The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after his 1970 overthrow.
Pol Pot was a Cambodian communist revolutionary, politician and a dictator who ruled Cambodia as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1976 and 1979. Ideologically a communist and a Khmer ethnonationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997 and served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. His administration converted Cambodia into a one-party communist state and perpetrated the Cambodian genocide.
Ta Mok, also known as Nguon Kang, was a Cambodian military chief and soldier who was a senior figure in the Khmer Rouge and the leader of the national army of Democratic Kampuchea. He was also known as "Brother Number Five" or "the Butcher". He was captured along the Thailand-Cambodia border in March 1999 by Cambodian government forces while on the run with a small band of followers and was held in government custody until his death in 2006 while awaiting his war crime trial.
The Party of Democratic Kampuchea was a political party in Cambodia, formed as a continuation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in December 1981. In the mid-1980s, it publicly claimed that its ideology was "a new form of democratic socialism", having ostensibly renounced Marxism–Leninism.
The Kingdom of Cambodia, also known as the First Kingdom of Cambodia, and commonly referred to as the Sangkum period, refers to Norodom Sihanouk's first administration of Cambodia from 1953 to 1970, an especially significant time in the country's history. Sihanouk continues to be one of the most controversial figures in Southeast Asia's turbulent and often tragic postwar history. From 1955 until 1970, Sihanouk's Sangkum was the sole legal party in Cambodia.
Hou Yuon (Khmer: ហ៊ូ យន់, 1930 – August 1975 was a veteran of the communist movement in Cambodia. A member of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, also known as the Khmer Rouge, he served in several ministerial posts during the 1960s and 1970s.
Son Sen, alias Comrade Khieu (សមមិត្តខៀវ) or "Brother Number 89", was a Cambodian Communist politician and soldier. A member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea/Party of Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge, from 1974 to 1992, Sen oversaw the Party's security apparatus, including the Santebal secret police and the notorious security prison S-21 at Tuol Sleng.
Khieu Samphan is a Cambodian former communist politician and economist who was the chairman of the state presidium of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) from 1976 until 1979. As such, he served as Cambodia's head of state and was one of the most powerful officials in the Khmer Rouge movement, although Pol Pot remained the General Secretary in the party.
The Cambodian–Vietnamese War was an armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea, controlled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war began with repeated attacks by the Liberation Army of Kampuchea on the southwestern border of Vietnam, particularly the Ba Chúc massacre which resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians. On 23 December 1978, 10 out of 19 divisions of Khmer Rouge's military divisions opened fire along the shared Southwestern borderline with Vietnam with the goal of invading the Vietnamese provinces of Đồng Tháp, An Giang and Kiên Giang. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea, and subsequently occupied the country in 2 weeks and removed the government of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from power. In doing so, Vietnam put an ultimate stop to the Cambodian Genocide, during which 25% of the Cambodian population had already been executed under Pol Pot’s regime.
Nuon Chea, also known as Long Bunruot or Rungloet Laodi, was a Cambodian communist politician and revolutionary who was the chief ideologist of the Khmer Rouge. He also briefly served as acting Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea. He was commonly known as "Brother Number Two", as he was second-in-command to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, General Secretary of the Party, during the Cambodian genocide of 1975–1979. In 2014, Nuon Chea received a life sentence for crimes against humanity, alongside another top-tier Khmer Rouge leader, Khieu Samphan, and a further trial convicted him of genocide in 2018. These life sentences were merged into a single life sentence by the Trial Chamber on 16 November 2018. He died while serving his sentence in 2019.
Chan Sy, also spelt Chan Si, was a Cambodian politician who served as the Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Kampuchea from 1982 until his death in 1984.
Kampuchea, officially Democratic Kampuchea (DK) from 1976 onward, was the Cambodian state from 1975 to 1979, under the totalitarian dictatorship of Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge (KR). It was established following the Khmer Rouge's capture of the capital Phnom Penh, effectively ending the United States-backed Khmer Republic of Lon Nol. After Vietnam took Phnom Penh in 1979, it was disestablished in 1982 with the creation of the CGDK in its place.
Pen Sovan was a Cambodian politician and revolutionary who served as the Prime Minister of the Hanoi-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea from 27 June to 5 December 1981. He also served as General Secretary of the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP) from 1979 to 1981. He was arrested and removed from office in December 1981 by the Vietnamese for irritating Lê Đức Thọ, the chief adviser to the PRK government. He was imprisoned in Vietnam until January 1992.
The National United Front of Kampuchea was an organisation formed by the deposed then Chief of State of Cambodia, Norodom Sihanouk, in 1970 while he was in exile in Beijing.
The Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea was a government-in-exile of Cambodia, based in Beijing and Hong Kong, that was in existence between 1970 and 1976, and was briefly in control of the country starting from 1975.
The Cambodian National Unity Party was a political party set up by the Khmer Rouge on 30 November 1992, during the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia to participate in the elections that year. The party was led by Khieu Samphan and Son Sen. It succeeded the Party of Democratic Kampuchea after 1993. As with the PDK, the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea was said to be its armed wing. Its professed aim at its founding was to "work towards implementing multi-party liberal democracy." Its radio station was known as the Voice of the Great National Union Front of Cambodia until being replaced in July 1994 by PGNUNSC Radio.
The Democratic National Union Movement (DNUM) was a Cambodian political party founded after senior Khmer Rouge official Ieng Sary's defection from the Cambodian National Unity Party in August 1996. A magazine entitled Phka Rik is associated with it. It was created primarily to facilitate Ieng Sary's reentry into civilian political life, claiming neutrality and that he had broken away from the Khmer Rouge and from the "fascism and cruelty of Pol Pot's regime," naming Nuon Chea, Ta Mok, Son Sen and Yun Yat as Pol Pot's cohorts and "mass murderers of Cambodia." He stated that he was a supporter of "limited democracy"; he named Thailand, Singapore, and Japan as examples.
The Khmer National Solidarity Party (KNSP) was a Cambodian political party founded in May 1997 by senior Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan after he denunciated Pol Pot and as he began distancing himself from the Khmer Rouge. Khieu Samphan was formerly the leader of the Cambodian National Unity Party. Khieu Samphan had announced the new party to back the National United Front proposed by Prince Norodom Ranariddh for the 1998 Cambodian parliamentary election. Still, opposition from the ruling Cambodian People's Party led by Hun Sen prevented this from occurring. Khieu Samphan stated in 1998 of the elections that, "If the elections do not go ahead under the iron rule of Vietnamese communists and their puppet, we should be very happy and want to take part because we are democratic, pluralistic and free government."
The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as the Khmer Communist Party, was a communist party in Cambodia. Its leader was Pol Pot, and its members were generally known as the Khmer Rouge. Originally founded in 1951, the party was split into pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet factions as a result of the Sino–Soviet split with the former being the Pol Pot faction, and the latter adopting a more revisionist approach to Marxism. As such, it claimed that 30 September 1960 was its founding date; it was named the Workers' Party of Kampuchea before it was renamed the Communist Party in 1966.
The Cambodian Conflict or Khmer Rouge Insurgency, was an armed conflict that initiated in the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, Vietnam which provoked the deposition of Democratic Kampuchea, between the new Cambodian government and an anti-government coalition led by the Khmer Rouge.
