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The Colonial Period (1864 – 1953)

The centuries which followed the fall of Angkor were largely unremarkable. The sack of Lonvek was symptomatic of a wider struggle for Cambodian territory involving Siam to the west and Ðai Viêt (later Viêt Nam) to the east. Caught between a rock and a hard place Cambodia finally sought protection from the French. The French had colonial aspirations and saw Indochina as a potentially lucrative region. The initial base established by the French in Saigon in the 1850s eventually led to Cambodia’s King Norodom agreeing to the establishment of a French Protectorate in 1864. The Protectorate became a full colony in 1884.

There were pros and cons to being a French colony. The French put an end to the wholesale theft of Khmer territory and even returned the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap to Cambodia. These had been held by the Siamese since 1794. However, the French regarded Vietnam as a superior country to Cambodia and hired Vietnamese administrators and overseers to manage the colony. The long-standing tensions between the Khmer people and the Vietnamese meant that Khmer workers were often treated brutally by their handlers. Furthermore, the French actively encouraged schisms within the Cambodian royal family making a return to Khmer autonomy unlikely. It took the Japanese invasion during WWII and the events of the post-war period to revitalise Cambodian nationalism.

The Japanese occupation of Indochina temporarily broke the French stranglehold on the region and gave local nationalists time to organise. In Cambodia these events coincided with the coronation of King Norodom Sihanouk in 1941. Sihanouk was a boy when he inherited the throne and the French believed he would be easy to manipulate. It was the gravest of misjudgments. Sihanouk proved to be one of the shrewdest monarchs and politicians of his era and his influence on Cambodian political life spanned decades. Despite his eventual abdication from the throne in 2004, King Sihanouk is still loved and revered by the Cambodian people and his birthday, on October 31st, remains a public holiday.
Within ten years of the end of WWII Sihanouk had successfully negotiated independence from France, which Cambodia achieved on 9th November 1953. The Cambodian struggle for independence was greatly assisted by the French entanglement in Vietnam and by armed resistance from communist insurgents within Cambodia. In particular, the war waged by Vietnamese nationalists during the early 1950s caused the French to question their presence in Indochina. The will to continue with their colonial project in Indochina was categorically shattered by defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. The battle had long-term repercussions for the region and influenced the course of Cambodian history as much as it affected that of Vietnam. The colonial era was over in Cambodia but the peace and prosperity that might have been expected to thrive in a fledgling, sovereign nation failed to fully materialise.

The ‘Popular Socialist Community’ and the Lon Nol Regime (1955 – 1975)

The Sangkum Reastr Niyum ‘Popular Socialist Community’ ran from 1955 to 1970 with Norodom Sihanouk at its helm. He abdicated as king and held the position of Prime Minister from 1955-1960 and then Head of State from 1960 until 1970. In that year he was deposed in a coup and replaced by the pro-American General Lon Nol. Sihanouk’s support for Vietnamese communists during the American War certainly increased American animosity towards him. Sihanouk allowed the North Vietnamese to re-route part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Cambodian territory and Vietnamese units established forward positions on Khmer soil. There is some evidence that the coup of 1970 had tacit American backing.

Though the period from 1955 to 1970 was generally peaceful, the economy of the country deteriorated and inter-ethnic malcontent began to grow. Political and social injustices led to a surge in support for Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, particularly among rural Cambodians. The Lon Nol regime’s reliance on America and the inherent corruption and nepotism in the administration played straight into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Their armed struggle with Lon Nol in the early 1970s coincided with the Cambodian army’s attempt to push Vietnamese communist forces out of Cambodia. It was a fight the Cambodian army was not equipped for and when America abandoned Vietnam in 1975 they similarly left Cambodia to its own fate. Without American support Saigon and Phnom Penh fell within weeks of each other in the Spring of 1975; Saigon to the Viet Minh and Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge. In one of the most damning pieces of correspondence ever penned, Lon Nol’s co-conspirator Prince Sirik Matak wrote the following letter to outgoing US Ambassador to Cambodia, John Gunther Dean. Dean had offered safe passage to America to all members of the Lon Nol regime. The letter read:

Dear Excellency and Friend,

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion.

