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The Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 through the Cambodian Civil War, where the United States had supported the opposing regime of Lon Nol and heavily bombed Cambodia, [54]: 89–99 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 ...
The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), [a] also known as the Khmer Communist Party, [7] was a communist party in Cambodia. Its leader was Pol Pot , and its members were generally known as the Khmer Rouge .
[88] Islam was seen as an "alien" and "foreign" culture that did not belong in the new Communist system. Initially, the Khmer Rouge aimed for the "forced assimilation" of Chams through population dispersal. Pol Pot then began using intimidation efforts against the Chams that included the assassination of village elders, but he ultimately ...
Ideologically a Maoist and a Khmer ethnonationalist, Pot was a leader of Cambodia's Communist movement, known as the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981, during which Cambodia was converted into a one-party state.
The Khmer Rouge abolished the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea (GRUNK, established in 1970) and promulgated the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea on 5 January 1976. [citation needed] The Khmer Rouge continued to use Sihanouk as a figurehead for the government until 2 April 1976 when Sihanouk resigned as head of state.
A major point of departure between the Khmer Rouge faction and the Vietnam-aligned Communist Party of Kampuchea, which has favored more classical Marxism–Leninist ideology, was the Khmer Rouge's embrace of a nationalistic form of Maoism, one of the few major communist parties to do so in the wake of the Sino-Soviet split. [38]
Initially, communist North Vietnam was a strong ally of the Khmer Rouge while it was fighting against Lon Nol's Khmer Republic during the 1970–1975 civil war. Only after the Khmer Rouge took power did the Vietnamese opinion of Kampuchea become negative, when on 1 May 1975 (the day after Saigon fell), Khmer Rouge soldiers raided the islands of Phu Quoc and Tho Chau, killing more than five ...
The name of the party was changed to the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK) on 28 September 1960 and then to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) in 1966. Members of the CPK moved the party's headquarters to Ratanakiri Province, where they were termed "Khmer Rouge" by Prince Norodom Sihanouk.