Khmer rouge regime
The Khmer rouge regime
The Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the totalitarian ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. This organization was created in 1954 taking model on the PCF (the French communist party). Its main leaders (Pol Pot, Khieu Samphân, Son Sen, ...) where formed in Paris in the 1950s in the “cercle des etudes marxistes” founded by the Party executives of the PCF in 1930.
After 1960, the Khmer Rouge developed its own political ideas. For example, contrary to most Marxist doctrine, the Khmer Rouge considered the farmers in the countryside to be the proletariat and the true representatives of the working class.
In 1968, the Khmer Rouge forces launched a national insurgency across Cambodia. Although North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its communist forces provided shelters and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the Cambodian military to efficiently counter it.
The political appeal of the Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk from head of state in 1970. Prime Minister Lon Nol, with the support of the National Assembly, deposed Sihanouk and became the president of the Republic. Sihanouk, in exile in Beijing (china), made an alliance with the Khmer Rouge and became the symbolic head of a Khmer Rouge-dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym, GRUNK) supported by the People's Republic of China.
Sihanouk's popular support in rural Cambodia allowed the Khmer Rouge to extend its power and influence to the point that by 1973 it exercised control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population. Many people in Cambodia who helped the Khmer Rouge against the Lon Nol government thought they were fighting for the restoration of Sihanouk. In 1975, with the Lon Nol