—the poorest peasants, organized into production cooperatives, were considered the main and in fact the only force of the revolution; one of the Khmer Rouge's slogans was "agriculture is the basis for further industrial expansion"—the economy was to be based on agriculture, with the development of industry postponed for the future. The Cambodian economy was also supposed to be self-sufficient along the principle of "reliance on one's own strength", which Khmer Rouge considered necessary to ensure the independence of the Cambodian revolution from imperialism and neo-colonialism, even if this entailed technological regression.<ref name="tomasiewicz"/> 
=== Autarky ===
[[File:Bullet holes at angkor wat.jpg|thumb|Khmer Rouge bullet holes left at [[Angkor Wat]] temple]]
The Khmer Rouge's economic policy, which was largely based on the plans of [[Khieu Samphan]], focused on the achievement of national self-reliance through an initial phase of [[Collective farming|agricultural collectivism]]. This would then be used as a route to achieve rapid social transformation and industrial and technological development without assistance from foreign powers, a process which the party characterised as a "Super Great Leap Forward".<ref name="Tyner 2012 p116">Tyner, James (2012) ''Genocide and the Geographical Imagination'', Rowman and Littlefield, p. 116.</ref>

The party's General Secretary Pol Pot strongly influenced the propagation of the policy of [[autarky]]. He was reportedly impressed with the self-sufficient manner in which the mountain tribes of Cambodia lived, which the party believed was a form of [[primitive communism]]. Khmer Rouge theory developed the concept that the nation should take "agriculture as the basic factor and use the fruits of agriculture to build industry".<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|110}} In 1975, Khmer Rouge representatives to China said that Pol Pot's belief was that the collectivisation of agriculture was capable of "[creating] a complete communist society without wasting time on the intermediate steps".<ref name="Fletcher 2009">{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1879785,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090221002409/http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1879785,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=21 February 2009|title=The Khmer Rouge|last=Fletcher|first=Dan|magazine=Time|date=17 February 2009|access-date=30 July 2019}}</ref> Society was accordingly classified into peasant "base people" ({{lang|km|ប្រជាជនមូលដ្ឋាន}} {{transliteration|km|prâchéachôn mulôdthan}}), who would be the bulwark of the transformation; and urban "new people" ({{lang|km|ប្រជាជនថ្មី}} {{transliteration|km|prâchéachôn thmei}}), who were to be reeducated or liquidated. The focus of the Khmer Rouge leadership on the peasantry as the base of the revolution was according to [[Michael Vickery]] a product of their status as "[[Petite bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] radicals who had been overcome by peasantist [[romanticism]]".<ref name="Vickery 1999">{{cite book|last=Vickery|first=Michael|title=Cambodia 1975–82 2nd edition|publisher=Silkworm Books|year=1999|isbn=978-9747100815}}</ref>{{rp|306}} The opposition of the peasantry and the urban population in Khmer Rouge ideology was heightened by the structure of the Cambodian [[Rural economics|rural economy]], where small farmers and peasants had historically suffered from indebtedness to urban money-lenders rather than suffering from indebtedness to landlords.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|284}} The policy of evacuating major towns, as well as providing a reserve of easily exploitable agricultural labour, was likely viewed positively by the Khmer Rouge's peasant supporters as removing the source of their debts.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|284}}

=== Relationship to religion ===
Democratic Kampuchea was an [[State atheism|atheist state]],<ref name="Wessinger 2000 p282">{{Cite book |last=Salter |first=Richard C. |title=Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases |title-link=Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence |publisher=[[Syracuse University Press]] |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-8156-0599-7 |editor-last=Wessinger |editor-first=Catherine |editor-link=Catherine Wessinger |chapter=Time, Authority, and Ethics in the Khmer Rouge: Elements of the Millennial Vision in Year Zero |page=282 |quote=Democratic Kampuchea was officially an atheist state, and the persecution of religion by the Khmer Rouge was matched in severity only by the persecution of religion in the communist states of Albania and North Korea, so there were no direct historical continuities with Buddhism into the Democratic Kampuchean era.}}</ref> although its constitution stated that everyone had [[freedom of religion]], or freedom not to practice a religion. However, it specified that what it termed "reactionary religion" would not be permitted.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|191}} While in practice religious activity was not tolerated, the relationship of the CPK to the majority Cambodian [[Theravada|Theravada Buddhism]] was complex; several key figures in its history, such as [[Tou Samouth]] and [[Ta Mok]], were former monks, along with many lower level cadres, who often proved to be some of the strictest disciplinarians.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|191}} While there was extreme harassment of Buddhist institutions, the CPK regime had a tendency to internalise and reconfigure the symbolism and language of [[Buddhism in Cambodia|Cambodian Buddhism]] so that many revolutionary slogans mimicked the formulae which were learned by young monks during their training.<ref name="Harris 2008">{{cite book|last=Harris|first=Ian|title=Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice|publisher=University of Hawaii Press|year=2008|isbn=978-0824832988}}</ref>{{rp|182}} Some cadres who had previously been monks interpreted their change of vocation as a simple movement from a lower to a higher religion, mirroring attitudes around the growth of [[Caodaism|Cao Dai]] in the 1920s.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|193}}

Buddhist [[laity]] were seemingly not singled out for persecution, but the traditional belief in the [[Tutelary deity|tutelary spirits]], or the ''[[neak ta]]'', rapidly eroded as people were forcibly moved from their home areas.<ref name="Harris 2008" />{{rp|176}} The position with Buddhist monks was more complicated: as with [[Islam]], many religious leaders were killed whereas many ordinary monks were sent to remote monasteries where they were subjected to hard physical labour.<ref name="Harris 2008" />{{rp|176}} The same division between rural and urban populations was seen in the regime's treatment of monks. For instance, those from urban monasteries were classified as "new monks" and sent to rural areas to live alongside "base monks" of peasant background, who were classified as "proper and revolutionary".<ref name="Harris 2008" />{{rp|176}} Monks were not ordered to [[Defrocking|defrock]] until as late as 1977 in [[Kratié Province]], where many monks found that they reverted to the status of lay peasantry as the agricultural work they were allocated to involved regular breaches of [[Monasticism|monastic]] rules.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|192}} While there is evidence of widespread vandalism of Buddhist monasteries, many more than were initially thought survived the Khmer Rouge years in fair condition, as did most Khmer historical monuments, and it is possible that stories of their near-total destruction were propaganda issued by the successor People's Republic of Kampuchea.<ref name="Harris 2008" />{{rp|181}} Nevertheless, it has been estimated that nearly 25,000 Buddhist monks were killed by the regime.<ref name="NYTi">Shenon, Philp (2 January 1992). [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE5DE163CF931A35752C0A964958260 "Phnom Penh Journal; Lord Buddha Returns, With Artists His Soldiers"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080223082943/https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE5DE163CF931A35752C0A964958260 |date=23 February 2008 }}. ''[[The New York Times]]''. Retrieved 30 July 2019.</ref>

The repression of [[Islam in Cambodia|Islam]]<ref>{{cite book|date=2003|last=Juergensmeyer|first=Mark|title=The Oxford Handbook of Global Religions|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=495}}</ref> (practised by the country's [[Chams|Cham minority]]) was extensive. Islamic religious leaders were executed, but some Cham Muslims were probably told that they could continue to perform their devotions in private as long as it did not interfere with work quotas.<ref name="Harris 2008" />{{rp|176}} Mat Ly, a Cham who served as the deputy minister of agriculture under the [[People's Republic of Kampuchea]], stated that Khmer Rouge troops had perpetrated a number of massacres in Cham villages in the Central and Eastern zones where the residents had refused to give up Islamic customs.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|347}} While [[François Ponchaud]] stated that Christians were invariably taken away and killed based on the accusation that they had links to the U.S. [[Central Intelligence Agency]], however, at least some cadres appear to have regarded it as preferable to the "feudal" class-based religion of Buddhism.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Third Indochina War: Conflict Between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972–79|date=2006|publisher=Routledge|editor1-last=Quinn-Judge|editor1-first=Sophie|page=189|editor2-last=Westad|editor2-first=Odd Arne}}</ref><ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|193}} Nevertheless, it remained deeply suspect to the regime thanks to its close links to [[French colonialism]]; [[Roman Catholic Cathedral of Phnom Penh|Phnom Penh cathedral]] was razed along with other places of worship.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|193}}

=== Interpretations ===
In analysing the Khmer Rouge regime, scholars place it within historical context. The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 through the [[Cambodian Civil War]], where the United States had supported the opposing regime of Lon Nol and heavily bombed Cambodia,<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008">Karlsson, Klas-Göran (2008). "Cambodia". In Karlsson, Klas-Göran; Schoenhals, Michael. [https://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/research-review-crimes-against-humanity.pdf ''Crimes Against Humanity Under Communist Regimes – Research Review''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211124001629/https://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/research-review-crimes-against-humanity.pdf |date=24 November 2021 }}. Stockholm: Forum for Living History. pp. 88–102. {{ISBN|9789197748728}}.</ref>{{rp|89–99}} primarily targeting communist Vietnamese troops who were allied to the Khmer Rouge, but it gave the Khmer Rouge's leadership a justification to eliminate the pro-Vietnamese faction within the group.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|97}} The Cambodian genocide was stopped with the Khmer Rouge's overthrow in 1979 by Communist Vietnam.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|88}} There have been [[allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge]] following their overthrow; in September 1979 the [[United Nations General Assembly]] voted to continue recognising Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Nossiter |first=Bernard D. |date=1979-09-22 |title=U.N. Assembly, Rebuffing Soviet, Seats Cambodia Regime of Pol Pot |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/22/archives/un-assembly-rebuffing-soviet-seats-cambodia-regime-of-pol-pot-the.html |access-date=2025-08-04 |work=The New York Times |archive-date=9 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211009115332/https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/22/archives/un-assembly-rebuffing-soviet-seats-cambodia-regime-of-pol-pot-the.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|93}} Communism in [[Southeast Asia|South East Asia]] was deeply divided, as China supported the Khmer Rouge, while the Soviet Union and Vietnam opposed it.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|89}}

There are three interpretations of the Khmer Rouge: [[totalitarianism]], revisionism, and postrevisionism. Historian Ben Kiernan describes their rule as [[totalitarian]] but places it within the context of "xenophobic [[Pan-European nationalism|European nationalism]]", from which came their [[agrarianism]] and the establishment of a Great Cambodia, rather than communism or [[Marxism]].<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|96}} Pol Pot's biographers [[David P. Chandler]] and [[Philip Short]] place more emphasis on their ideological heritage of communism;<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|96}} it was not easy to apply [[Karl Marx]] and [[Vladimir Lenin]]'s ideas to Cambodia, and communism was chosen as a way to get rid of French colonialism and transform the [[feudal]] society.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|97}} Another interpretation, as proposed by historian Michael Vickery, is that of a bottom-up, left-wing peasant revolution with the Khmer Rouge as the revolutionaries.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|97}} The Khmer Rouge was an intellectual group with a middle-class background and a romanticised sympathy for rural poor people but with little to no awareness that their radical policies would lead to such violence;<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|97}} according to this view, the applicability of [[genocide]] is rejected and the violence was an unintentional consequence that was beyond the Khmer Rouge's control.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|97}} For Vickery, communist ideology does not explain the violence any more than those closer to the peasants', such as agrarianism, [[populism]], and [[nationalism]].<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|97}} Vickery wrote of communisms, as different communist factions were opposed to each other and fought against each other, resulting in further escalation of violence.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|98}}

A synthesis of both interpretations rejects the totalitarian theory in favor of a bottom-up perspective, which emphasises that the peasants did not have revolutionary ambitions.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|98}} According to this perspective, the Khmer Rouge was able to effectively manipulate the peasants to mobilise them towards collective goals that they did not understand, or where the revolutionaries had no desire to create a new society, which would require a certain level of support and understanding that the Khmer Rouge was not able to win over, but were mainly motivated to tear down the old one and violence became an end in itself.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|98}}