As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed that you would have the sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.

But mark it well that, if I should die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.

Please accept, Excellency, my dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments,

Sirik Matak

Year Zero

The Khmer Rouge were inspired and led by a small group of communist intellectuals headed by Saloth Sar (Pol Pot). Educated in Paris, the group planned to revolutionize Cambodian society using Mao Tze Tung’s Cultural Revolution as a model. They recruited support among Cambodia’s rural poor and emphasized the failings of the Lon Nol regime. Phnom Penh’s cosmopolitan residents were portrayed as decadent, lazy and pro-American and by the time the Khmer Rouge entered the capital in 1975 an ingrained hatred of the middle classes had been instilled among the Khmer Rouge rank and file. The urban population that initially welcomed the Khmer Rouge as liberators was forcibly evicted from the capital and sent to the countryside. Here a new life of honest toil and social equality awaited them, they were told. Their human needs would be met by Angkar (the Organization), the Khmer Rouge leadership’s name for the vast, ignorant state-sponsored bureaucracy that would virtually set Cambodia back a thousand years. One of the first things Angkar declared was that the Cambodian people had entered Year Zero: freedom of political, religious and artistic expression was at an end and the family unit did not exist. The international borders were closed and in every practical sense Cambodia disappeared from the world map.

Sihanouk returned to Cambodia (ironically renamed Democratic Kampuchea by the Khmer Rouge) but the communist forces he had previously supported turned on him. He was kept under what amounted to house arrest inside the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh and used by the regime to demonstrate to the outside world that Cambodia was still a monarchy. During the period 1976-1979 Pol Pot took the role of Prime Minister with Khieu Samphan as Head of State.

The excesses of the Khmer Rouge are well-documented. In the five-year period from 1975-1979 roughly a third of Cambodia’s total population of seven million are believed to have died from overwork, malnourishment, lack of health provision or persecution. Former professionals and intellectuals of every kind were slaughtered. Monks, dancers, artists and singers met the same fate. As the actor and writer Spalding Gray so eloquently phrased it in his monologue Swimming to Cambodia: “who needs metaphors for Hell, or literature about Hell? This happened, here, on this earth”

The Vietnamese Invasion (1979)

The period of Khmer Rouge control might well have lasted longer had the regime’s leaders not chosen to attack Vietnam in late 1977. By 1978 the Vietnamese, angered by the assaults, lost patience with the Khmer Rouge hierarchy and mounted a full-scale invasion. In January 1979 Vietnamese forces captured Phnom Penh and through the Spring and Summer of that year the Khmer Rouge were comprehensively routed. Significant numbers of Khmer Rouge fighters fled to sanctuaries along the Thai border where, incredibly, they were given humanitarian and military support by western governments including those in America and Great Britain. Western governments were wary of the Vietnamese and still concerned to stem the potential flow of communism to friendly countries like Thailand.

The period immediately after the Vietnamese invasion revealed the extent of the Khmer Rouge genocide. The notorious interrogation centre S21 in Phnom Penh was one of the first places to be unearthed, as was the mass burial ground just outside the city at Choeung Ek. Foreign journalists returned to Cambodia and gradually the world became aware of the full horror of the Khmer Rouge reign.

1981-1989

The resilience of the Khmer people saw the restoration of various forms of traditional life in the period after Pol Pot’s downfall. By the end of the decade Buddhism had re-established itself as the national faith and the rich culture Pol Pot had sought to eradicate began to lay down new roots. The family, the backbone of Khmer society, was again able to flourish, though no family was left untouched by the Khmer Rouge reign. The period immediately after the fall of the Khmer Rough saw widespread starvation and hordes of refugees heading for the Thai border. This, combined with the violent retribution visited on former members of the regime, meant further misery for Cambodia. Aid efforts were hampered by logistics and red-tape, despite a world-wide response to the news footage gathered in Cambodia by campaigning journalists like Colin Pilger.

