History

Communist Party of Kampuchea

The communist party behind the Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979; its dissolution was announced in December 1981.

A red flag with a yellow hammer and sickle in the center
Flag of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) was the party behind the Khmer Rouge (ខ្មែរក្រហម), which took control of Cambodia in April 1975 and ruled it until January 1979.[1] Its leaders kept the party and their own names secret from outsiders until 1977.[1][2] Pol Pot was its secretary from 1963, and Nuon Chea its deputy secretary from 1960.[3] The party announced its dissolution in December 1981, and its leaders went on as the Party of Democratic Kampuchea.[4]

Names

Most people knew the party simply as the Angkar Loeu.[2] Its leaders called themselves "Angkar Padevat".[1] The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia found that they used the word "Angkar" in place of their names, and called it a deliberately vague term.[3]

In the 1960s Sihanouk called his communist opponents the "Khmer Rouge". The name later came to stand for the party and for the state Pol Pot led.[5][6]

The Uppsala Conflict Data Program dates the party's names this way: founded in 1960 as the Workers Party of Kampuchea (Pak Polakor Kampuchea), renamed the CPK in September 1966, and the Party of Democratic Kampuchea from 1981.[7] The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor already uses the CPK name for 1963.[1][5]

Origins

In 1930 Ho Chi Minh joined three small communist movements into the Vietnamese Communist Party. Its name changed almost at once to the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), in name to take in revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos.[6] Before the Second World War its members were nearly all Vietnamese.[6]

In 1951 the ICP was split into three national parties: the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP), the Vietnam Workers' Party and the Lao Itsala.[6][2] In the Country Study's account this was a reorganization of the ICP; in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's, a dissolution.[2][7] A document issued afterwards said the Vietnam Workers' Party would go on to "supervise" the Cambodian and Laotian parties.[6] Most of the KPRP's leaders and members seem to have been Khmer Krom (ខ្មែរក្រោម) or ethnic Vietnamese who lived in Cambodia.[6]

About 1,000 KPRP members, Son Ngoc Minh among them, went to North Vietnam on a "Long March". Those who stayed founded a legal party, the Pracheachon Party, in late 1954.[6] In the mid-1950s the KPRP split into an "urban committee" under Tou Samouth and a "rural committee" under Sieu Heng. Sieu Heng went over to the government in 1959 and gave information to the security forces. By 1960 only a few hundred communists were still active in the country.[6]

The circle around Pol Pot had first come together in Paris in the 1950s.[2] Pol Pot came back to Cambodia in 1953 and joined a secret communist movement.[1]

Founding

Sources differ on what was founded in 1960. The court found that in 1959 Pol Pot, Nuon Chea and Tou Samouth began building a new Cambodian communist party, free of Vietnamese influence.[3] The Uppsala Conflict Data Program holds that the 1960 party was only the KPRP under a new name.[7] In the court's findings the meeting of September 30 to October 2, 1960, was the First Party Congress, where the party's statute was adopted; in the Country Study's account it was the KPRP's Second Party Congress.[3][6] The court found the party's principles were Marxism–Leninism and democratic centralism.[3]

At that congress Tou Samouth became the party's secretary and Nuon Chea its deputy secretary. Both joined the Standing Committee as full members with Pol Pot, and Ieng Sary joined as a candidate member. Vorn Vet and Son Sen were among those named to the Central Committee.[3][8] In the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's account, the 1960 congress ended a struggle for power inside the party, and young radicals took over its leadership: Pol Pot, Son Sen, Ieng Sary and, some years later, Khieu Samphan.[7] The Country Study also dates Saloth Sar's control of the party's apparatus to the years after that congress.[6]

The party's own founding dates also differ. In a five-hour recorded radio speech in September 1977, Pol Pot made the party public and said it was seventeen years old, founded on September 30, 1960. The party journal Tung Padevat (Revolutionary Flag) gave the same date. Inside the party, September 30, 1951, the day the KPRP was set up, had long been kept as the founding date, and the journal Tung Kraham (Red Flag) still named it in September 1976.[2]

In February 1963, at the Second Party Congress, after Tou Samouth disappeared, Pol Pot became the party's secretary. Ieng Sary and Sao Phim (spelled So Phim in the Country Study) became full members of the Standing Committee.[3][5] The Third Party Congress, in September 1971, kept the lines set at the first two. It was the first congress Khieu Samphan attended, and he joined the Central Committee as an alternate member.[3]

Leadership and secrecy

Nuon Chea stayed deputy secretary through the whole Democratic Kampuchea period. The court found that he and Pol Pot held the party's final say inside the Standing Committee, and that he was one of the main writers of the Revolutionary Flag, the party's chief propaganda magazine.[3] From late 1977 he was officially named Deputy Secretary of the Central Committee.[8]

