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100-644: (Redirected from HOK ) [REDACTED] Look up hok in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Hok may refer to: People [ edit ] Åke Hök (1889–1963), Swedish military officer and Olympic horse rider Hok Lundy (1950–2008), National Police Commissioner of Cambodia Hok Sochetra (born 1974), Cambodian football player Hokuto Konishi (born 1984) Japanese-American dancer Other uses [ edit ] HOK (firm) , an American worldwide design, architecture and urban planning firm Hok, Sweden ,

200-566: 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. While François Ponchaud stated that Christians were invariably taken away and killed with the accusation of having links with

300-565: A central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party. In 1951, the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (but subsequently judged them to be too subservient to

400-902: A degree, but according to 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. 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. Hou Yuon studied economics and law; Son Sen studied education and literature; and Hu Nim studied law. Two members of

500-465: A distinctive and eclectic "post-Leninist" ideology that drew on elements of Stalinism, Maoism and the postcolonial theory of Frantz Fanon . In the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge looked to the model of Enver Hoxha 's Albania which they believed was the most advanced communist state then in existence. Many of the regime's characteristics—such as its focus on the rural peasantry rather than

600-456: A former police chief in Phnom Penh , accused Hok Lundy of involvement in over 70 deaths, including those of several high-profile Cambodian figures such as Pisith Pilika ; in return, Hok Lundy accused Heng Pov of involvement in several other murders, including that of a judge. Human Rights Watch described Hok Lundy as "represent(ing) the absolute worst that Cambodia has to offer", and said that "aside from his boss, Prime Minister Hun Sen, there

700-797: A hip hop group from Detroit Kaman HOK , a U.S. Navy helicopter Hok, a fictional character in The Five Ancestors Hooker Creek Airport , IATA airport code "HOK" Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Hok . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hok&oldid=1126031004 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Disambiguation pages with surname-holder lists Hidden categories: Articles containing Danish-language text Short description

800-614: A legal political party, the Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to harassment and arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's political organization, Sangkum . Government attacks prevented it from participating in

900-467: A more extreme form. Additionally, non-Khmers, who comprised a significant part of the supposedly favored segment of the peasantry, were singled out because of their race. According to Ben Kiernan, this was "neither a communist proletarian revolution that privileged the working class, nor a peasant revolution that favored all farmers". While the CPK described itself as the "number 1 Communist state" once it

1000-611: A new group, the Khmer Students Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste. 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

1100-647: 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". 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

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1200-437: 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. Democratic Kampuchea was an atheist state , although its constitution stated that everyone had freedom of religion, or not to hold a religion. However, it specified that what it termed "reactionary religion" would not be permitted. While in practice religious activity

1300-695: A separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) 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;

1400-523: A village Hok/sok system , a host-killing gene of the R1 E. coli plasmid Army Operational Command (Denmark) (Danish: Hærens Operative Kommando ) Henge of Keltria , a druid order Hokan languages , a hypothetical language family of indigenous languages of North America Hong Kong , UNDP country code Hong Kong station , a station of the Hong Kong MTR House of Krazees ,

1500-480: A way to get rid of French colonialism and transform the feudal society. 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. 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; according to this view,

1600-516: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Hok Lundy Hok Lundy was born in Ta Pov village, Bavet commune, Chanthrea District , Svay Rieng Province to a family of Chinese - Vietnamese origin. Hok Lundy's Vietnamese ancestry was often extensively discussed in public circles, and at least one close aide of Hok Lundy, Cheam Yeap confirmed that he had some Vietnamese ancestry and fluent in

1700-520: 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 million gift, which was "the biggest aid ever given to any one country by China". 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

1800-547: Is hardly anyone in Cambodia who has shown more contempt for the rule of law than Hok Lundy" Hok Lundy was killed on November 9, 2008, in a helicopter crash in heavy rain, along with General Sok Sa Em, the pilot, and the co-pilot. The official cause of the crash was cited as bad weather and possibly a lightning strike. The helicopter may have also hit something on the way down. Later independent investigations, possibly aligned with opposition political parties, have suggested that

1900-709: 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. On 20 July 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. At the WPK's second congress in February 1963, Pol Pot

2000-618: The Cambodian Civil War , where the United States had supported the opposing regime of Lon Nol and heavily bombed Cambodia, 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. The Cambodian genocide was stopped with the Khmer Rouge's overthrow in 1979 by Communist Vietnam. There have been allegations of United States support for

2100-545: The Cambodian genocide which took place under the Khmer Rouge regime led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population. In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge was largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong ; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China. The regime

