Cambodia Timeline
Category: Other
Updated: 30 Apr 2018
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Created byJung Won SEO
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Cambodian communists join forces with Vietnam against French ColonialismFrench withdraw from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.Pol Pot becomes leader of Cambodian Communist Party, and makes plans for a rebellion. Visits China and Vietnam, 1964-5.US Escalation of Vietnam WarUS B-52 bombardment of Cambodian countryside in support of Lon Nol forces reaches its peak. 250,000 tonnes of bombs are dropped in seven months, before US Congress calls a halt to the bombing on 15 August. Toll from 1969 to 1973: 50,000 to 150,000 civilian deaths from the bombing. Pol Pot forces use the bombing's killing and destruction as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for the abandonment of moderate socialist policies in the insurgent zones. Purges of moderate communists suspected of disloyalty tKhmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot defeat Lon Nol army and take Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. Cities immediately evacuated, and the country is cut off from the outside world. Killings of surrendered Lon Nol officers, soldiers, and officials. Forced unpaid agricultural labour for all, and brutal persecution of Buddhist monks and ethnic minorities: Chinese, Vietnamese, Cham Muslim, and Thai.Massive starvation in parts of northwest Cambodia, following the deportation there of hundreds of thousands of evacuated urban dwellers.A second wave of bloody purges convulses Cambodia, centrally directed by Pol Pot group. The purges spread to the mass of the peasantry as well as to the persecuted urban evacuees. Cambodia also launches military attacks across all three of its borders, massacring civilians in Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos.Periods
The Khmer Republic. Coup against Sihanouk establishes General Lon Nol as President of a US-backed regime, the Khmer Republic. Sihanouk, in exile in China, joins forces with the Vietnamese and the Cambodian communists (the 'Khmer Rouge'). Lon Nol's rule initially wins the support of the urban classes, but becomes increasingly dictatorial.Kingdom of Cambodia, under Prince Norodom Sihanouk: autocratic monarchy, non-aligned in foreign policy and neutral in the Vietnam War.Democratic Kampuchea (DK)People's Republic of Kampuchea. Vietnamese troops invade and overthrow Pol Pot regime. Hun Sen Prime Minister.
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