The leaders hid who they were and kept a strict rule of secrecy.[3] In the Country Study's view, the main reason for this was conflict inside the party.[2] The party's official history says it cut its ties with the Vietnam Workers' Party by 1973.[2]

Rise to power

The Country Study dates the Khmer Rouge insurgency from 1967 and 1968 until the Lon Nol (លន់ នល់) government fell in April 1975.[6] The court found that the party was in fact in charge of the armed struggle.[3]

On the morning of April 17, 1975, the party's forces entered Phnom Penh, fighting as the Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces and ordered the people to leave the city at once.[3] They drove perhaps two million people from Phnom Penh and other cities to the countryside, and thousands died on the way.[1] The court dates the start of the Democratic Kampuchea era to that day, and the Country Study dates the regime from April 1975; the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor holds that the party set up the state of Democratic Kampuchea in 1976.[3][6][1] In July 1975 the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea was "reestablished" to put every Khmer Rouge unit under central command.[2]

In March 1976 Saloth Sar, under the name Pol Pot, won a seat in the assembly, and the next month he became prime minister.[2] On September 27, 1976, he stepped down "for reasons of health", and Nuon Chea became acting prime minister. The Country Study holds that Pol Pot was back in the post by late October 1976; the court found that his leave ran from September 1976 to September 1977.[2][3] In the Country Study's account Nuon Chea was pro-Vietnamese; in the court's findings he was "Pol Pot's loyal right hand man".[2][3]

Under the party's Four-Year Plan of 1976, Cambodians had to grow three tons of rice per hectare.[1]

Factions and purges

Analysts count the party's factions differently. The Country Study cites Etcheson, who finds six, the first the Pol Pot group, and Ben Kiernan, who finds three: pro-Vietnamese communists, the Pol Pot faction and a third.[2] The Eastern Zone was the main center of regional resistance to the party center, and its leader So Phim was a pro-Vietnamese internationalist and a long rival of Pol Pot. There were at least two coup attempts against the center, in July and September 1975.[2] In the Country Study's account Vorn Vet, the second deputy prime minister, was pro-Vietnamese; the court places him among the senior leaders who shared the party's common purpose until his arrest in late 1978.[2][3]

In 1975 Pol Pot made an alliance with Ta Mok, the party head of the Southwestern Zone, and in 1977 and 1978 Ta Mok's backing let Pol Pot destroy his opponents in the party.[2] In February 1977 cadres from the Southwest were sent into the Northern, Eastern and Western zones to purge the local Khmer Rouge, and four months later the purge reached the Northwestern Zone.[2]

A former high school teacher who took the name Comrade Deuch was made head of the secret police. He set up the Tuol Sleng interrogation and detention center in a former Phnom Penh high school.[2] Hu Nim was tortured and killed there in 1977; his confession said that Hou Yuon had been killed for opposing the center's extreme policies.[2] In the Country Study's account, 2,404 people were tortured and executed there as "antiparty elements" in 1975 and 1976, 6,330 in 1977 and 5,765 in the first half of 1978, and about 20,000 victims from mid-1975 to January 1979. In the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor's count, about 14,000 prisoners were held there and about 12 survived. The court found that at least 11,742 prisoners were put to death at or near S-21 and Choeung Ek.[2][1][3] There were similar centers across the country; the code S-21 suggests at least twenty others.[2]

In May 1978 So Phim led a revolt, and Pol Pot and his Southwestern forces struck back hard. In the Eastern Zone as many as 100,000 people, branded as having "Khmer bodies but Vietnamese minds", were killed or deported. So Phim reportedly killed himself as he was about to be captured; the court dates his suicide to June 1978.[2][3] Some of his men fled to Vietnam, among them Heng Samrin, who led the People's Republic of Kampuchea after 1979.[2]

The court found that zone secretaries were removed one after another: Koy Thuon under house arrest in mid-1976, Chou Chet arrested in March 1978 and Ruos Nhim in May or June 1978.[3] Ruos Nhim and Vorn Vet were among the party members held at S-21.[3] It found that Nuon Chea helped plan and carry out the purges of the Northwest, Central (old North) and East zones, and that he oversaw S-21. From August 15, 1977, after Son Sen left for the East Zone front, he was the direct supervisor of Duch (Deuch). He and Son Sen gave orders to kill prisoners, both large groups and named people.[3][8] In the Country Study's view, these purges are the main reason so much of the movement's history is still unclear.[6]

The court's findings

On November 16, 2018, the Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers ruled in Case 002/02, which covered crimes in Democratic Kampuchea from April 17, 1975, to January 6, 1979.[3] It found an international armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea and Vietnam from May 1975 to January 6, 1979.[3] Vietnamese troops crossed into Cambodia in December 1978 and took Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979.[1]