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2200-564: The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the Democratic Kampuchea through which the CPK 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 . The Kampuchea Revolutionary Army was slowly built up in the forests of eastern Cambodia during

2300-499: The Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations. 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

2400-576: 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,

2500-598: The Vietnamese language as well. He spent his early days in his hometown until 1977 when he fled to Vietnam to become a spy for the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation . Hok Lundy returned to Cambodia following the fall of the Khmer Rouge , and served in various executive ranks under the People's Republic of Kampuchea in his home province. In 1990, Hok Lundy became the president of

2600-822: The tutelary spirits , or neak ta , rapidly eroded as people were forcibly moved from their home areas. 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. 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". Monks were not ordered to defrock until as late as 1977 in Kratié Province , where many monks found that they reverted to

2700-483: The "purest" Marxist–Leninist movement to characterising it as an anti-Marxist "peasant revolution". The first interpretation has been criticized by historian Ben Kiernan , who asserts that it comes from a "convenient anti-communist perspective". Its leaders and theorists, most of whom had been exposed to the heavily Stalinist outlook of the French Communist Party during the 1950s, developed

2800-571: 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. 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 communist revolution in China , class conflicts , and Communist International . Pol Pot

2900-580: The 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. 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

3000-551: The 1970s. Some historians such as Ben Kiernan have stated that the importance the regime gave to race overshadowed its conceptions of class. The Khmer Rouge targeted particular groups of people, among them Buddhist monks , ethnic minorities, and educated elites. Once in power, the Khmer Rouge explicitly targeted the Chinese , the Vietnamese , the Cham minority and even their partially Khmer offspring. The same attitude extended to

3100-749: The Cambodian Civil War and the years afterward. 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. 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. It

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3200-563: 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

3300-606: The Chinese reportedly gave 400 tons of military aid to the United Front. 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 Nixon administration supported the newly proclaimed Khmer Republic. On 29 March 1970, the North Vietnamese launched an offensive against the Cambodian army. Documents uncovered from

3400-618: 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. 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

3500-627: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" ( 无产阶级专政下继续革命理论 ). High-ranking CCP officials such as Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. Democratic Kampuchea was overthrown by the 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 as well as some Western countries supported

3600-465: 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. 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

3700-683: The Khmer Rouge following their overthrow and the United Nations General Assembly voted to continue recognising Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea. Communism in South East Asia was deeply divided, as China supported the Khmer Rouge, while the Soviet Union and Vietnam opposed it. There are three interpretations of the Khmer Rouge: totalitarianism , revisionism, and postrevisionism. Historian Ben Kiernan describes their rule as totalitarian but places it within

3800-430: The Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. According to Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. ... 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." Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler writes that

3900-421: The Khmer Rouge but disputed that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory. William Shawcross writes that the United States bombing and ground incursion plunged Cambodia into the chaos that Sihanouk had worked for years to avoid. By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge had largely disappeared. On the other hand, the CCP largely "armed and trained" the Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, both during

4000-581: The Khmer Rouge leadership on the peasantry as the base of the revolution was according to Michael Vickery a product of their status as " petty-bourgeois radicals who had been overcome by peasantist romanticism ". The opposition of the peasantry and the urban population in Khmer Rouge ideology was heightened by the structure of the Cambodian rural economy , where small farmers and peasants had historically suffered from indebtedness to urban money-lenders rather than suffering from indebtedness to landlords. The policy of evacuating major towns, as well as providing

4100-565: The Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970 . Premier Lon Nol deposed Sihanouk with the support of the 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,

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4200-493: 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. 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

4300-472: The Khmer Rouge won the Cambodian Civil War when they 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

4400-604: 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. In 1996, a new political party called the Democratic National Union Movement

4500-700: The Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea to continue holding Cambodia's seat in the United Nations, which was held until 1993, after the Cold War had ended. 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. The governing structure of Democratic Kampuchea

4600-482: 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. During the civil war, unparalleled atrocities were executed on both sides. While the civil war was brutal, its estimated death toll has been revised downwards over time. The relationship between

4700-549: The People’s Committee for Phnom Penh . He served as the governor of Svay Rieng Province for 9 months between January and September 1994, before was appointed as the National Police Commissioner. In the aftermath of the 1997 coup, Funcinpec officials accused Hok Lundy of ordering the attempted murder of Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh ; that same day, Hok Lundy accused Funcinpec of plotting

