User:San Pisith

The Decline of King Norodom Sihanouk and the Rise of Khmer Rouge

The popularity of King Norodom Sihanouk was dramatically declined after he leaned over to the left-wing communist bloc and broke off the relationship with the United States on May 3, 1965. He rejected the U.S. military aid program which had provided the pay for his arms force. As a result of this policy, his government lost fifteen percent of the national budget which was offered by the U.S. government at the time. The relationship between Sihanouk’s regime and America was getting worst since a group of people who supported Sihanouk’s policy organized a demonstration against the American government in front of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh in 1964. The demonstration forced the American government to withdraw her Embassy from Cambodia. As a matter of fact, the economy of Cambodia was unable to adjust to the loss of American aid and budgetary support. The self-reliance economic policy of Sihanouk led his own government into a serious financial problem.

Having seen the Sihanouk’s policy was leaning towards the communist and his political life was in a vulnerable situation, many right-wing officials started plotting against him. One of the most prominent plotters was Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak. While Sihanouk was on an oversea trip to France, the Soviet Union and Beijing, Prince Sirik Matak and General Lon Nol backed by the United States convened the General Assembly for a vote to depose Sihanouk in 1970 and declared Cambodia the Khmer Republic. Lon Nol was chosen as the first President of Cambodia and Sirik Matak was appointed as the Deputy Prime Minister. It was the first time in the history of Cambodia that the monarchy was abolished. The newly established Khmer Republic of general Lon Nol faced a number of tough situations, i.e., a joint U.S.–South Vietnamese invasion of eastern Cambodia and the gradual development of the left-wing communist forces destabilizing Lon Nol’s government. As a result of this, Lon Nol’s right-wing government fell into a serious crisis of civil war.

In addition, the deposed King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk took up residence in Beijing where he set up a government-in-exile, Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea (Government Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchéa or known as GRUNK in its French acronym) and it was immediately recognized by China. The GRUNK established the National United Front of Cambodia or Front uni national du Kampuchéa (known as FUNK in its French acronym) movement in 1970 to fight against Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic. On March 23, 1970, Sihanouk made a public announcement to appeal to the people of Cambodia to stand up against Lon Nol’s republican government. Sihanouk states: Our soldiers have been ordered to give up defending the frontiers and the country’s territory, to set themselves against their own compatriots and ruthlessly repress all those who dare to show even the slightest verbal opposition to the new fascist power which serves U.S. imperialism…I call on all those of my children, compatriots, military and civilian, who can no longer endure the unjust oppression by the traitors and who have the courage and patriotic spirit needed for liberating the motherland, to engage in guerrilla warfare in the jungle against our enemies.

His announcement effectively attracted people from all walks of life who were loyal to him and praised his policy. This movement consequently built a connection between the Sihanoukist official nationalism and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (known as CPK). As a matter of fact, during the SRN period, King Sihanouk had launched a campaigned against the CPK group. He began to call it by a new name: the Khmer Rouge. Several prominent members of the CPK were imprisoned and some were secretly killed at that period. Nonetheless, the left-wing CPK, led by a former schoolteacher using the pseudonym Pol Pot (1925 – 1998) seized this great opportunity to enter into a political coalition with King Norodom Sihanouk and took Sihanouk’s wide popularity to persuade the people of Cambodia who were unsatisfied with the Republican government to join with their rebel army. Finally, the left-wing CPK took the national power in April 1975 and established the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) or generally know Khmer Rouge (KR) regime after defeating the government of Lon Nol. Finally, after twenty years of thinking, planning, and fighting, Pol Pot one of the top leaders of KR was free to establish his new society by the new revolutionary calendar, and declared April 17, 1975, as the beginning of the new day and a new year. In July 1975, Pol Pot made a victory address: This is what we should call the extremely great significance of our great victory in the international arena because never before had there been such an event in the annals of the world’s revolutionary wars…To win such a big victory in just five years is extremely fast. The party has thus ordered that the national construction efforts to be carried out from now should be fulfilled rapidly so that ours will rapidly become a prosperous country with advanced agriculture and industry and so that our people’s standard of living will be rapidly improved.

In contrast to Pol Pot’s victory address, just a few weeks after gaining victory over the Khmer Republic, the DK completely transformed Cambodia into a prison camp state in which more than eight million Cambodians served as its prisoners. The new regime began revolutionizing Cambodia by evacuating all people from all towns, abolishing all markets, abolishing Lon Nol regime currency and circulating the revolutionary currency that had been printed, forcing all Buddhist monks to disrobe, executing all cadres of the Lon Nol regime beginning with top leaders, expelling the entire Vietnamese minority population and so on. In the article “The Cambodian Genocide: 1975-1979.” Ben Kiernan states: The nation’s cities were evacuated, hospitals emptied, schools closed, factories deserted, money and wages abolished, monasteries emptied, and libraries scattered. Freedom of the press, movement, worship, organization, association, and discussion all completely disappeared for nearly four years. So did everyday family life. A whole nation was “kidnapped,” and then besieged from within. Meals had to be eaten in collective mess halls: Parents ate breakfast in sittings, and if they were lucky their sons and daughters waited for their turns outside.

After five years away (from 1970-1975), King Sihanouk returned to Cambodia in September and he was chosen as the Head of State. One year later, Sihanouk resigned from the position and then he was put under house arrest together with his royal family for nearly three years.

Under the Marxist leader Pol Pot, the DK tried to take Cambodia back to the Middle Ages, treating millions of people as slaves and forcing them from the cities to work on communal farms in the countryside. The freedom of press and religion was suspended. The Buddhist monk was forbidden from wearing monastic robes and forcibly defrocked. Anyone who had a well-educated background: wearing glasses or knowing a foreign language was arrested and then executed. Over two million innocent people died from execution, starvation, disease, and overwork. The survivors from that regime severely affected by psychological trauma. Article by San Pisith