== History==

=== Early history ===
The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases, namely the emergence before [[World War II]] of the [[Indochinese Communist Party]] (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese; the 10-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the [[Cambodian People's Party|Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party]] (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967–1968 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea regime from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when [[Hanoi]] effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party.<ref name="Morris">{{cite news|url=http://editorials.cambodia.org/2007/04/vietnam-and-cambodian-communism.html|publisher=Cambodian Information Center, Source: The Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association|first=Stephen J.|last=Morris|title=Vietnam and Cambodian Communism|date=20 April 2007|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=8 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190808180119/http://editorials.cambodia.org/2007/04/vietnam-and-cambodian-communism.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1930, [[Ho Chi Minh]] founded the Communist Party of Vietnam by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in northern, central and southern Vietnam during the late 1920s. The party was renamed the Indochinese Communist Party, ostensibly so it could include revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, all of the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the Indochinese communist movement as well as their influence on developments within Cambodia was negligible.<ref name="Tyner">{{cite book|title=The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmaking of Space|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gfac3N6GOYAC|first=James A.|last=Tyner|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|year=2008|isbn=978-0754670964|pages=44, 51, 54–55, 60–62, 68|access-date=2 June 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183134/https://books.google.com/books?id=Gfac3N6GOYAC|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Viet Minh]] units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French and in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947. The Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing [[Khmer Issarak]] bands. On 17 April 1950, the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the [[United Issarak Front]] was established. Its leader was [[Son Ngoc Minh]], and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups aided by the Viet Minh occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952, and on the eve of the [[1954 Geneva Conference|Geneva Conference]] in 1954, they controlled as much as one half of the country.<ref name="Chandler 2007" />{{rp|180–1}} In 1951, the ICP was reorganized into three national units, namely the [[Vietnam Workers' Party]], the [[Lao Issara]], and the Kampuchean or Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP). According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have been either [[Khmer Krom]] or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

According to Democratic Kampuchea's perspective 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.<ref name="Tyner" /> In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the [[Pracheachon]], which participated in the [[1955 Cambodian general election|1955]] and the [[1958 Cambodian general election|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.<ref name="Doyle">{{cite book|title=Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GNC-XxHxIdYC&q=cambodia+September+1955+election+Pracheachon+Party&pg=PA31|last1=Doyle|first1=Michael W.|last2=Johnston|first2=Ian|last3=Orr|first3=Robert C.|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1997|chapter=Politics in Cambodia|page=31|isbn=9780521588379|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183136/https://books.google.com/books?id=GNC-XxHxIdYC&q=cambodia+September+1955+election+Pracheachon+Party&pg=PA31#v=snippet&q=cambodia%20September%201955%20election%20Pracheachon%20Party&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> Members of the Pracheachon were subject to harassment and arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's political organization, [[Sangkum]]. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the [[1962 Cambodian general election|1962 election]] and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labelled 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.<ref name="Morris" />

During the mid-1950s, 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.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/9610196/Norodom-Sihanouk.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/9610196/Norodom-Sihanouk.html |archive-date=11 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Norodom Sihanouk Obituary|publisher=Telegraph Media Group Limited|work=The Telegraph|date=15 October 2012|access-date=30 July 2019}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Advocates 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 "[[Feudalism|feudalist]]" Sihanouk.<ref name="Yimsut">{{cite book|title=Facing the Khmer Rouge: A Cambodian Journey|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jSdYz91-sJYC&q=khmer+rouge+struggle+to+overthrow+feudalist+Sihanouk&pg=PR11|first=Ronnie|last=Yimsut|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2011|chapter=Forward|page=forward xi|isbn=9780813552309|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183137/https://books.google.com/books?id=jSdYz91-sJYC&q=khmer+rouge+struggle+to+overthrow+feudalist+Sihanouk&pg=PR11#v=snippet&q=khmer%20rouge%20struggle%20to%20overthrow%20feudalist%20Sihanouk&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Paris student 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 Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975 and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.<ref name="Cambodiatribunal">{{cite web|url=http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/|title=Khmer Rouge History|last=Dy|first=Khamboly|publisher=Cambodia Tribunal Monitor|date=2013|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=21 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321195205/http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/|url-status=live}}</ref> Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, 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 fax machines and also studied civil engineering). Described by one source as a "determined, rather plodding organizer", Pol Pot failed to obtain a degree, but according to [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]] priest Father François Ponchaud he acquired a taste for the classics of [[French literature]] as well as an interest in the writings of Karl Marx.<ref name="Bartrop">{{cite book|title=A Biographical Encyclopedia of Contemporary Genocide: Portraits of Evil and Good|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=55NPpA6EvyMC&q=Pol+Pot+%C3%89cole+FRan%C3%A7aise+d%27%C3%89lectronique+et+d%27Informatique&pg=PT256|first=Paul R.|last=Bartrop|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2012|isbn=978-0313386794|chapter=on Pol Pot|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183138/https://books.google.com/books?id=55NPpA6EvyMC&q=Pol+Pot+%C3%89cole+FRan%C3%A7aise+d%27%C3%89lectronique+et+d%27Informatique&pg=PT256|url-status=live}}</ref>

Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary, a Chinese-Khmer from South Vietnam. He attended the elite [[Lycée Sisowath]] in [[Phnom Penh]] before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Paris Institute of Political Science (more widely known as [[Sciences Po]]) in France. Khieu Samphan specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bartrop |first=Paul R. |title=A biographical encyclopedia of contemporary genocide portraits of evil and good|year=2012|publisher=Abc-Clio |isbn=978-1-78539-448-5|oclc=915350384}}</ref> [[Hou Yuon]] studied economics and law, Son Sen studied education and literature, and [[Hu Nim]] studied law.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://d.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/Confessions/Confessions_Hu_Nim.htm|title=Confession of Hu Nim|translator=Eng Kok Thay|work=The Confession of Hu Nim, aka Phoas (Arrested: April 10, 1977; Executed: July 6, 1977)|publisher=Documentation Center of Cambodia|date=18 April 1975|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=3 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203014412/http://www.d.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/Confessions/Confessions_Hu_Nim.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Two members of the group, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the [[University of Paris]] while Hu Nim obtained his degree from the [[Royal University of Phnom Penh|University of Phnom Penh]] in 1965. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family as an older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King [[Sisowath Monivong|Monivong]]. 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/world/khieu-ponnary-83-first-wife-of-pol-pot-cambodian-despot.html|title=Khieu Ponnary, 83, First Wife Of Pol Pot, Cambodian Despot|last=Becker|first=Elizabeth|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=3 July 2003|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=6 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191206145612/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/world/khieu-ponnary-83-first-wife-of-pol-pot-cambodian-despot.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

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 (but subsequently judged them 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.<ref name="Frey">{{cite book|title=Genocide and International Justice|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m569AfPJkB4C&q=Cercle+Marxiste+Khmer+Students+Association&pg=PA267|first=Rebecca Joyce|last=Frey|publisher=Infobase Publishing|year=2009|isbn=978-0816073108|pages=266–267|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183140/https://books.google.com/books?id=m569AfPJkB4C&q=Cercle+Marxiste+Khmer+Students+Association&pg=PA267#v=snippet&q=Cercle%20Marxiste%20Khmer%20Students%20Association&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

Inside the KSA and its successor organizations, there was a secret organization known as the ''Cercle Marxiste'' (Marxist circle). 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, but Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish in 1956 a new group, the Khmer Students Union. Inside, the group was still run by the ''Cercle Marxiste''.<ref name="Frey" />

The doctoral dissertations which were written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that would later become the cornerstones of the policy that was 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 [[Industrialisation|industrialization]] are necessary precursors of development.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|63}} 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 country|developed world]]. In its general contours, Samphan'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.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|63}}

=== Path to power and reign ===
==== KPRP Second Congress ====
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]]. 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.<ref name="Short">{{cite book|title=Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XW24koscGMkC&q=pol+pot+viet+minh&pg=PR11|first=Philip|last=Short|publisher=Macmillan|year=2007|chapter=Initiation to the Maquis|page=95|isbn=9781429900935|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183141/https://books.google.com/books?id=XW24koscGMkC&q=pol+pot+viet+minh&pg=PR11#v=snippet&q=pol%20pot%20viet%20minh&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

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 Samphan by beating, undressing and photographing him in public; as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget".<ref name="Shawcross 1979">{{cite book|last=Shawcross|first=William|title=Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and The Destruction of Cambodia|publisher=Cooper Square Press|year=1979|isbn=978-0815412243}}</ref>{{rp|92–100, 106–112}} Yet the experience did not prevent Samphan from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. 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.<ref name="Tyner" />

In late September 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. 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.<ref name="Tyner" /> The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK). His ally [[Nuon Chea]], also known as Long Reth, became deputy general secretary, but Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Political Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the renamed party's hierarchy. The name change is significant. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea implied in the 1980s that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second congress of the KPRP.<ref name="Tyner" />

On 20 July 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. At the WPK's second congress in February 1963, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Samouth'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 centre, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|241}} 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 34 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.<ref name="Frey" />

==== Sihanouk and the GRUNK ====
{{see also|Cambodian Civil War}}
The region where 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 warfare|guerrilla struggle]]. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China.<ref name="Frey" /> From the 1950s on, Pol Pot had made frequent visits to the People's Republic of China, receiving political and military training—especially on the theory of [[dictatorship of the proletariat]]—from the personnel of the CCP.<ref name="Chandler 2018" /><ref name="Wilson Center 2018" /><ref name="ifeng shidian">{{Cite web|url=http://news.ifeng.com/history/2/shidian/200804/0410_2666_485387.shtml|script-title=zh:西哈努克、波尔布特与中国|website=ifeng.com|language=zh|access-date=26 November 2019|archive-date=30 October 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201030081609/http://news.ifeng.com/history/2/shidian/200804/0410_2666_485387.shtml|url-status=live}}</ref> From November 1965 to February 1966, Pol Pot received training from high-ranking CCP officials such as [[Chen Boda]] and [[Zhang Chunqiao]], on topics such as the [[Chinese Communist Revolution|communist revolution in China]], [[class conflict]]s, and [[Communist International]].<ref name="yhcqw">{{cite web|url=http://www.yhcqw.com/13/2114.html|script-title=zh:波尔布特：并不遥远的教训|publisher=炎黄春秋|language=zh|access-date=23 November 2019|archive-date=27 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200627212910/http://www.yhcqw.com/13/2114.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> Pol Pot was particularly impressed by the lecture on political purge by [[Kang Sheng]].<ref name="Chandler 2018" /><ref name="yhcqw" /> This experience had 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.<ref name=":10">{{Cite book |last=Ross |first=Russell R. |url=https://countrystudies.us/cambodia/ |title=Cambodia: A Country Study |date=1987 |chapter= |lccn=89600150 |chapter-url=}}</ref>

In September 1966, the WPK changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK).<ref name=":10" /> 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. The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Sihanouk. In 1968, the Khmer Rouge was officially formed, and its forces 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. Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the Cambodian military to effectively counter it. For the next two years, the insurgency grew as Sihanouk did very little to stop it. As the insurgency grew stronger, the party finally openly declared itself to be the Communist Party of Kampuchea.<ref name="Frey" />

The political appeal of the Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the [[1970 Cambodian coup d'état|removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970]]. Premier Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk with the support of the [[National Assembly of Cambodia|National Assembly]]. Sihanouk, who was in exile in Beijing, made an alliance with the Khmer Rouge on the advice of CCP, and became the nominal head of a Khmer Rouge–dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym [[GRUNK]]) backed by China. In 1970 alone, the Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the United Front.<ref name="Xiamen Forum 2013">{{Cite journal|author=宋梁禾|year=2013|others=吴仪君|script-title=zh:中国对柬埔寨的援助：评价及建议|url=https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41448796.pdf|url-status=live|journal=Xiamen University Forum on International Development|language=zh|issue=6|pages=54–58|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190414161319/https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41448796.pdf|archive-date=14 April 2019|access-date=25 November 2019}}</ref> Although thoroughly aware of the weakness of Lon Nol's forces and loath to commit American military force to the new conflict in any form other than air power, the [[Presidency of Richard Nixon|Nixon administration]] supported the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic.<ref name="Shawcross 1979" />{{rp|181–2, 194}}<ref>{{cite book|last1=Isaacs|first1=Arnold|last2=Hardy|first2=Gordon|last3=Brown|first3=MacAlister|title=The Vietnam Experience: Pawns of War: Cambodia and Laos|publisher=Boston Publishing Company|year=1987|isbn=978-0-939526246|page=[https://archive.org/details/pawnsofwarcambod00isaa/page/98 98]|url=https://archive.org/details/pawnsofwarcambod00isaa/page/98}}</ref>