4800-429: The Soviet Union archives revealed that the invasion was launched at the explicit request of the Khmer Rouge following negotiations with Nuon Chea. A force of North Vietnamese quickly overran large parts of eastern Cambodia reaching to within 15 miles (24 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

4900-449: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency , at least some cadres appear to have regarded it as preferable to the "feudal" class-based Buddhism. Nevertheless, it remained deeply suspect to the regime thanks to its close links to French colonialism ; Phnom Penh cathedral was razed along with other places of worship. In analysing the Khmer Rouge regime, scholars place it within historical context. The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 through

5000-453: The Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside, and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a Long March into North Vietnam , where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded

5100-557: The Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas. Inside the KSA and its successor organizations, there was a secret organization known as

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5200-511: The applicability of genocide is rejected and the violence was an unintentional consequence that was beyond the Khmer Rouge's control. For Vickery, communist ideology does not explain the violence any more than those closer to the peasants', such as agrarianism, populism , and nationalism . Vickery wrote of communisms, as different communist factions were opposed to each other and fought against each other, resulting in further escalation of violence. A synthesis of both interpretations rejects

5300-537: The assassination of Hun Sen, vice-Prime Minister Sar Kheng , and himself. In February 2006, Hok Lundy was denied a visa to visit the United States due to suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking and human trafficking . In March 2006, he was awarded a medal by the FBI for his efforts in fighting terrorism , and in 2007, he was granted a visa so that he could attend counterterrorism talks. Heng Pov ,

5400-520: 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. Peter Rodman and Michael Lind claim that the United States intervention saved the Lon Nol regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973. Craig Etcheson acknowledged that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for

5500-485: 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

5600-402: The context of "xenophobic European nationalism ", from which came their agrarianism and the establishment of a Great Cambodia, rather than communism or Marxism . Pol Pot's biographers David P. Chandler and Philip Short place more emphasis on their ideological heritage of communism; it was not easy to apply Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin 's ideas to Cambodia, and communism was chosen as

5700-523: The conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development , was that the country had to become self-reliant and end its economic dependency on the developed world . In its general contours, Samphan's work reflected the influence of a branch of the dependency theory school which blamed lack of development in

5800-439: 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. 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

5900-505: The countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the " feudalist " Sihanouk. 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

6000-425: The crash may have been caused by sabotage or a missile fired from the ground. Lundy was married to Men Pheakdey and had several children, including Dy Vichea, and Hok Chendavy. Lundy was related to Hun Sen by marriage; Vichea is married to Sen's daughter Hun Mana, while Chendavy is married to Hun Sen's son Hun Manith . Khmer Rouge The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of

6100-438: 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. The political appeal of

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6200-630: The deterioration in relations between the Socialist Republic of 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 ( Vietnamese : Tập đoàn Pol Pot-Ieng Sary ) or the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary reactionary clique ( Vietnamese : Tập đoàn phản động Pol Pot-Ieng Sary ). The movement's ideology

6300-479: The government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police. 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 struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. From

6400-599: The group, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the University of Paris while Hu Nim obtained his degree from the 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 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

6500-616: The idea of history as inevitable progression toward communism. In 1981, following the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, in an attempt to get foreign support, the Khmer Rouge officially renounced communism. One of the regime's main characteristics was its Khmer nationalism, which combined an idealisation of the Angkor Empire (802–1431) and the Late Middle Period of Cambodia (1431–1863) with an existential fear for

6600-409: 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

6700-474: The late 1960s, supported by the People's Army of Vietnam , the Viet Cong , the Pathet Lao , and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 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 . Despite a massive American bombing campaign ( Operation Freedom Deal ) against them,

6800-405: The left and the underground secret communist movement. His comrades Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing French-language publication, L'Observateur . The paper soon acquired

6900-410: 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 and Greg Grandin , have cited the United States intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965–1973) as a significant factor which led to increased support for

7000-460: 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. 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. A reorganisation that occurred in September 1976, during which Pol Pot

7100-541: The mid-1990s. Its leaders were mostly from middle-class families and had been educated at French universities. 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. In 1975–1976, there were several powerful regional Khmer Rouge leaders who maintained their own armies and had different party backgrounds than

7200-418: 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. 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. By 1975, with

7300-421: 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

7400-595: 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. A 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". The Khmer Rouge's economic policy, which

7500-444: 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". In 1975, Khmer Rouge representatives to China said that Pol Pot's belief

7600-407: The regime of Democratic Kampuchea. 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

7700-415: The status of lay peasantry as the agricultural work they were allocated to involved regular breaches of monastic rules. 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

