Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea was the official name of the Cambodian state from 1975 to 1979, under the general secretaryship of Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge's capture of the capital Phnom Penh in 1975 effectively ended the United States-backed Khmer Republic under Prime Minister-later President Lon Nol.
From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge's one-party regime killed millions of its own people through mass executions, forced labour, and starvation, in an event which has come to be known as the Cambodian genocide. The killings ended when the Khmer Rouge were ousted from Phnom Penh by the People's Army of Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge subsequently established a government-in-exile in neighbouring Thailand and retained Kampuchea's seat at the United Nations. In response, Vietnamese-backed communists created a rival government, the People's Republic of Kampuchea, but failed to gain international recognition.
In 1982, the Khmer Rouge established the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea with two non-communist guerrilla factions, broadening the exiled government of Democratic Kampuchea. The exiled government renamed itself the National Government of Cambodia in 1990, in the run-up to the UN-sponsored 1991 Paris Peace Agreements.
Background and establishment
In 1970, Prime Minister Lon Nol and the National Assembly deposed Prince Norodom Sihanouk as the head of state. Sihanouk, opposing the new government, entered into an alliance with the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, against them. Taking advantage of the North Vietnamese occupation of eastern Cambodia, massive United States carpet bombing ranging across the country, and Sihanouk's reputation, the Khmer Rouge were able to present themselves as a peace-oriented party in a coalition that represented the majority of the people. Thus, with large popular support in the countryside, the capital Phnom Penh finally fell on 17 April 1975 to the Khmer Rouge.Thus, prior to the Khmer Rouge's takeover of Phnom Penh in 1975 and the start of Year Zero, Cambodia had already been involved in the Third Indochina War. Tensions between Cambodia and Vietnam were growing due to differences in communist ideology and the incursion of Vietnamese military presence within Cambodian borders. The context of war destabilised the country and displaced Cambodians while making available to the Khmer Rouge the weapons of war. The Khmer Rouge leveraged on the devastation caused by the war to recruit members and used this past violence to justify the similarly, if not more, violent and radical policies of the regime.
The birth of Democratic Kampuchea and its propensity for violence must be understood against this backdrop of war that likely played a contributing factor in hardening the population against such violence and simultaneously increasing their tolerance and hunger for it. Early explanations for the Khmer Rouge brutality suggest that the Khmer Rouge had been radicalised during the war years and later turned this radical understanding of society and violence onto their countrymen. This backdrop of violence and brutality arguably also affected everyday Cambodians, priming them for the violence that they themselves perpetrated under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Phnom Penh fell on 17 April 1975. Sihanouk was given the symbolic position of head of state for the new government of Democratic Kampuchea and, in September 1975, returned to Phnom Penh from exile in Beijing, China. After a trip abroad, during which he visited several communist countries and recommended the recognition of Democratic Kampuchea, Sihanouk returned again to Cambodia at the end of 1975. A year after the Khmer Rouge takeover, Sihanouk resigned in mid-April 1976 and was placed under house arrest, where he remained until 1979, and the Khmer Rouge remained in sole control.
Evacuation of cities
In deportations that became markers of the beginning of their rule, the Khmer Rouge demanded and then forced the people to leave the cities and live in the countryside. Phnom Penh—populated by 2.5 million people —was soon nearly empty. The roads out of the city were clogged with evacuees. Similar evacuations occurred throughout the nation.The conditions of the evacuation and the treatment of the people involved often depended on which military units and commanders were conducting the specific operations. Pol Pot's brother, Saloth Chhay, who worked as a Republican journalist in the capital, was reported to have died during the evacuation of Phnom Penh.
Even Phnom Penh's hospitals were emptied of their patients. The Khmer Rouge provided transportation for some of the aged and the disabled, and they set up stockpiles of food outside the city for the refugees; however, the supplies were inadequate to sustain the hundreds of thousands of people on the road. Even seriously injured hospital patients, many without any means of conveyance, were summarily forced to leave regardless of their condition.