On 29 March 1970, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. Documents uncovered from the Soviet Union archives revealed that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea.<ref name="Mosyakov">Mosyakov, Dmitry. "The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists: A History of Their Relations as Told in the Soviet Archives". In Cook, Susan E., ed. (2004). "Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda". ''Yale Genocide Studies Program Monograph Series''. '''1''': 54. "In April–May 1970, many North Vietnamese forces entered Cambodia in response to the call for help addressed to Vietnam not by Pol Pot, but by his deputy Nuon Chea. Nguyen Co Thach recalls: "Nuon Chea has asked for help and we have "liberated" five provinces of Cambodia in ten days."</ref> A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within {{convert|15|mi|km}} of Phnom Penh before being pushed back. By June, three months after the removal of Sihanouk, they had swept government forces from the entire northeastern third of the country. After defeating those forces, the North Vietnamese turned the newly won territories over to the local insurgents. The Khmer Rouge also established "liberated" areas in the south and the southwestern parts of the country, where they operated independently of the North Vietnamese.<ref>Sutsakhan, Lt. Gen. Sak, The Khmer Republic at War and the Final Collapse. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History, 1987. p. 32.</ref>

After Sihanouk showed his support for the Khmer Rouge by visiting them in the field, their ranks swelled from 6,000 to 50,000 fighters. Many of the new recruits for the Khmer Rouge were apolitical peasants who fought in support of the king, not for communism, of which they had little understanding.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IC15Ae01.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070328161501/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IC15Ae01.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=2007-03-28|title=Dining with the Dear Leader|work=Asia Time}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chronology of the Khmer Rouge Movement |url=https://cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/chronology-of-the-khmer-rouge-movement/ |access-date=2025-08-04 |website=Cambodia Tribunal Monitor |publisher= |archive-date=20 August 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250820010010/https://cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/chronology-of-the-khmer-rouge-movement/ |url-status=live }}</ref> By 1975, with the Lon Nol government running out of ammunition, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the government would collapse. On 17 April 1975, there was the [[Fall of Phnom Penh]], as the Khmer Rouge captured the capital.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2018-08-21 |title=Khmer Rouge |url=https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/the-khmer-rouge |access-date=2023-09-29 |website=HISTORY |archive-date=17 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221117085947/https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/the-khmer-rouge |url-status=live }}</ref>

During the civil war, unparalleled atrocities were executed on both sides.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|90}} While the civil war was brutal, its estimated death toll has been revised downwards over time.<ref>Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979". Forced Migration and Mortality. National Academies Press. pp. 103–104. {{ISBN|9780309073349}}.</ref>

==== Foreign involvement ====
===== Before 1975 =====
{{further|Allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge|Operation Menu|Operation Freedom Deal}}
[[File:Bomb craters in Cambodia.jpg|thumb|An aerial view of bomb craters in Cambodia]]
The relationship between the massive [[carpet bombing]] of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians. Some scholars, including [[Michael Ignatieff]], [[Adam Jones (Canadian scholar)|Adam Jones]]<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.mcvts.net/cms/lib07/NJ01911694/Centricity/Domain/155/Textbook.pdf|title=Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction|last=Jones|first=Adam|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|pages=189–90|access-date=25 January 2019|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805203324/https://www.mcvts.net/cms/lib07/NJ01911694/Centricity/Domain/155/Textbook.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> and [[Greg Grandin]],<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QGGzBgAAQBAJ&q=%22grandin,%22+khmer+rouge|title=Kissinger's Shadow: The Long Reach of America's Most Controversial Statesman|last=Grandin|first=Greg|date=2015|publisher=Henry Holt and Company|isbn=978-1627794503|pages=179–80}}</ref> have cited the United States intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965–1973) as a significant factor which led to increased support for the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry.<ref>Kiernan, Ben (Winter 1989). "The American Bombardment of Kampuchea 1969–1973". ''Vietnam Generation''. '''1''' (1): 4–41.</ref>

According to Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia.{{nbsp}}... It used the bombing's devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment [[propaganda]] and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies and its purge of moderate communists and Sihanoukists."<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|16–19}} Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler writes that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted – it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh", but it also accelerated the collapse of rural society and increased social polarization.<ref name="Chandler 2018" />{{rp|96–8}}<ref>Chandler, David (2005). ''Cambodia 1884–1975'', in The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia, edited by Norman Owen. University of Hawaii Press, p. 369.</ref> [[Peter Rodman]] and [[Michael Lind]] claim that the United States intervention saved the Lon Nol regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973.<ref>Rodman, Peter (23 August 2007). [http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/0823iraq_rodman.aspx "Returning to Cambodia"]. Brookings Institution. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111110165813/http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/0823iraq_rodman.aspx|date=10 November 2011}}</ref><ref>Lind, Michael, ''Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict'', Free Press, 1999.</ref> Craig Etcheson acknowledged that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge but disputed that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory.<ref>Etcheson, Craig, ''The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea'', Westview Press, 1984, p. 97.</ref> [[William Shawcross]] writes that the United States bombing and ground incursion plunged Cambodia into the chaos that Sihanouk had worked for years to avoid.<ref name="Shawcross 1979" />{{rp|92–100, 106–112}}

By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge had largely disappeared.<ref name="Cook 2017" /> On the other hand, the CCP largely "armed and trained" the Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, both during the Cambodian Civil War and the years afterward.<ref>Bezlova, Antoaneta (21 February 2009). [https://web.archive.org/web/20090223174332/http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KB21Ad01.html "China haunted by Khmer Rouge links"]. ''Asia Times''. Retrieved 21 February 2009.</ref> In 1970 alone, the Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the [[National United Front of Kampuchea]] formed by Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge.<ref name="Xiamen Forum 2013" />

===== 1975–1992 =====
In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and in January 1976, Democratic Kampuchea was established. During the [[Cambodian genocide]], the CCP was the main international patron of the Khmer Rouge, supplying "more than 15,000 military advisers" and most of its external aid.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Roett|first1=Riordan|last2=Ruz|first2=Guadalupe|title=China's Expansion into the Western Hemisphere: Implications for Latin America and the United States|publisher=Brookings Institution Press|year=2008|isbn=9780815775546|page=193}}</ref> It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid to Khmer Rouge came from China, with 1975 alone seeing [[US$]]1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid and US$20&nbsp;million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China".<ref name="NYT 2015-03-30" /><ref name="Kiernan 2008" /><ref name="Southgate 2019" /> In June 1975, Pol Pot and other officials of Khmer Rouge met with Mao Zedong in [[Beijing]], receiving Mao's approval and advice; in addition, Mao also taught Pot his "Theory of Continuing Revolution under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" ({{lang|zh|无产阶级专政下继续革命理论}}).<ref name="Chandler 2018" /><ref name="RFA 2019-11-26" /><ref name="ifeng shidian" /><ref name="yhcqw" /> High-ranking CCP officials such as Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help.<ref name="Chandler 2018" /><ref name="Wilson Center 2018" /><ref name="RFA 2019-11-26" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/docs/2016_12_30.pdf|script-title=zh:2016:张春桥幽灵|last=Wang|first=Youqin|publisher=The University of Chicago|language=zh|access-date=27 November 2019|archive-date=25 June 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200625142035/http://ywang.uchicago.edu/history/docs/2016_12_30.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

Democratic Kampuchea was overthrown by the [[People's Army of Vietnam|Vietnamese army]] in January 1979, and the Khmer Rouge fled to [[Thailand]]. However, to counter the power of the Soviet Union and Vietnam, a group of countries—including China, the United States, Thailand, and some other Western nations—supported the Khmer Rouge–dominated [[Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea]] in retaining Cambodia's seat in the United Nations, which it held until 1993, after the [[Cold War]] had ended.<ref name="Tufts.edu" /> In 2009, China defended its past ties with previous Cambodian governments, including that of Democratic Kampuchea or Khmer Rouge, which at the time had a legal seat at the United Nations and foreign relations with more than 70 countries.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE51G33W20090217|publisher=Reuters|first=Ben|last=Blanchard|title=China defends its Khmer Rouge ties as trial opens|date=17 February 2009|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=7 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407222155/https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE51G33W20090217|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== Regime ====
{{main|Democratic Kampuchea}}

===== Leadership =====
The governing structure of Democratic Kampuchea was split between the state presidium headed by Khieu Samphan, the cabinet headed by Pol Pot (who was also Democratic Kampuchea's [[List of prime ministers of Cambodia|prime minister]]) and the party's own Politburo and Central Committee. All were complicated by a number of political factions which existed in 1975. The leadership of the Party Centre, the faction which was headed by Pol Pot, remained largely unchanged from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. Its leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Khmer-Rouge|title=Khmer Rouge — Facts, Leadership, & Death Toll|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica|access-date=5 November 2017|archive-date=7 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107033002/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Khmer-Rouge|url-status=live}}</ref> The second significant faction was made up of men who had been active in the pre-1960 party and had stronger links to Vietnam as a result; government documents show that there were several major shifts in power between factions during the period in which the regime was in control.<ref name=":10" />

In 1975–1976, there were several powerful regional Khmer Rouge leaders who maintained their own armies and had different party backgrounds than the members of the Pol Pot clique, particularly [[So Phim]] and Nhim Ros, both of whom were vice presidents of the state [[presidium]] and members of the Politburo and Central Committee respectively.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|158}} A possible military coup attempt was made in May 1976, and its leader was a senior Eastern Zone cadre named Chan Chakrey, who had been appointed deputy secretary of the army's General Staff.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chan Chakrei - ECCC |url=https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/directory/khmer-rouge-profile/chan-chakrei |access-date=2025-08-04 |website=www.eccc.gov.kh}}</ref> A reorganisation that occurred in September 1976, during which Pol Pot was demoted in the state presidium, was later presented as an attempted pro-Vietnamese coup by the Party Centre.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|158}} Over the next two years, So Phim, Nhim Ros, Vorn Vet and many other figures who had been associated with the pre-1960 party were arrested and executed.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|158}} Phim's execution was followed by that of the majority of the cadres and much of the population of the Eastern Zone that he had controlled.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|159}} The Party Centre, lacking much in the way of their own military resources, accomplished their seizure of power by forming an alliance with Southwestern Zone leader Ta Mok and Pok, head of the North Zone's troops. Both men were of a purely peasant background and were therefore natural allies of the strongly peasant ideology of the Pol Pot faction.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|159}}

The Standing Committee of the Khmer Rouge's Central Committee during its period of power consisted of the following:
* Pol Pot (Saloth Sar), "Brother number&nbsp;1", General Secretary from 1963 until his death in 1998 and effectively the leader of the movement.
* Nuon Chea (Long Bunruot), "Brother number&nbsp;2", Prime Minister. High status made him Pol Pot's "right hand man".
* Ieng Sary (Pol Pot's brother-in-law), "Brother number 3", Deputy Prime Minister.
* [[Khieu Samphan]], "Brother number&nbsp;4", President of Democratic Kampuchea.
* [[Ta Mok]] (Chhit Chhoeun), "Brother number&nbsp;5", Southwest Regional Secretary.
* [[Son Sen]], "Brother number&nbsp;89", Defence Minister, superior of [[Kang Kek Iew]] and executed on Pol Pot's orders for treason.
* [[Yun Yat]], wife of Son Sen, former Information Minister, executed with Son Sen.
* [[Ke Pauk]], "Brother number&nbsp;13", former secretary of the Northern zone.
* [[Ieng Thirith]], sister-in-law of Pol Pot and wife of Ieng Sary, former Social Affairs Minister.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/IHRLC/Leaders_of_the_Khmer_Rouge.pdf|title=Leaders of the Khmer Rouge|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=5 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190805203332/https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/IHRLC/Leaders_of_the_Khmer_Rouge.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== Life under the Khmer Rouge ====
The Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the country from all foreign influences, closing schools, hospitals and some factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, and collectivising agriculture. Khmer Rouge theorists, who developed the ideas of Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan, believed that an initial period of self-imposed economic isolation and national self-sufficiency would stimulate the rebirth of the crafts as well as the rebirth of the country's latent industrial capability.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|47}}

==== Evacuation of the cities ====
In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents that they would be moved only about "two or three kilometers" away from the city and would return in "two or three days". Some witnesses said they were told that the evacuation was because of the "threat of American bombing" and they were also told that they did not have to lock their houses since the Khmer Rouge would "take care of everything" until they returned. If people refused to evacuate, they would immediately be killed and their homes would be burned to the ground. The evacuees were sent on long marches to the countryside, which killed thousands of children, elderly people and sick people.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|251–310}} 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.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|251–310}}

On arrival at the villages to which they had been assigned, evacuees were required to write brief autobiographical essays. The essay's content, particularly with regard to the subject's activity during the Khmer Republic regime, was used to determine their fate.<ref name="Bergin p31">Bergin, S. ''The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide'', Rosen, p. 31.</ref> Military officers and those occupying elite professional roles were usually sent for reeducation, which in practice meant immediate execution or confinement in a labour camp.<ref name="Bergin p31" /> Those with specialist technical skills often found themselves sent back to cities to restart production in factories which had been interrupted by the takeover.<ref name="Bergin p31" /> The remaining displaced urban population ("[[New People (Cambodia)|new people]]"), as part of the regime's drive to increase food production, were placed into [[agricultural commune]]s alongside the peasant "base people" or "old people". The latter's holdings were collectivised. Cambodians were expected to produce three tons of rice per hectare, whereas before the Khmer Rouge era the average was one ton per hectare.

