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He greatly expanded education but expressed little inter-
est in economic affairs. The Cambodian economy went
into decline. Meanwhile, the Vietnam conflict was om-
nipresent and Sihanouk permitted the northern Viet
Minh and the southern Viet Cong to use Cambodian ter-
ritory . He rejected the United States and opened relations
with China. This eliminated United States aid and an-
gered conservatives. Communist-led revolts over govern-
ment seizures of rice were brutally crushed. In 1970,
while Sihanouk was overseas, the National Assembly
withdrew its support and installed Lon Nol as the head of
the new government of the “Khmer Republic.”
The anti-Sihanouk coup polarized the Cambodian
population. The United States supported Lon Nol and
his totally inept government. Aid programs funded by
the U.S. fostered gross corruption in both government
and military . At the same time, the United States was car-
pet bombing Cambodia with more than half a million
tons of bombs as part of its offensive against North Viet-
nam. About 500,000 soldiers and civilians were killed.
The Communist insurgency was slowed by this devasta-
tion but not defeated. The Lon Nol regime ultimately col-
lapsed and the insurgents took Phnom Penh in April
1975.
The Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer) set up the state of
Democratic Kampuchea. This name derived from Kam-
buja, meaning “the sons of Kambu”—the ascetic who
married a celestial nymph and founded the kingdom of
Chenla, forerunner to the great Khmer empire. Their
communist leadership was made explicit in 1977 when
they announced the existence of the Communist Party of
Kampuchea (CPK), which had been founded in 1968. A
Paris-educated school teacher rose to take the helm. His
name was Saloth Sar, later known as Pol Pot. One of his
first acts was to declare 1975 as the year zero.
people were forced from the southeast of the
country to the northwest.
Pol Pot' s goal was pure socialism. Everything
modern was to be eliminated. A typical slogan was
“We will burn the old grass and new will grow .”
Money , newspapers, education, and technology
were outlawed. Intellectuals were killed. This was
to show the strength of the people who, “though
bare handed . . . can do everything.”
Food was scarce under Pol Pot' s inefficient sys-
tem of farming, and administration was built on
fear, torture, and execution. Little was known of the
Khmer Rouge atrocities until a few refugees trickled
over the Thai border. During the Khmer Rouge
reign of terror, more than a million people died;
some estimates are as high as 2 to 3 million. The
Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia into a terrifying
work camp in which families were abolished and
murder was used as a tool of discipline. Pregnant
women were disembowled, babies were torn apart
limb from limb, people were buried alive or bashed
to death with axe handles. Of 64,000 Buddhist
monks, only 2,000 survived. Half of the Cambodian
Vietnamese were eliminated, along with thousands
from other groups. The CPK even turned upon it-
self, purging those who had received training in
Vietnam.
In 1978, Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia. The
Khmer Rouge collapsed before them, abandoning their
centers of power. The Vietnamese took Phnom Penh in
1979 but failed to capture Pol Pot and his close com-
rades. The Vietnamese quickly established the People' s
Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) with a Cambodian gov-
ernment. This included Hun Sen, who became premier
in 1985 and won in elections held much later in 1998.
The country suffered a devastating famine, and it
was not until the mid-1980s that subsistence farming
reached an even keel and shops and markets began to
function normally . Meanwhile, the PRK became an inter-
national pariah supported by only a few countries, in-
cluding the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Vietnamese
withdrew from Cambodia. Kampuchea was renamed the
State of Cambodia and committed itself to a private en-
terprise economy and the restoration of Buddhism.
The United Nations became involved in Cambodia' s
internal affairs and elections were held in 1993. Multiple
parties contested and a coalition government was
The Killing Fields
In April 1975 the insurgent Khmer Rouge
marched triumphantly into Phnom Penh. The city
was filled with refugees and its population had
jumped from 600,000 to more than 2 million. Pol
Pot immediately imposed his radical Maoist-style
agrarian society onto the Cambodian people.
Within four days, most of the inhabitants of Ph-
nom Penh had been forcibly relocated to the
countryside. Later, hundreds of thousands of
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