The foreign community, about 800 people, was quarantined in the French embassy compound, and by the end of the month the foreigners were taken by truck to the Thai border. Khmer women who were married to foreigners were allowed to accompany their husbands, but Khmer men were not permitted to leave with their foreign wives.
Western historians claim that the motives were political, based on deep-rooted resentment of the cities. The Khmer Rouge was determined to turn the country into a nation of peasants in which the corruption and "parasitism" of city life would be completely uprooted. In addition, Pol Pot wanted to break up the "enemy spy organisations" that allegedly were based in the urban areas. Finally, it seems that Pol Pot and his hard-line associates on the CPK Political Bureau used the forced evacuations to gain control of the city's population and to weaken the position of their factional rivals within the communist party.
Constitution
The Khmer Rouge abolished the Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea and promulgated the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea on 5 January 1976.The Khmer Rouge continued to use Sihanouk as a figurehead for the government until 5 April 1976, when Sihanouk resigned as head of state. Sihanouk remained under comfortable but strict house arrest in Phnom Penh until late in the war with Vietnam, at which point he departed for the United States where he presented Democratic Kampuchea's case before the Security Council. He eventually relocated to China.
The "rights and duties of the individual" were briefly defined in Article 12. They included none of what are commonly regarded as guarantees of political human rights except the statement that "men and women are equal in every respect." The document declared, however, that "all workers" and "all peasants" were "masters" of their factories and fields. An assertion that "there is absolutely no unemployment in Democratic Kampuchea" was technically correct, in light of the regime's massive use of force to achieve it.
The constitution defined Democratic Kampuchea's foreign policy principles in Article 21, the document's longest, in terms of "independence, peace, neutrality, and nonalignment." It pledged the country's support to anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World. In light of the regime's aggressive attacks against Vietnamese, Thai, and Laotian territory during 1977 and 1978, the promise to "maintain close and friendly relations with all countries sharing a common border" bore little resemblance to reality.
Governmental institutions were outlined very briefly in the constitution. The legislature, the Kampuchean People's Representative Assembly, contained 250 members "representing workers, peasants, and other working people and the Kampuchean Revolutionary army." One hundred and fifty KPRA seats were allocated for peasant representatives; fifty, for the armed forces; and fifty, for worker and other representatives. The legislature was to be popularly elected for a five-year term. Its first and only election was held on 20 March 1976. The "New People" apparently were not allowed to participate.
The executive branch of government also was chosen by the KPRA. It consisted of a state presidium "responsible for representing the state of Democratic Kampuchea inside and outside the country." It served for a five-year term, and its president was head of state. Khieu Samphan was the only person to serve in this office, which he assumed after Sihanouk's resignation. The judicial system was composed of "people's courts", the judges for which were appointed by the KPRA, as was the executive branch.
The constitution did not mention regional or local government institutions. After assuming power, the Khmer Rouge abolished the old provinces and replaced them with seven zones ; the Northern Zone, Northeastern Zone, Northwestern Zone, Central Zone, Eastern Zone, Western Zone, and Southwestern Zone. There were also two other regional-level units: the Kracheh Special Region Number 505 and, until 1977, the Siemreab Special Region Number 106.
The zones were divided into regions that were given numbers. Number One, appropriately, encompassed the Samlot region of the Northwestern Zone, where the insurrection against Sihanouk had erupted in early 1967. With this exception, the damban appear to have been numbered arbitrarily.
The damban were divided into districts, communes, and villages, the latter usually containing several hundred people. This pattern was roughly similar to that which existed under Sihanouk and the Khmer Republic, but inhabitants of the villages were organized into groups composed of ten to fifteen families. On each level, administration was directed by a three-person committee.
The Khmer Rouge occupied committee posts at the higher levels. Subdistrict and village committees were often staffed by local poor peasants and, very rarely, by "new people". Cooperatives, similar in jurisdictional area to the, assumed local government responsibilities in some areas.