The political situation was little better. The results of the Cambodian National Assembly elections in 1981 were not recognised by the international community and Cambodia continued to be represented at the United Nations by Ieng Sary, Pol Pot’s deputy and co-conspirator. A Khmer Rouge-dominated government, which included Sihanouk, officially ruled from exile while Cambodia was again renamed by the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party. The new name for Cambodia, adopted in 1979, was the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. The Vietnamese remained in Cambodia until 1989.

In 1985 the ‘iron man’ of modern Cambodian politics took power. Hun Sen has been at the hub of national politics and power ever since. One of his first moves as Prime Minister was to distance himself from left-wing ideals and policies in order to encourage foreign investment. This ploy eventually proved successful but the early years of Hun Sen’s tenancy were dogged by factional infighting. A guerrilla war raged in the Cambodian countryside and the exodus of Cambodian citizens to neighbouring countries again accelerated.

1991 – 1996: The Paris Peace Accords / Democratic Elections

In 1989 a Peace Agreement was finally signed by the warring factions and under the auspices of the United Nations an interim coalition government took control of Cambodia while democratic elections were organised. Sihanouk temporarily returned to his role as Head of State.

It was not until 1993 that democratic elections were held. The pro-monarchy FUNCINPEC party, led by Prince Ranariddh, won a majority over Hun Sen’s CCP (Cambodian People’s Party). The royalist victory led to an immediate restoration of the monarchy and once again Sihanouk became king. Ranariddh took control of a coalition government with Hun Sen working as his deputy. The new government quickly declared an amnesty for former members of the Khmer Rouge, many of whom abandoned their quest for power and laid down their arms. The move was expedient: significant numbers of representatives in the new parliament had either been Khmer Rouge members or sympathisers. The major benefit of the amnesty, which Sihanouk later extended to include Ieng Sary, was that it heralded the beginning of a period of relative peace in Cambodia.

Hun Sen Seizes Power

The year 1997 was momentous. Hun Sen staged a coup which ousted Prince Ranariddh and forced him to flee the country. A trumped-up charge of arms-smuggling was leveled against the Prince and once again Sihanouk was called upon to bestow a royal pardon before Ranariddh could safely return to Cambodia. The coup was vilified by the international community, though the only significant action taken in protest was to defer Cambodia’s entry into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Hun Sen retained his grip on power and tightened it further with a general election win the following year.

Though the UN officially declared the 1998 elections ‘fair and free’ there was widespread violence and intimidation during the campaign. Many observers questioned the validity of the results that saw the CCP sweep to victory over FUNCINPEC. Another coalition government was formed, virtually a mirror-image of the previous one, with Hun Sen as Prime Minister and Prince Ranariddh as leader of the National Assembly. Hun Sen has been in power in Cambodia ever since and his Cambodian People’s Party remains the dominant force in Cambodian politics.

The Death of Pol Pot

1997 also saw the trial and life ‘imprisonment’ of Pol Pot. As Pol Pot was still living in a near-secret location in the jungle the sentence was somewhat ludicrous and he died there in 1998 still, to all intents and purposes, a free man. His death again put the matter of the Khmer Rouge genocide at the forefront of world news and the Cambodian Senate responded by establishing a tribunal to bring other Khmer Rouge leaders to book. The reaction of the Cambodian populace was lack-luster. Most people simply wanted to forget about life under Pol Pot and did not want to re-live the anguish of losing family members and friends to the regime. Buddhist tenets may have played a significant role in this reaction: there was a genuine belief that Pol Pot would meet divine justice in his next life.

The ambivalence of the Cambodian people was matched by government-level reluctance to pursue former Khmer Rouge members with any vehemence. To date, very few people who took part in the Cambodian genocide have even been charged, let alone prosecuted.