The lack of agricultural knowledge on the part of the former city dwellers made [[famine]] inevitable. The rural peasantry were often unsympathetic, or they were too frightened to assist them. Such acts as picking wild fruit or berries were seen as "private enterprise" and punished with death. Labourers were forced to work long shifts without adequate rest or food, resulting in many deaths through exhaustion, illness and starvation. Workers were executed for attempting to escape from the communes, for breaching minor rules, or after being denounced by colleagues. If caught, offenders were taken off to a distant forest or field after sunset and killed.<ref>Seng Kok Ung, I survived the killing fields, pp. 22–26</ref> Due to the widespread and constant nature of state violence, the regime's autarkic and economically disruptive industrial policies, and especially after the outbreak of [[Cambodian–Vietnamese War|war with Vietnam]] in 1978, even [[Bullet|bullets]] would fall into scarcity. As a result, executions were often carried out using crude implements such as a [[Hoe (tool)|hoes]], [[Machete|machetes]], and [[Pickaxe|pickaxes]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Locard |first=Henri |title=Pol Pot's Little Red Book: The Sayings of Angkar |date=January 1, 2005 |publisher=Silkworm Books |isbn=978-9749575567 |location=Chiang Mai |pages=84}}</ref>

Unwilling to import Western medicines, the regime turned to traditional medicine instead and placed medical care in the hands of cadres who were only given rudimentary training. The famine, forced labour and lack of access to appropriate services led to a high number of deaths.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|251–310}}

===== Economic policies =====
Khmer Rouge economic policies took a similarly extreme course. Officially, trade was restricted to bartering between communes, a policy which the regime developed in order to enforce self-reliance.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|62}} Banks were raided, and all currency and records were destroyed by fire, thus eliminating any claim to funds.<ref>Cambodia Tribunal, "Life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge Regime".</ref> After 1976, the regime reinstated discussion of export in the period after the disastrous effects of its planning began to become apparent.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|58}} [[Commercial fishing]] was banned in 1976.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/let-fish-dammed/|title=Dam the Fish|last=Tolson|first=Michelle|publisher=Inter Press Service|date=17 December 2013|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=1 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190301235803/http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/let-fish-dammed/|url-status=live}}</ref>

===== Family relations =====
[[File:Photos of victims in Tuol Sleng prison.JPG|thumb|Rooms of the [[Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum]] contain thousands of photos taken by the Khmer Rouge of their victims.]]
The regulations made by the Angkar (អង្គការ, The Organisation, which was the ruling body) also had effects on the traditional Cambodian family unit. The regime was primarily interested in increasing the young population and one of the strictest regulations prohibited [[Extramarital sex|sex outside marriage]] which was punishable by execution.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|186–7}} The Khmer Rouge followed a morality based on an idealised conception of the attitudes of prewar rural Cambodia.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|186}} Marriage required permission from the authorities, and the Khmer Rouge were strict, giving permission to marry only to people of the same class and level of education. Such rules were applied even more strictly to party cadres.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|186}} While some refugees spoke of families being deliberately broken up, this appears to have referred mainly to the traditional Cambodian extended family unit, which the regime actively sought to destroy in favour of small [[nuclear family|nuclear]] units of parents and children.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|188}}

The regime promoted [[Arranged marriage|arranged marriages]], particularly between party cadres. While some academics such as Michael Vickery have noted that arranged marriages were also a feature of rural Cambodia prior to 1975, those conducted by the Khmer Rouge regime often involved people unfamiliar to each other.<ref name="Mam 1998 p18">Mam, K. (1998) ''An Oral History of Family Life Under the Khmer Rouge'', Yale, p. 18.</ref> As well as reflecting the Khmer Rouge obsession with production and reproduction, such marriages were designed to increase people's dependency on the regime by undermining existing family and other loyalties.<ref name="Mam 1998 p18" />

===== Education =====
{{further|Anti-intellectualism#Democratic Kampuchea}}
It is often concluded that the Khmer Rouge regime promoted [[functional illiteracy]]. This statement is not completely incorrect, but it is quite inaccurate. The Khmer Rouge wanted to "eliminate all traces of Cambodia's imperialist past", and its previous culture was one of them. The Khmer Rouge did not want the Cambodian people to be completely ignorant, and [[primary education]] was provided to them. Nevertheless, the Khmer Rouge's policies dramatically reduced the Cambodian population's cultural inflow as well as its knowledge and creativity. The Khmer Rouge's goal was to gain full control of all of the information that the Cambodian people received and spread revolutionary culture among the masses.<ref>[https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge "Literacy and Education under the Khmer Rouge"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190217012047/https://gsp.yale.edu/literacy-and-education-under-khmer-rouge |date=17 February 2019 }}.</ref>

Education came to a "virtual standstill" in Democratic Kampuchea.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} Irrespective of central policies, most local cadres considered higher education useless and as a result, they were suspicious of those who had received it.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} The regime abolished all literary schooling above primary grades, ostensibly focusing on basic literacy instead.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|183}} In practice, primary schools were not set up in many areas because of the extreme disruptions which had been caused by the regime's takeover, and most ordinary people, especially "new people", felt that their children were taught nothing worthwhile in those schools which still existed. The exception was the Eastern Zone, which until 1976 was run by cadres who were closely connected with Vietnam rather than the Party Centre, where a more organised system seems to have existed under which children were given extra rations, taught by teachers who were drawn from the "base people" and given a limited number of official textbooks.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|184}}

Beyond primary education, technical courses were taught in factories to students who were drawn from the favoured "base people".<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|184}} There was a general reluctance to increase people's education in Democratic Kampuchea, and in some districts, cadres were known to kill people who boasted about their educational accomplishments, and it was considered bad form for people to allude to any special technical training.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}} Based on a speech which Pol Pot made in 1978, it appears that he may have ultimately envisaged that illiterate students with approved poor peasant backgrounds could become trained engineers within ten years by doing a lot of targeted studying along with a lot of practical work.<ref name="Vickery 1999" />{{rp|185}}

==== Language reforms ====
The [[Khmer language]] has a complex system of usages to define speakers' rank and social status. During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, these usages were abolished. People were encouraged to call each other "friend" (មិត្ត; ''mitt'') and to avoid traditional signs of deference such as bowing or folding the hands in salutation, known as [[sampeah]]. Language was also transformed in other ways. The Khmer Rouge invented new terms. In keeping with the regime's theories on Khmer identity, the majority of new words were coined with reference to [[Pali]] or [[Sanskrit]] terms,<ref name="smyth">Judith; Smyth David A., ed. (2013). [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZTv_AQAAQBAJ ''Cambodian Linguistics, Literature and History: Collected Articles'']. Routledge. p. 164.</ref> while Chinese and Vietnamese–language borrowings were discouraged. People were told to "forge" (លត់ដំ; ''lot dam'') a new revolutionary character, that they were the "instruments" (ឧបករណ៍; ''opokar'') of the ruling body known as Angkar (អង្គការ, The Organisation) and that nostalgia for pre-revolutionary times (ឈឺសតិអារម្មណ៍; ''chheu satek arom'', or "memory sickness") could result in execution.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

==== Crimes against humanity ====
[[File:Choeungek2.JPG|thumb|Skulls of Khmer Rouge victims]]
[[File:Khmer Rouge Victims.JPG|thumb|Remains of victims of the Khmer Rouge in the Kampong Trach Cave, Kiry Seila Hills, Rung Tik (Water Cave), or Rung Khmao (Dead Cave)]]
Acting through the [[Santebal]], the Khmer Rouge arrested, tortured and eventually executed anyone who was suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed enemies:<ref name="Frey" />
* People with connections to former Cambodian governments, either those of the [[Khmer Republic]] or the [[Sangkum]], to the Khmer Republic military, or to foreign governments.
* Professionals and intellectuals, including almost everyone with an education and people who understood a foreign language. Many artists—including musicians, writers, and filmmakers—were executed, including [[Ros Serey Sothea]], [[Pen Ran|Pan Ron]] and [[Sinn Sisamouth]].
* [[Vietnamese people|Ethnic Vietnamese]], ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai and other minorities in the Eastern Highlands, Cambodian Christians (most of whom were Catholic), [[Chams|Muslims]] and senior Buddhist monks. The Roman Catholic [[Roman Catholic Cathedral of Phnom Penh|cathedral of Phnom Penh]] was razed. The Khmer Rouge forced Muslims to eat pork, which they regard as forbidden ([[ḥarām]]). Many of those who refused were killed. Christian clergy and Muslim imams were executed.
* "Economic saboteurs" as many former urban dwellers were deemed guilty of sabotage because of their lack of agricultural ability.
* Party cadres who had fallen under political suspicion; the regime tortured and executed thousands of party members during its purges.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|3}}

The Santebal established over 150 prisons for political opponents; [[Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum|Tuol Sleng]] is a former high school that was turned into the Santebal headquarters and interrogation center for the highest-value [[political prisoner]]s. Tuol Sleng was operated by the Santebal commander [[Kang Kek Iew|Khang Khek Ieu]], more commonly known as Comrade Duch, together with his subordinates [[Mam Nai]] and Tang Sin Hean.<ref name="Jackson 1992" />{{rp|3}}<ref>{{cite journal|last=Locard|first=Henri|url=http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf|title=State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) and Retribution (1979–2004)|journal=European Review of History|volume=12|issue=1|date=March 2005|doi=10.1080/13507480500047811|page=134|s2cid=144712717|access-date=30 January 2013|archive-date=30 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131030013853/http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref> According to Ben Kiernan, "all but seven of the twenty thousand Tuol Sleng prisoners" were executed.<ref name="Kiernan 2008" />{{rp|464}} The buildings of Tuol Sleng have been preserved as they were left when the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979. Several of the rooms are now lined with thousands of black-and-white photographs of prisoners that were taken by the Khmer Rouge.<ref name="DDCam History">{{cite book|title=A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979)|year=2007|publisher=Documentation Center of Cambodia|isbn=978-99950-60-04-6}}</ref>{{rp|74}}

On 7 August 2014, when sentencing two former Khmer Rouge leaders to life imprisonment, Cambodian judge Nil Nonn said there was evidence of "a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Cambodia". He said the leaders, Nuon Chea, the regime's chief ideologue and former deputy to late leader Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, together in a "[[joint criminal enterprise]]" were involved in murder, extermination, political persecution and other inhumane acts related to the mass eviction of city-dwellers, and executions of enemy soldiers.<ref name="CheaAppeal">{{cite news|title=Cambodian court sentences two former Khmer Rouge leaders to life term|url=http://www.thecambodianews.net/index.php/sid/224538879|access-date=8 August 2014|publisher=The Cambodia News|archive-date=22 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822164336/http://www.thecambodianews.net/index.php/sid/224538879|url-status=live}}</ref> In November 2018, the trial convicted Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Vietnamese, while Nuon Chea was also found guilty of genocide relating to the Chams.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/case/topic/1298|title=Case 002/02 &#124; Drupal|publisher=Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia|accessdate=29 August 2021|archive-date=15 September 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210915141035/https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/case/topic/1298|url-status=live}}</ref>