7800-424: The successor People's Republic of Kampuchea. Nevertheless, it has been estimated that nearly 25,000 Buddhist monks were killed by the regime. The repression of Islam (practised by the country's Cham minority) was extensive. Islamic religious leaders were executed, although some Cham Muslims appear to have been told they could continue devotions in private as long as it did not interfere with work quotas. Mat Ly,

7900-474: The supply of medicine, led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria . The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Summary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately,

8000-549: The survival of the Cambodian state, which had historically been liquidated during periods of Vietnamese and Siamese intervention. The spillover of Vietnamese fighters from the Vietnamese–American War further aggravated anti-Vietnamese sentiments: the Khmer Republic under Lon Nol , overthrown by the Khmer Rouge, had promoted Mon-Khmer nationalism and was responsible for several anti-Vietnamese pogroms during

8100-458: The symbolism and language of Cambodian Buddhism so that many revolutionary slogans mimicked the formulae learned by young monks during their training. 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 Cao Dai in the 1920s. Buddhist laity seem not to have been singled out for persecution, although traditional belief in

8200-545: The system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government. 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. The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk

8300-440: The totalitarian theory in favor of a bottom-up perspective, which emphasises that the peasants did not have revolutionary ambitions. 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

8400-399: The urban proletariat as the bulwark of revolution, its emphasis on Great Leap Forward -type initiatives, its desire to abolish personal interest in human behaviour, its promotion of communal living and eating, and its focus on perceived common sense over technical knowledge—appear to have been heavily influenced by Maoist ideology; however, the Khmer Rouge displayed these characteristics in

8500-517: 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 Geneva Conference in 1954, they controlled as much as one half of the country. In 1951, the ICP was reorganized into three national units, namely

8600-468: 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. In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of

8700-636: Was coined by King Norodom Sihanouk and it was later adopted by English speakers (in the form of the corrupted version Khmer Rouge). 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 . Since

8800-565: Was demoted in the state presidium, was later presented as an attempted pro-Vietnamese coup by the Party Center. 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. 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. The Party Centre, lacking much in

8900-490: Was formed by Ieng Sary, who was granted amnesty for his role as the deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge. The organisation was largely dissolved by the mid-1990s and finally surrendered completely in 1999. In 2014, two Khmer Rouge leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, were jailed for life by a United Nations-backed court which found them guilty of crimes against humanity for their roles in the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign. The term Khmers rouges , French for red Khmers ,

9000-492: Was highly autocratic , totalitarian , and repressive . Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Moha Lout Plaoh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward which had caused the Great Chinese Famine . The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivization similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency, including

9100-540: Was in power, some communist regimes, such as Vietnam, saw it as a Maoist deviation from orthodox Marxism . According to author Rebecca Gidley, the Khmer Rouge "almost immediately erred by implementing a Maoist doctrine rather than following the Marxist–Leninist prescriptions." 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

9200-453: Was largely based on the plans of Khieu Samphan , focused on the achievement of national self-reliance through an initial phase of 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". The party's General Secretary Pol Pot strongly influenced

9300-558: Was negligible. 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

9400-421: Was not tolerated, the relationship of the CPK to the majority Cambodian 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 some of the strictest disciplinarians. While there was extreme harassment of Buddhist institutions, there was a tendency for the CPK regime to internalise and reconfigure

9500-404: Was particularly impressed by the lecture on political purge by Kang Sheng . 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. In September 1966, the WPK changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The change in the name of

9600-432: Was removed from power in 1979 when 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 . 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 Cambodian governments-in-exile (including

9700-434: Was shaped by a power struggle during 1976 in which the so-called Party Centre led by Pol Pot defeated other regional elements of its leadership. The Party Centre's ideology combined elements of Communism with a strongly xenophobic form of Khmer nationalism . Partly because of its secrecy and changes in how it presented itself, academic interpretations of its political position vary widely, ranging from interpreting it as

9800-465: Was split between the state presidium headed by Khieu Samphan, the cabinet headed by Pol Pot (who was also Democratic Kampuchea's 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

9900-427: Was that the collectivisation of agriculture was capable of "[creating] a complete communist society without wasting time on the intermediate steps". Society was accordingly classified into peasant "base people" ( ប្រជាជនមូលដ្ឋាន prâchéachôn mulôdthan ), who would be the bulwark of the transformation; and urban "new people" ( ប្រជាជនថ្មី prâchéachôn thmei ), who were to be reeducated or liquidated. The focus of

10000-540: 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

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