The court found a widespread and systematic attack on Cambodia's civilians, carried out in pursuit of the party's plans to build socialism and to defend the country.[3] It found that:[3]

  • The party set up cooperatives and worksites as its main tool of class struggle, and murder, enslavement, political persecution and other inhumane acts were committed there.[3]
  • The party ran security centers and execution sites to find, arrest, isolate and "smash" those it saw as its worst enemies. Many children were held at S-21 and Choeung Ek and executed there.[3]
  • At least 100 Jarai were held at Au Kanseng in mid-1977, led out of the compound on a false pretext and executed. The order passed through Son Sen and Sao Saroeun, commander of Division 801, with the Standing Committee involved.[3]
  • The party targeted the Cham, the Vietnamese, Buddhists and former officials of the Khmer Republic (សាធារណរដ្ឋខ្មែរ), to build an atheist society of one kind with no classes.[3]
  • People were brought to Wat Au Trakuon in 1977 and executed there. The perpetrators at Wat Au Trakuon and the Trea Village security center held a genocidal intent toward the Cham, and the party restricted Cham religious and cultural life in Kroch Chhmar district.[3]
  • The Vietnamese were targeted for expulsion until late 1976 and for destruction from April 1977. Hundreds of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed at S-21, and genocide and crimes against humanity were committed against the Vietnamese.[3]
  • Buddhism was banned, its symbols destroyed and pagodas closed to worship; more than 100 monks were gathered at Angk Roka Pagoda and made to leave the monkhood.[3]
  • Former Khmer Republic officials were murdered at S-21.[3]
  • Across the country the party forced couples to marry and to have children, to grow the population.[3]

The court found that from April 17, 1975, to at least January 6, 1979, senior party leaders shared a common purpose: a fast socialist revolution through a "great leap forward". The party's whole network of zone, sector, district and local secretaries carried it out, and it included moving people again and again from the towns to the countryside and from one rural area to another. The court held that the purpose was criminal in itself. It named its senior leaders as Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Khieu Samphan, Vorn Vet and Son Sen, and found that they oversaw the policies in person and used others to commit the crimes.[3] It found Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty. Ieng Sary had died in 2013, and Ieng Thirith in 2015.[3]

The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor holds that the Khmer Rouge killed thousands of the Khmer Republic's soldiers, officers and civil servants soon after taking power. Over the next three years they put to death hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, city people and minorities, among them the Cham, Vietnamese and Chinese, as well as many of the movement's own soldiers and party members accused of treason. In its count, nearly two million Cambodians died of disease, hunger, execution or overwork.[1]

Dissolution and after

As the Vietnamese arrived in January 1979, Nuon Chea, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary fled to Pursat Province.[8] In December 1981 the party announced its dissolution, saying communism did not fit Democratic Kampuchea's anti-Vietnamese united front. Because the Khmer Rouge were always secretive, the Country Study holds that it is hard to say whether the party really disbanded. In its view the new name, Party of Democratic Kampuchea, was probably a cosmetic step to win back respect abroad, and the party probably carried on, as its leaders stayed the same.[4] In the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's account, the CPK simply became the Party of Democratic Kampuchea in 1981.[7]

From July 1985 the Khmer Rouge's main leaders were Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan. For years their opponents named Ieng Sary and Pol Pot as the two men most to blame for the mass killings in Cambodia.[4] Son Sen was murdered in 1997, allegedly by Pol Pot, because he meant to open talks, and Pol Pot was arrested and given a life sentence by a "people's tribunal".[7] Pol Pot died in 1998, and other senior leaders went over to the government that year; Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea surrendered in December 1998.[5][7] Ta Mok, the last leader who would not join the Royal Government of Cambodia, was captured in March 1999. The Khmer Rouge lasted until 1999, when every one of its leaders had gone over, been arrested or died.[5][1]

References 8
  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, Khmer Rouge History (undated)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 Library of Congress, Cambodia: A Country Study, An Elusive Party (1987)
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 3.21 3.22 3.23 3.24 3.25 3.26 3.27 3.28 3.29 3.30 3.31 3.32 3.33 3.34 3.35 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Summary of Judgement, Case 002/02 (November 16, 2018)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Library of Congress, Cambodia: A Country Study, Democratic Kampuchea (1987)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, Chronology of the Khmer Rouge Movement (undated)
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 6.12 Library of Congress, Cambodia: A Country Study, The Cambodian Left: The Early Phases (1987)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Uppsala Conflict Data Program, KR (Khmer Rouge) (undated)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Nuon Chea (undated)


Retrieved from "https://khmerconnection.com/w/index.php?title=Communist_Party_of_Kampuchea&oldid=18339"

Know something we're missing? Send a tip

This page was last edited on 14 November 2026, at 18:25.