===== Number of deaths =====
According to a 2001 academic source, the most widely accepted estimates of excess deaths under the Khmer Rouge range from 1.5&nbsp;million to 2&nbsp;million, although figures as low as 1&nbsp;million and as high as 3&nbsp;million have been cited; conventionally accepted estimates of executions range from 500,000 to 1&nbsp;million, "a third to one half of excess mortality during the period".<ref name="Heuveline 2001">{{cite book|last=Heuveline|first=Patrick|title=Forced Migration and Mortality|chapter=The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979|publisher=[[National Academies Press]]|year=2001|isbn=9780309073349}}</ref>{{rp|105}} A 2013 academic source (citing research from 2009) indicates that execution may have accounted for as much as 60% of the total, with 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3&nbsp;million suspected victims of execution.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Seybolt|first1=Taylor B.|last2=Aronson|first2=Jay D.|last3=Fischoff|first3=Baruch|title=Counting Civilian Casualties: An Introduction to Recording and Estimating Nonmilitary Deaths in Conflict|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2013|isbn=9780199977314|page=238}}</ref>

Historian Ben Kiernan estimates that 1.671&nbsp;million to 1.871&nbsp;million Cambodians died as a result of Khmer Rouge policy, or between 21% and 24% of Cambodia's 1975 population.<ref>{{cite journal|author-link=Ben Kiernan|last=Kiernan|first=Ben|s2cid=143971159|title=The Demography of Genocide in Southeast Asia: The Death Tolls in Cambodia, 1975–79, and East Timor, 1975–80|journal=Critical Asian Studies|volume=35|issue=4|pages=585–597|year=2003|doi=10.1080/1467271032000147041}}</ref> A study by Polish demographer Marek Sliwinski calculated nearly 2&nbsp;million unnatural deaths under the Khmer Rouge out of a 1975 Cambodian population of 7.8&nbsp;million; 33.5% of Cambodian men died under the Khmer Rouge compared to 15.7% of Cambodian women.<ref name="Locard">{{cite journal|last=Locard|first=Henri|title=State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) and Retribution (1979–2004)|journal=[[European Review of History]]|volume=12|issue=1|pages=121–143|date=March 2005|doi=10.1080/13507480500047811|s2cid=144712717}}</ref> Researcher Craig Etcheson of the [[Documentation Center of Cambodia]] (DC-Cam) suggests that the death toll was between 2&nbsp;million and 2.5&nbsp;million, with a "most likely" figure of 2.2&nbsp;million. After five years of researching mass grave sites, he estimated that they contained 1.38&nbsp;million suspected victims of execution.<ref name="Mekong.net_deaths">{{cite web|last=Sharp|first=Bruce|title=Counting Hell: The Death Toll of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia|url=http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm|access-date=7 August 2019|archive-date=15 November 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131115041409/http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/deaths.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Although considerably higher than earlier and more widely accepted estimates of Khmer Rouge executions, Etcheson argues that these numbers are plausible, given the nature of the mass grave and DC-Cam's methods, which are more likely to produce an under-count of bodies rather than an over-estimate.<ref name="Tufts.edu" /> Demographer Patrick Heuveline estimated that between 1.17&nbsp;million and 3.42&nbsp;million Cambodians died unnatural deaths between 1970 and 1979, with between 150,000 and 300,000 of those deaths occurring during the civil war. Heuveline's central estimate is 2.52&nbsp;million excess deaths, of which 1.4&nbsp;million were the direct result of violence.<ref name="Tufts.edu">{{cite web|url=https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/cambodia-u-s-bombing-civil-war-khmer-rouge/|title=Cambodia: U.S. bombing, civil war, & Khmer Rouge|publisher=[[World Peace Foundation]]|date=7 August 2015|access-date=5 August 2019|quote=Demographer Patrick Heuveline has produced evidence suggesting a range of 150,000 to 300,000 violent deaths from 1970 to 1975.&nbsp;... One of the more thorough demographic studies, conducted by Patrick Heuveline, also attempts to separate out violent civilian deaths from a general increase in mortality caused by famine, disease, working conditions, or other indirect causes. He does so by grouping deaths within different age and sex brackets and analyzing treatment of these age and sex groups by the Khmer Rouge and violent regimes in general. His conclusion is that an average of 2.52 million people (range of 1.17–3.42 million) died as a result of regime actions between 1970 and 1979, with an average estimate of 1.4 million (range of 1.09–2.16 million) directly violent deaths.|archive-date=14 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190714181839/https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/cambodia-u-s-bombing-civil-war-khmer-rouge/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Heuveline 2001" />{{rp|102–4}}

Despite being based on a house-to-house survey of Cambodians, the estimate of 3.3&nbsp;million deaths promulgated by the Khmer Rouge's successor regime, the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), is generally considered to be an exaggeration; among other methodological errors, the PRK authorities added the estimated number of victims that had been found in the partially exhumed mass graves to the raw survey results, meaning that some victims would have been double-counted.<ref name="Tufts.edu" /> An additional 300,000 Cambodians starved to death between 1979 and 1980, largely as a result of the after-effects of Khmer Rouge policy.<ref name="Heuveline 2001" />{{rp|124}}

===== Genocide =====
While the period from 1975 to 1979 is commonly associated with the phrase "the Cambodian genocide", scholars debate whether the legal definition of the crime can be applied generally.<ref name="Chandler 2007" />{{rp|260}} While two former leaders were convicted of genocide, this was for treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, the Vietnamese and Cham. The death toll of these two groups, approximately 100,000 people, is roughly 5% of the generally accepted total of two million. The treatment of these groups can be seen to fall under the legal definition of genocide, as they were targeted on the basis of their religion or ethnicity. The vast majority of deaths were of the Khmer ethnic group, which was not a target of the Khmer Rouge. The deaths occurring as a result of targeting these Khmer, whether it was the "new people" or enemies of the regime, was based on political distinctions rather than ethnic or religious. In an interview conducted in 2018, historian David P. Chandler states that crimes against humanity was the term that best fit the atrocities of the regime and that some attempts to characterise the majority of the killings as genocide was flawed and at times politicised.<ref>In the Shadows of Utopia Podcast, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCNbBIiPTc4 "A History of Democratic Kampuchea with Historian David Chandler"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200304135820/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCNbBIiPTc4&gl=US&hl=en |date=4 March 2020 }}.</ref>

=== Internal power struggles and purges ===
[[Hou Yuon]] was one of the first senior leaders to be purged. The Khmer Rouge originally reported that he had been killed in the final battles for Phnom Penh, but he was apparently executed in late 1975 or early 1976.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|202}} In late 1975, numerous Cambodian intellectuals, professionals and students returned from overseas to support the revolution. These returnees were treated with suspicion and made to undergo reeducation, while some were sent straight to [[Tuol Sleng]].<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|272}} In 1976, the center announced the start of the socialist revolution and ordered the elimination of class enemies. This resulted in the expulsion and execution of numerous people within the party and army who were deemed to be of the wrong class.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|265}} In mid-1976, Ieng Thirith, minister of social affairs, inspected the northwestern zone. On her return to Phnom Penh, she reported that the zone's cadres were deliberately disobeying orders from the center, blaming enemy agents who were trying to undermine the revolution.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|236}} During 1976, troops formerly from the eastern zone demanded the right to marry without the party's approval. They were arrested and under interrogation implicated their commander who then implicated eastern zone cadres who were arrested and executed.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|264}}

In September 1976, Keo Meas, who had been tasked with writing a history of the party, was arrested as a result of disputes over the foundation date of the party and its reliance on Vietnamese support. Under torture at Tuol Sleng, he confessed that the date chosen was part of a plot to undermine the party's legitimacy and was then executed.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|268–9}} In late 1976, with the Kampuchean economy underperforming, Pol Pot ordered a purge of the ministry of commerce, and [[Khoy Thoun]] and his subordinates who he had brought from the northern zone were arrested and tortured before being executed at Tuol Sleng.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|221}} Khoy Thoun confessed to having been recruited by the CIA in 1958.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|282}} The center also ordered troops from the eastern and central zones to purge the northern zone, killing or arresting numerous cadres.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|264–5}}

At the end of 1976, following disappointing rice harvests in the northwestern zone, the party center ordered a purge of the zone. Troops from the western and southwestern zones were ordered into the northwestern zone. Over the next year, troops killed at least 40 senior cadre and numerous lower ranking leaders.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|238–40}}

The chaos caused by this purge allowed many Khmers to escape the zone and try to seek refuge in Thailand, but was met with gunfire by the Thai army, who then raped the Khmer women and children while they were hiding near the border with their families. The [[United Nations Border Relief Operation]] (UNBRO), formed on 1 January 1982, coordinated humanitarian assistance to Cambodian displaced persons along the [[Cambodia–Thailand border|Thai–Cambodian border]].<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|308}}

In 1977, the center began purging the returnees, sending 148 to Tuol Sleng and continuing a purge of the ministry of foreign affairs where many returnees and intellectuals were suspected of spying for foreign powers.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|274–5}} In January, the center ordered eastern and southeastern zone troops to conduct cross-border raids into Vietnam. In March 1977, the center ordered [[So Phim]], the eastern zone commander, to send his troops to the border; however, with class warfare purges underway in the eastern zone, many units staged a mutiny and fled into Vietnam. Among the troops defecting in this period was [[Hun Sen]].<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|304–5}} On 10 April 1977 [[Hu Nim]] and his wife were arrested. After three months of interrogation at Tuol Sleng, he confessed to working with the CIA to undermine the revolution following which he and his wife were executed.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|275–6}} In July 1977, Pol Pot and Duch sent So Phim a list of "traitors" in the eastern zone, many of whom were So Phim's trusted subordinates. So Phim disputed the list and refused to execute those listed, for the center this implicated So Phim as a traitor.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|306}} In October 1977, in order to secure the Thai border while focusing on confrontation with Vietnam, [[Nhim Ros]], the northwestern zone leader, was blamed for clashes on the Thai border, acting on behalf of both the Vietnamese and the CIA.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|305}}

In December 1977, the Vietnamese launched a punitive attack into eastern Cambodia, quickly routing the eastern zone troops including [[Heng Samrin]]'s Division 4 and further convincing Pol Pot of So Phim's treachery. [[Son Sen]] was sent to the eastern zone with center zone troops to aid the defense. In January 1978, following the Vietnamese withdrawal, a purge of the eastern zone began. In March, So Phim called a secret meeting of his closest subordinates advising them that those who had been purged were not traitors and warning them to be wary. During the next month more than 400 eastern zone cadres were sent to Tuol Sleng while two eastern zone division commanders were replaced. During May eastern zone military leaders were called to meetings where they were arrested or killed. So Phim was called to a meeting by Son Sen but refused to attend, instead sending four messengers who failed to return. On 25 May, Son Sen sent two brigades of troops to attack the eastern zone and capture So Phim. Unable to believe he was being purged, So Phim went into hiding and attempted to contact Pol Pot by radio. A meeting was arranged, but instead of Pol Pot, a group of center soldiers arrived, and So Phim committed suicide and the soldiers then killed his family.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|311–2}}

Many of the surviving eastern zone leaders fled into the forests where they hid from and fought center zone troops. In October 1978, [[Chea Sim]] led a group of 300 people across the border into Vietnam, and the Vietnamese then launched a raid into the eastern zone that allowed Heng Samrin and his group of 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers and followers to seek refuge in Vietnam. Meanwhile, the center decided that the entire eastern zone was full of traitors and embarked on a large scale purge of the area, with over 10,000 killed by July 1978, while thousands were evacuated to other zones to prevent them from defecting to the Vietnamese. The center also stepped up purges nationwide, killing cadres and their families, "old people" and eastern zone evacuees who were regarded as having dubious loyalty.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|312–4}}

In September 1978, a purge of the ministry of industry was begun, and in November Pol Pot ordered the arrest of [[Vorn Vet]], the deputy premier for the economy, followed by his supporters. Vorn Vet had previously served as the secretary of the zone around Phnom Penh, had established the Santebal and been Duch's immediate superior. Under torture, Vorn Vet admitted to being an agent of the CIA and the Vietnamese. Unable to reach the borders, ministry of industry personnel who could escape the purge went into hiding in Phnom Penh.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|324–5}}

=== Fall ===
==== War with Vietnam ====
{{main|Cambodian–Vietnamese War}}

[[File:Thảm sát.jpg|thumb|Photo images of the [[Ba Chúc massacre]] at a Vietnamese museum, as the massacre was one of the events that prompted the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea]]
Fearing that Vietnam would attack Cambodia, Pol Pot ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam on 18 April 1978. His Khmer Rouge forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages, mostly in the border town of [[Ba Chúc]]. Of the 3,157 civilians who had lived in Ba Chúc,<ref>[http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/01/07/edpringle_ed3_.php "Meanwhile: When the Khmer Rouge came to kill in Vietnam"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051027063937/http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/01/07/edpringle_ed3_.php |date=27 October 2005 }}. International Herald Tribune.</ref> [[Ba Chúc massacre|only two survived the massacre]]. These Khmer Rouge forces were repelled by the Vietnamese.<ref name="Morris2">{{cite book|title=Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uEYKCGj6J0wC|first=Stephen J.|last=Morris|publisher=Stanford University Press|date=1 January 1999|isbn=0804730490|pages=25, 32, 93–97, 102–04, 107, 111, 159}}</ref>

After several years of border conflict and after a flood of refugees fled from Kampuchea, relations between Kampuchea and Vietnam collapsed by December 1978. On 25 December 1978, the Vietnamese armed forces along with the [[Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation]], an organization founded by Heng Samrin that included many dissatisfied former Khmer Rouge members,<ref name="Vickery 1999" /> invaded Cambodia and captured Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979. Despite a traditional Cambodian fear of Vietnamese domination, defecting Khmer Rouge activists assisted the Vietnamese, and with Vietnam's approval, they became the core of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea. The new government was quickly dismissed as a "[[Puppet state|puppet government]]" by the Khmer Rouge and China.<ref name="Morris2" />

At the same time, the Khmer Rouge retreated west and it continued to control certain areas near the Thai border for the next decade.<ref>Bultmann Daniel (2015). ''Inside Cambodian Insurgency. A Sociological Perspective on Civil Wars and Conflict''. Ashgate: Burlington, Vermont; Farnham, England. {{ISBN|978-1472443076}}.</ref> These included [[Phnom Malai]], the mountainous areas near [[Pailin]] in the [[Cardamom Mountains]] and [[Anlong Veng]] in the [[Dângrêk Mountains]].<ref name="Cook 2017" /> These Khmer Rouge bases were not self-sufficient and were funded by diamond and timber smuggling, military assistance from China channeled by means of the Thai military, and food smuggled from markets across the border in Thailand.<ref>Fawthrop, Tom; Jarvis, Helen (2014). ''Getting Away With Genocide?''. {{ISBN|0-86840-904-9}}.</ref>

==== Place in the United Nations ====
{{Further|Allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge}}
Despite its deposal, the Khmer Rouge retained its United Nations seat, which was occupied by [[Thiounn Prasith]], an old companion of Pol Pot and [[Ieng Sary]] from their student days in Paris and one of the 21 attendees at the 1960 KPRP Second Congress. The seat was retained under the name Democratic Kampuchea until 1982 and then it was retained under the name Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. Western governments voted in favor of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea retaining Cambodia's seat in the organization over the newly installed Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea, even though it included the Khmer Rouge. In 1988, [[Margaret Thatcher]] stated: "So, you'll find that the more reasonable ones of the Khmer Rouge will have to play some part in the future government, but only a minority part. I share your utter horror that these terrible things went on in Kampuchea".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page12166|title=Margaret Thatcher – Transcript for the interview with Blue Peter in 1988|date=28 June 2007|access-date=25 January 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100121094456/http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page12166|archive-date=21 January 2010}}</ref> On the contrary, [[Sweden]] changed its vote in the [[United Nations]] and it withdrew its support for the Khmer Rouge after many Swedish citizens wrote letters to their elected representatives in which they demanded a policy change towards Pol Pot's regime.<ref name="Pilger 2004">Pilger, John (2004). In ''Tell Me No Lies''. Jonathan Cape Ltd.</ref>

The origin of the international [[proxy war]] between the US and the [[Soviet Union]] dates back to the origin of the Cambodian Civil War. The [[Kingdom of Cambodia]] was supported by the United States, the Khmer Republic (that eventually took over after the removal of [[Prince Sihanouk]]) and South Vietnam. The other side, the National United Front of Kampuchea, was supported by the Khmer Rouge, North Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kiernan|first=B|date=2002|title=Introduction: conflict in Cambodia|url=|journal=Critical Asian Studies|volume=34|issue=4|pages=483–495|doi=10.1080/1467271022000035893|s2cid=144934704}}</ref> Cambodia became an instrument for the superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The measures that the US employed in Cambodia were seen as preventative acts which were supposed to stop the communists. These preventative acts included the deployment of military troops and the establishment of other institutions like the [[United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia|UNTAC]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Doyle|first=M. W.|date=1995|title=UN peacekeeping in Cambodia: UNTAC's civil mandate|url=|journal=Boulder|volume=|pages=|via=}}</ref>

==== Insurgency and surrender ====
{{Further|Cambodian Conflict (1979–1998)}}[[File:Khmers rouges map.png|thumb|Khmer Rouge's activities in 1989–90]]
Vietnam's victory was supported by the Soviet Union and had significant ramifications for the region. The People's Republic of China launched a [[Sino-Vietnamese War|punitive invasion]] of northern Vietnam but then retreated, with both sides claiming victory. China, the United States and the [[ASEAN]] countries sponsored the creation and the military operations of a Cambodian [[government in exile]], known as the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, which included the Khmer Rouge, the republican [[Khmer People's National Liberation Front]] and the royalist [[FUNCINPEC|Funcinpec Party]].<ref name="Cook 2017" />{{rp|201–21}}

Eastern and central Cambodia were firmly under the control of Vietnam and its Cambodian allies by 1980, while the western part of the country continued to be a battlefield throughout the 1980s, and millions of [[land mine]]s were sown across the countryside. The Khmer Rouge, still led by Pol Pot, was the strongest of the three rebel groups in the Coalition Government, which received extensive military aid from China, Britain and the United States and intelligence from the Thai military. Great Britain and the United States in particular gave aid to the two non-Khmer Rouge members of the coalition.<ref>Thayer, Nate (Spring 1991). "Cambodia: Misperceptions and Peace". ''The Washington Quarterly''.</ref>

In an attempt to broaden its support base, the Khmer Rouge formed the [[Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea]] in 1979. In 1981, the Khmer Rouge went so far as to officially renounce communism<ref name="Cook 2017" /> and somewhat moved their ideological emphasis to [[nationalism]] and [[Anti-Vietnamese sentiment|anti-Vietnamese]] rhetoric instead. Some analysts argue that this change meant little in practice because according to historian Kelvin Rowley, the "CPK propaganda had always relied on nationalist rather than revolutionary appeals".<ref name="Cook 2017" /> With the need for broader unity against Vietnam, a unity that an explicit communist line would hamper, in December 1981, the Khmer Rouge established the [[Party of Democratic Kampuchea]] to replace the CPK and officially abandoned [[Marxism-Leninism]] to choose [[democratic socialism]].<ref name="p. 109">Alan John Day, Richard German, and John Campbell (Ed.). ''Political Parties of the World''. 1996. New York: Stockton. p. 109.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.websitesrcg.com/border/glossary.html |title=Glossary - Thai / Cambodia Border Refugee Camps Website<!-- Bot generated title --> |access-date=16 July 2025 |archive-date=4 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221204035522/http://www.websitesrcg.com/border/glossary.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="p. 54">Bogdan Szajkowski (Ed.). ''Revolutionary and Dissident Movements of the World''. John Harper Publishing. 2004. p. 54.</ref> 

Pol Pot relinquished the Khmer Rouge leadership to Khieu Samphan in 1985; however, he continued to be the driving force behind the Khmer Rouge insurgency, giving speeches to his followers. Journalist [[Nate Thayer]], who spent some time with the Khmer Rouge during that period, commented that despite the international community's near-universal condemnation of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule, a considerable number of Cambodians in Khmer Rouge–controlled areas seemed genuinely to support Pol Pot.<ref name="pbs" /> While Vietnam proposed to withdraw from Cambodia in return for a political settlement that would exclude the Khmer Rouge from power, the rebel coalition government as well as ASEAN, China and the United States, insisted that such a condition was unacceptable.<ref name="Cook 2017" /> Nevertheless, Vietnam declared in 1985 that it would complete the withdrawal of its forces from Cambodia by 1990 and it did so in September 1989, having allowed the Cambodian People's Party government that it had installed there to consolidate its rule and gain sufficient military strength.<ref name="Pilger 2004" />[[File:TuolSlang3.jpg|thumb|Photos of the victims of the Khmer Rouge]]

After a decade of inconclusive conflict, the pro-Vietnamese Cambodian government and the rebel coalition signed a treaty in 1991 calling for elections and disarmament. However, the Khmer Rouge resumed fighting in 1992, boycotted the election and in the following year rejected its results. It began fighting the Cambodian coalition government which included the former Vietnamese-backed communists (headed by Hun Sen) as well as the Khmer Rouge's former non-communist and monarchist allies (notably Prince [[Norodom Ranariddh|Rannaridh]]). In 1993, after a transition period and free elections, the [[Kingdom of Cambodia]] was restored, replacing the communist regime; however, the Khmer Rouge rebels opposed the new regime and established [[Khmer Rouge unrecognized government (1994–1998)|its own government]] in 1994.

Ieng Sary led a mass defection from the Khmer Rouge in 1996, with half of its remaining soldiers (about 4,000) switching to the government side and Ieng Sary becoming leader of [[Pailin Province]].<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|515}} A conflict between the two main participants in the ruling coalition caused in 1997 Prince Rannaridh to seek support from some of the Khmer Rouge leaders while refusing to have any dealings with Pol Pot.<ref name="Pilger 2004" /><ref name="pbs">{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/june97/cambodia_6-18.html|title=Continuing Unrest|agency=PBS|date=18 June 1997|type=Transcript|publisher=PBS|access-date=27 July 2010|archive-date=4 January 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140104210804/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/june97/cambodia_6-18.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> This resulted in bloody factional fighting among the Khmer Rouge leaders, ultimately leading to Pol Pot's trial and imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot died in April 1998.<ref name="Chandler 2018" />{{rp|186}} Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea surrendered in December 1998.<ref>{{cite news|date=26 December 1998|title=Khmer Rouge leaders surrender|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/242577.stm|publisher=[[BBC News]]|access-date=7 August 2014|archive-date=30 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170730084142/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/242577.stm|url-status=live}}</ref> On 29 December 1998, leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologised for the 1970s genocide.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/1998/dec/30/cambodia|title=Pol Pot men say sorry for killing fields|first=John|last=Gittings|date=30 December 1998|work=The Guardian|accessdate=29 August 2021|archive-date=16 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210416190708/https://www.theguardian.com/world/1998/dec/30/cambodia|url-status=live}}</ref> By 1998, the Khmer Rouge was almost wiped out and it dissolved its government. Its last guerrillas surrendered to the Cambodian government on 9 February 1999, ending the remnants of communism in Cambodia. As a result, the government incorporated the last remnants of the Khmer Rouge into Cambodian army on 12 February.<ref>{{cite web | title=Timeline: After 'Year Zero' | url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/2/3/timeline-the-khmer-rouge | access-date=16 July 2025 | archive-date=7 August 2025 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250807013453/https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2012/2/3/timeline-the-khmer-rouge | url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title=Report of the Group of Experts for Cambodia | url=https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/cambodia-1999.html | access-date=16 July 2025 | archive-date=13 August 2025 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250813160507/https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/cambodia-1999.html | url-status=live }}</ref>

== Legacy ==
Cambodia has been described as the black sheep of Southeast Asia because [[extremism]] is condoned in a country which is characterized by very weak economic growth and extensive poverty.<ref name="Karllson & Schoenhals 2008" />{{rp|99}} Both demographically and economically, Cambodia has gradually recovered from the rule of the Khmer Rouge regime, but the psychological scars affect many Cambodian families and they also affect many [[émigré]] Cambodian communities. It is noteworthy that Cambodia has a very young population, and by 2003, three-quarters of Cambodians were too young to remember the Khmer Rouge era. Nonetheless, their generation is affected by the traumas of the past.<ref>{{cite web|last=Dombrowski|first=Katja|title=Dealing with the past|date=15 May 2013|url=http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/initiatives-help-young-cambodians-come-terms-trauma-dictatorial-khmer-rouge-regime|publisher=D+C Development and Cooperation|access-date=7 August 2013|archive-date=5 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140905193226/http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/initiatives-help-young-cambodians-come-terms-trauma-dictatorial-khmer-rouge-regime|url-status=live}}</ref> Members of this younger generation may know about the Khmer Rouge only through word of mouth from their parents and elders. In part, young Cambodians lack knowledge about the Khmer Rouge because the Cambodian government does not require educators to teach Cambodian children about the Khmer Rouge's atrocities in Cambodian schools;<ref>Kinetz, Erika.[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050701870.html?hpid=topnews In Cambodia, a Clash Over History of the Khmer Rouge"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170810172018/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050701870.html?hpid=topnews |date=10 August 2017 }}, ''Washington Post'', 8 May 2007.</ref> however, [[Ministry of Education (Cambodia)|Cambodia's Education Ministry]] started to teach Khmer Rouge history in high schools beginning in 2009.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.phnompenhpost.com/search/node/index%20php%20200805151854%20Post%20Life%20Schools%20face%20up%20to%20KR%20history|title=Search|work=Phnom Penh Post|access-date=10 August 2017|archive-date=21 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181121024605/https://www.phnompenhpost.com/search/node/index%20php%20200805151854%20Post%20Life%20Schools%20face%20up%20to%20KR%20history|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8350313.stm|publisher=[[BBC News]]|title=Textbook sheds light on Khmer Rouge era|date=10 November 2009|access-date=7 May 2010|first=Guy|last=De Launey|archive-date=10 February 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110210122824/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8350313.stm|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia ===
{{main|Khmer Rouge Tribunal}}

[[File:Kang Kek Iew (Kaing Guek Eav or Duch) before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia - 20090720.jpg|thumb|[[Kang Kek Iew]] before the [[Khmer Rouge Tribunal]] on 20 July 2009]]
The [[Khmer Rouge Tribunal|Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia]] (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, was established as a Cambodian court with international participation and assistance to bring to trial senior leaders and those most responsible for crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime.<ref name="Cambodia 2012">{{Cite web|date=7 December 2020|title=ECCC Homepage|url=https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en|access-date=26 December 2019|archive-date=4 June 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230604222122/https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en|url-status=live}}</ref> As of 2020, there are three open cases.<ref name="Cambodia 2012" /> ECCC's efforts for outreach toward both national and international audience include public trial hearings, study tours, video screenings, school lectures and video archives on the web site.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.eccc.gov.kh/sites/default/files/Outreach%20statestics%20as%20of%20September%202017.pdf|title=Outreach Statistics 2017 ECCC|date=30 September 2017|publisher=Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia|access-date=21 October 2018|archive-date=21 October 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181021232441/https://www.eccc.gov.kh/sites/default/files/Outreach%20statestics%20as%20of%20September%202017.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>

After claiming to feel great remorse for his part in Khmer Rouge atrocities, [[Kang Kek Iew]], also known as Comrade Duch, surprised the court in his trial on 27 November 2009 with a plea for his freedom. Duch had been the head of [[Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum|Security Prison 21]], where 16,000 men, women and children were sent to their deaths. His Cambodian lawyer, Kar Savuth, stunned the tribunal further by issuing the trial's first call for an acquittal of his client even after his French lawyer denied seeking such a verdict.<ref>{{cite news|title=Surprise plea in Khmer Rouge trial|publisher=Associated Press, via The Raleigh [[News & Observer]]|last1=Cheang|first1=Sopheng|last2=Hunt|first2=Luke|date=28 November 2009}}</ref> On 26 July 2010, Duch was convicted and sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. [[Theary Seng]] responded: "We hoped this tribunal would strike hard at impunity, but if you can kill 14,000 people and serve only 19 years&nbsp;– 11 hours per life taken&nbsp;– what is that? It's a joke", voicing concerns about political interference.<ref name="Petty">{{cite news|title=Senior Khmer Rouge Cadre Jailed for Mass Murder, Torture|first1=Martin|last1=Petty|author2=Prak Chan Thul<!-- Did not use first2=, etc., because not sure what order Prak Chan Thul's name goes in. -->|date=26 July 2010|publisher=Reuters|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-rouge-idUSTRE66P0EH20100726|access-date=2 August 2015|archive-date=4 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160204011305/http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-rouge-idUSTRE66P0EH20100726|url-status=live}}</ref> In February 2012, Duch's sentence was increased to life imprisonment following appeals by both the prosecution and defence. In dismissing the defence's appeal, Judge [[Kong Srim]] stated that Duch's crimes were "undoubtedly among the worst in recorded human history" and deserved "the highest penalty available".<ref>{{cite news|last1=Leng|first1=Maly|last2=Yun|first2=Yun|url=http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/life-02032012152231.html/|title=Duch Appeal Rejected, Gets Life|publisher=[[Radio Free Asia]]|date=3 February 2012|access-date=26 April 2012|archive-date=29 June 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140629140542/http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/life-02032012152231.html/|url-status=live}}</ref>

From 2007 to 2022, public trial hearings in Phnom Penh were open to all adults including foreigners.<ref name="eccc.gov.kh">{{cite web|title=Who can attend the trials?|publisher=Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia|url=http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/faq/who-can-attend-trials|access-date=21 April 2012|archive-date=31 May 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120531003259/http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/faq/who-can-attend-trials|url-status=live}}</ref> The court provided free bus transportation for groups of Cambodians who wanted to visit the court.<ref name="eccc.gov.kh" /> Since the commencement of the Case 001 trial in 2009 through the end of 2011, 53,287 people participated in the public hearings.<ref name="Cambodia 2012" /> The ECCC also has hosted a study tour program to help villagers in rural areas understand the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. The court has provided free transport for them to come to visit the court and meet with court officials to learn about its work, in addition to visits to the genocide museum and the killing fields.<ref>Di Certo, Bridget (5 January 2012). [http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/KRTalk/krt-visits-top-100000-mark.html "KRT visits top 100,000 mark"]. ''[[Phnom Penh Post]]''. Phnom Penh. Retrieved 21 April 2012.</ref> ECCC also has visited villages to provide video screenings and school lectures to promote their understanding of the trial proceedings.<ref name="Cambodia 2012" /> Furthermore, trials and transcripts are partially available with English translation on the ECCC's website.<ref>{{cite web|title=Video Archive|publisher=Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia|url=http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/video/archive|access-date=21 April 2012|archive-date=18 April 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120418085032/http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/video/archive|url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Museums ===
[[File:Skulls from the killing fields.jpg|thumb|Skulls displayed in the memorial tower]]
The [[Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum]] is a former secondary school building, which was transformed into a torture, interrogation and execution center between 1976 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge called it Security Prison 21.<ref name="killingfieldsmuseum.com">{{cite web|title="S-21 and Choeng Ek Killing Fields: Facing death," The Killing Fields Museum – Learn from Cambodia|url=http://www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/s21-victims.html|access-date=21 April 2012|archive-date=15 March 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120315212401/http://www.killingfieldsmuseum.com/s21-victims.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Of the estimated 15,000 to 30,000 prisoners,<ref>{{cite web|title=Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes|publisher=International Center for Transitional Justice|url=http://memoryandjustice.org/site/tuol-sleng-museum-of-genocidal-crimes/|access-date=21 April 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120209081233/http://memoryandjustice.org/site/tuol-sleng-museum-of-genocidal-crimes/|archive-date=9 February 2012}}</ref> only seven prisoners survived. The Khmer Rouge photographed the vast majority of the inmates and left a photographic archive, which enables visitors to see almost 6,000 S-21 portraits on the walls.<ref name="killingfieldsmuseum.com" /> Visitors can also learn how the inmates were tortured from the equipment and facilities exhibited in the buildings.

The [[Choeung Ek]] Killing Fields are located about 15 kilometers outside of [[Phnom Penh]]. Most of the prisoners who were held captive at S-21 were taken to the fields to be executed and deposited in one of the approximately 129 [[mass grave]]s. It is estimated that the graves contain the remains of over 20,000 victims. After the discovery of the site in 1979, the Vietnamese transformed the site into a memorial and stored skulls and bones in an open-walled wooden memorial pavilion. Eventually, these remains were showcased in the memorial's centerpiece Buddhist [[stupa]].<ref name="memoryandjustice.org">{{cite web|title=Choeung Ek, Center of Genocide Crimes|publisher=International Center for Transitional Justice|url=http://memoryandjustice.org/site/choeung-ek-center-of-genocide-crimes/|access-date=22 April 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120528091634/http://memoryandjustice.org/site/choeung-ek-center-of-genocide-crimes|archive-date=28 May 2012}}</ref> 

In 2025, three sites associated with the Khmer Rouge's atrocities (the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Choeung Ek, and M-13 prison in [[Kampong Chhnang province]]) were designated as [[World Heritage Site]]s by [[UNESCO]] as part of the [[Cambodian Memorial Sites]].<ref>{{Cite web |date=July 12, 2025 |title=Cambodian sites of Khmer Rouge brutality added to UNESCO heritage list |url=https://apnews.com/article/cambodia-khmer-rouge-unesco-072f06ec2039fd2fb0a6496cbc3dd20c |work=AP News |access-date=25 July 2025 |archive-date=12 July 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250712234615/https://apnews.com/article/cambodia-khmer-rouge-unesco-072f06ec2039fd2fb0a6496cbc3dd20c |url-status=live }}</ref>

=== Publications ===
The [[Documentation Center of Cambodia]] (DC-Cam), an independent research institute, published ''[[A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979)]]'',<ref name="DDCam History" /> the nation's first textbook on the history of the Khmer Rouge.<ref name="dccam.org">{{cite web|title=Providing Genocide Education|publisher=Documentation Center of Cambodia|url=http://www.dccam.org/#/theorganization/worktodate|access-date=22 April 2012|archive-date=12 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191212034404/http://www.dccam.org/#/theorganization/worktodate|url-status=live}}</ref> The 74-page textbook was approved by the government as a supplementary text in 2007.<ref name="mediakh.net">Khateya. [http://mediakh.net/khmer-news/trials-tribulations-and-textbooks-govt-dc-cam-review-kr-teaching/ "Trials, tribulations and textbooks: Govt, DC-Cam review KR teaching"]. ''Khmer Media''. 21 January 2009. Retrieved 23 April 2013. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140327221143/http://mediakh.net/khmer-news/trials-tribulations-and-textbooks-govt-dc-cam-review-kr-teaching/|date=27 March 2014}}.</ref> The textbook is aiming at standardising and improving the information students receive about the Khmer Rouge years because the government-issued social studies textbook devotes eight or nine pages to the period.<ref name="mediakh.net" /> The publication was a part of their [[genocide education]] project that includes leading the design of a national genocide studies curriculum with the [[Ministry of Education (Cambodia)|Ministry of Education]], training thousands of teachers and 1,700 high schools on how to teach about genocide and working with universities across Cambodia.<ref name="dccam.org" />

Youth for Peace,<ref name="yfp">http://www.yfpcambodia.org/ {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120629083447/http://www.yfpcambodia.org/ |date=29 June 2012 }} Youth for Peace</ref> a Cambodian [[non-governmental organization]] (NGO) that offers education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution and reconciliation to Cambodia's youth, published a book titled ''Behind the Darkness: Taking Responsibility or Acting Under Orders?'' in 2011. The book is unique in that instead of focusing on the victims as most books do, it collects the stories of former Khmer Rouge, giving insights into the functioning of the regime and approaching the question of how such a regime could take place.<ref>{{cite book|last=Khet|first=Long|editor=Youth for Peace|title=Behind the Darkness: Taking Responsibility or Acting Under Orders?|publisher=Youth for Peace|year=2011|page=i|chapter=Preface}}</ref>

=== Dialogues ===
While the tribunal contributes to the [[memorialization]] process at national level, some civil society groups promote memorialization at community level. The International Center for Conciliation (ICfC)<ref>[http://centerforconciliation.org/ "The International Center for Conciliation"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120225192846/http://centerforconciliation.org/ |date=25 February 2012 }}.</ref> began working in Cambodia in 2004 as a branch of the ICfC in [[Boston]]. ICfC launched the Justice and History Outreach project in 2007 and has worked in villages in rural Cambodia with the goal of creating mutual understanding and empathy between victims and former members of the Khmer Rouge.<ref name="ic4c.files.wordpress.com">[http://ic4c.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/2-11-eccc-report.pdf "ICfC Fosters Open Dialogue between Victims and Cadres"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140327204215/http://ic4c.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/2-11-eccc-report.pdf |date=27 March 2014 }} (PDF). The Court Report. February 2011. Retrieved 23 April 2012.</ref> Following the dialogues, villagers identify their own ways of memorialization such as collecting stories to be transmitted to the younger generations or building a memorial.<ref>Desai, Anuradha (March 2010). [http://ic4c.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/3-10-ed-cambodia-report.pdf "Through Dialogue, Healing Pain in Eastern Cambodia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140327220839/http://ic4c.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/3-10-ed-cambodia-report.pdf |date=27 March 2014 }}. International Center for Conciliation. Field Report. Retrieved 23 April 2012.</ref> Through the process, some villagers are beginning to accept the possibility of an alternative viewpoint to the traditional notions of evil associated with anyone who worked for the Khmer Rouge regime.<ref name="ic4c.files.wordpress.com" />

=== Media coverage ===
Radio National Kampuchea<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rnk.gov.kh/index.php|title=Welcome to Radio National of Kampuchea|publisher=Radio National of Kampuchea|access-date=14 May 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120813234716/http://www.rnk.gov.kh/index.php|archive-date=13 August 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> as well as private radio stations broadcast programmes on the Khmer Rouge and trials.<ref name="Khmer Rouge Trials p. 25">''An Introduction to the Khmer Rouge Trials'', p. 25. Secretariat of the Royal Government Task Force, Office of the Council of Ministers. Revised by Public Affairs Section of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. 4th edition.</ref> ECCC has its own weekly radio program on RNK which provides an opportunity for the public to interact with court officials and deepen their understanding of cases.<ref>{{cite web|title= Weekly Radio Programme |website= Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia|url=http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/media-center/weekly-radio|access-date=21 April 2012|archive-date=9 April 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120409032339/http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/media-center/weekly-radio|url-status=live}}</ref>

Youth for Peace,<ref name="yfp" /> a Cambodian NGO that offers education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution and reconciliation to Cambodian's youth, has broadcast the weekly radio program, ''You Also Have a Chance'' since 2009.<ref name="Peace Activism p. 18">''10 Years of Peace Activism'', p. 18. Youth for Peace, Phnom Penh, April 2011.</ref> Aiming at preventing the passing on of hatred and violence to future generations, the program allows former Khmer Rouge to talk anonymously about their past experience.<ref name="Peace Activism p. 18" />

== See also ==
{{Portal|Cambodia|Communism}}
* [[Cambodian genocide]]
* [[Cambodian genocide denial]]
* [[Cambodia Tribunal]]
* [[Criticism of communist party rule]]
* [[Genocides in history]]
* [[Killing Fields]]
* [[Mass killings under communist regimes]]

==Notes==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
{{refbegin}}
* {{Cite book |last=Affonço |first=Denise |author-link=Denise Affonço |url=https://archive.org/details/toendofhellonewo00deni |title=To the End of Hell: One Woman's Struggle to Survive Cambodia's Khmer Rouge |date=2007 |publisher=[[Reportage Press]] |isbn=978-0-9555729-5-1 |location=London |translator-last=Burn |translator-first=Margaret |translator-last2=Hogben |translator-first2=Katie |url-access=registration }}
* {{Cite book |last=Bizot |first=François |author-link=François Bizot |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KtmbfZCPPQMC |title=The gate |date=2003 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=978-0-375-41293-6 |series=A Borzoi book |location=New York |translator-last=Cameron |translator-first=Euan |archive-date=24 December 2024 |access-date=21 November 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241224232330/https://books.google.com/books?id=KtmbfZCPPQMC |url-status=live }}
* {{Cite journal |last=Bultmann |first=Daniel |date=2012 |title=Irrigating a Socialist Utopia: Disciplinary Space and Population Control under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 |url=https://www2.hu-berlin.de/transcience/Vol3_Issue1_2012_40_52.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Transcience |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=40–52 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130513085950/http://www2.hu-berlin.de/transcience/Vol3_Issue1_2012_40_52.pdf |archive-date=13 May 2013 }}
* {{Cite book |last=Chanda |first=Nayan |author-link=Nayan Chanda |url=https://archive.org/details/brotherenemywara0000chan_h4n2 |title=Brother Enemy: The War After the War |date=1986 |publisher=[[Harcourt Brace Jovanovich]] |isbn=978-0-15-114420-4 |location=San Diego }}
* {{Cite book |last1=Criddle |first1=Joan D. |url=https://archive.org/details/todestroyyouisno00cridrich |title=To Destroy You is No Loss: The Odyssey of a Cambodian Family |last2=Mam |first2=Teeda B. |date=1989 |publisher=[[Doubleday (publisher)|Doubleday]] |isbn=978-0-385-26628-4 |location=New York |url-access=registration }}
* {{Cite book |last=Him |first=Chanrithy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MH85IIeQf3sC |title=When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge |date=2001 |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |isbn=978-0-393-32210-1 |location=New York |archive-date=24 December 2024 |access-date=21 November 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241224153436/https://books.google.com/books?id=MH85IIeQf3sC |url-status=live }}
* {{Cite book |last1=Ngor |first1=Haing S. |author-link1=Haing S. Ngor |url=https://archive.org/details/cambodianodyssey00ngor |title=A Cambodian Odyssey |last2=Warner |first2=Rogert |date=1987 |publisher=[[Macmillan Inc.]] |isbn=978-0-02-589330-6 |location=New York, NY }}
* {{Cite book |last=Nhem |first=Boraden |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VFDEEAAAQBAJ |title=The Khmer Rouge: Ideology, Militarism, and the Revolution That Consumed a Generation |date=2013 |publisher=[[Praeger Paperback|Praeger]] |isbn=978-0-313-39337-2 |series=PSI guides to terrorists, insurgents, and armed groups |location=Santa Barbara, Calif. |archive-date=19 December 2024 |access-date=21 November 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241219093109/https://books.google.com/books?id=VFDEEAAAQBAJ |url-status=live }}
* {{Cite book |title=Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors |date=1997 |publisher=[[Yale University Press]] |isbn=978-0-300-06839-9 |editor-last=Pran |editor-first=Dith |editor-link=Dith Pran |series=Yale Southeast Asia studies monograph series |location=New Haven, Conn |editor-last2=DePaul |editor-first2=Kim}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Panh |first1=Rithy |author-link1=Rithy Panh |url=https://archive.org/details/eliminationsurvi0000rith_q3l6 |title=The Elimination: A Survivor of the Khmer Rouge Confronts His Past and the Commandant of the Killing Fields |last2=Bataille |first2=Christophe |date=2013 |publisher=The Clerkenwell Press |isbn=978-1-84668-929-1 |location=London |translator-last=Cullen |translator-first=John |url-access=registration }} A dispassionate interview and analysis of "Duch", who was head of security for the Khmer regime. Written by a surviving victim.
* {{Cite book |last=Swain |first=Jon |author-link=Jon Swain |url=https://archive.org/details/riveroftime00swai |title=River of Time |date=1997 |publisher=[[St. Martin's Press]] |isbn=978-0-312-16989-3 |location=New York |url-access=registration }}
* {{Cite book |last=Ung |first=Loung |author-link=Loung Ung |title=First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers |title-link=First They Killed My Father |date=2000 |publisher=[[HarperCollins]] |isbn=978-0-06-019332-4 |location=New York}}
* {{Cite book |last=Weber |first=Olivier |author-link=Olivier Weber |title=Les impunis: Cambodge: un voyage dans la banalité du mal |date=2013 |publisher=[[R. Laffont]] |isbn=978-2-221-11663-0 |location=Paris |language=fr |oclc=831306752}}
* {{Cite book |last=Pescali |first=Piergiorgio |title=S-21. Nella prigione di Pol Pot  |date=2015 |publisher=La Ponga Edizioni |isbn=978-8-89-782330-8 |location=Milan |language=it}}
{{refend}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category|Khmer Rouge}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050403182720/http://www.cambodia.gov.kh/krt/english/ The Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force]
* [https://www.eccc.gov.kh/ Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)]
* [https://cambodia.ohchr.org/ The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia]
* [https://www.eccc.gov.kh/sites/default/files/documents/courtdoc/%5Bdate-in-tz%5D/E457_6_3_EN.pdf Nuon Chea's 570-page closing brief; his version of Khmer Rouge history.]
* [https://cambodiatribunal.org/ Cambodia Tribunal Monitor]

=== Other online sources ===
* [http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/ Cambodia Tribunal Monitor], a consortium of academic, philanthropic and non-profit organizations which provides free access to videos of the proceedings, relevant news and statements as well as an overview of each case
* [http://www.yale.edu/cgp/ Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP) at Yale University] offers a comprehensive set of resources on the Khmer Rouge and the tribunal including news updates, photographs, databases, literature, maps, overview of US involvement in the Cambodian war and genocide and links to other organizations
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20151118102714/http://www.genocidewatch.org/cambodiaproject.html Cambodian Genocide Project by Genocide Watch] updates the development of the tribunal on the website
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20160403055102/http://www.khmerbird.com/best-of/cambodian-movies.html Best Movies About Cambodia] available online via Amazon Instant Video

=== Genocide ===
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20121028015223/http://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/552628 Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide] from the [https://web.archive.org/web/20160115205405/https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/552494 Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives]
* [https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/cambodian-genocide-program Yale University: Cambodian Genocide Program]
* [http://www.cybercambodia.com/dachs/ Digital Archive of Cambodian Holocaust Survivors] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120316034224/http://www.cybercambodia.com/dachs/ |date=16 March 2012 }}
* [https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/cambodia/index.html PBS Frontline/World: Pol Pot's Shadow]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110727195102/http://www.docsonline.tv/Archives/description.php?doc=185 Survivor of the killing fields describes her experience] from the ''[[Deacon of Death]]''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070621175821/http://www.btinternet.com/~andy.brouwer/vannnath.htm Cambodia Tales: Khmer Rouge torture and killing paintings]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070618100356/http://www.genocidewatch.org/news/CAMBODIA.htm Khmer Rouge Tribunal Updates] from [[Genocide Watch]]
* [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=solomon_bashi Prosecuting starvation at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141118230711/http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=solomon_bashi |date=18 November 2014 }}
* [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/a-search-for-justice-by-the-women-forced-to-marry-strangers-2303228.html A Search For Justice by the Women Forced to Marry Strangers]
* [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf State Violence in Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) and Retribution (1979–2004)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131030013853/http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cambodia/locard.pdf |date=30 October 2013 }}

=== Uncategorized ===
* [http://www.dccam.org/ Documentation Center of Cambodia]. Retrieved 6 February 2005.
* {{cite journal|last=Chigas|first=George|year=2000|title=Building a Case Against the Khmer Rouge: Evidence from the Tuol Sleng and Santebal Archives|url=http://www.asiaquarterly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=5|journal=Harvard Asia Quarterly|volume=4|issue=1|pages=44–49|access-date=10 February 2006|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928055637/http://www.asiaquarterly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=5|archive-date=28 September 2007|url-status=dead}}

<!-- Note that the entire *Category*:Khmer Rouge is already a sub-cat under Category:Democratic Kampuchea, Category:Political parties in Cambodia and various other categories. Avoid over-categorisation. -->
{{Cambodia topics}}
{{Khmer Rouge}}
<!-- Please respect alphabetical order. -->
{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khmer Rouge}}
[[Category:Khmer Rouge| ]]
[[Category:1951 establishments in French Indochina]]
[[Category:20th century in Cambodia]]
[[Category:Anti-Buddhism]]
[[Category:Anti-Chinese sentiment in Asia]]
[[Category:Anti-Christian sentiment in Cambodia]]
[[Category:Anti-Hindu sentiment]]
[[Category:Anti-intellectualism]]
[[Category:Anti-Thai sentiment]]
[[Category:Anti-Vietnamese sentiment]]
[[Category:Communism in Cambodia]]
[[Category:Communist terrorism]]
[[Category:Far-left politics]]
[[Category:Isolationism]]
[[Category:National communism]]
[[Category:Nationalism]]
[[Category:Political history of Cambodia]]
[[Category:Rebel groups in Cambodia]]
[[Category:Republicanism in Cambodia]]
[[Category:Ultranationalism]]