A Look at the Day the Khmer Rouge Took Power

Fall of Phnom Penh (Photo: Roland Neveu)

A Khmer Rouge rebel frisks a civilian in downtown Phnom Penh hours after the rebel forces led by Pol Pot took control of the Cambodian capital April 17, 1975. (Photo: AP)

Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer

Phnom Penh Tuesday, 19 April 2011

“Any activity to remember this day is necessary ... And that’s why the [tribunal] is operational under its mission here to bring those responsible to trial.” (sic!)

The Documentation Center of Cambodia is preparing a permanent exhibition of photographs marking the day the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh and began their devastating four-year rule 36 years ago.

Chhang Youk, director of the center, said the exhibition, which opens next Monday, is to remind people of the beginning of the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

The exhibition showcases 17 rare photographs taken by American photographer Al Rockoff and French photographer Roland Neveu.

The center receives between 600 and 800 visitors each month, Chhang Youk said, and the exhibit is meant to be a discussion point that provides a look back at Phnom Penh.

Former Khmer Rouge Recalls Fall of Phnom Penh

Him Huy, 54, a former Khmer Rouge soldier. (Photo: by Chun Sakada)

Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Tuesday, 19 April 2011

“Heavy weapons and light weapons both were used by Khmer Rouge in the attack.”

On April 17, 1975, Him Huy, an 18-year-old soldier within the Khmer Rouge revolution, found himself on Road 24, passing Kandal province’s Sa’ang district as part of a concerted attack on the capital, Phnom Penh.

“That day, all units and divisions came from every side into Phnom Penh,” Him Huy told “Hello VOA” Monday, recalling the day 36 years later. “Heavy weapons and light weapons both were used by Khmer Rouge in the attack.”

By the end of the day, the city had fallen to the revolution, and Year Zero had begun. Him Huy, who led a group of 12 soldiers into the city for the attack, would find himself assigned to a former high school the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison, S-21, or Tuol Sleng.

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: The Dark Day of Cambodia

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

April 17,1975: Th​e Dark day of Cambodia

To commemorate the Dark Day of Cambodia,I would like to post my 90 black & white drawings here.

You could see them all at www.khmerrouge-toons.blogspot.com.

Cheers,

Ung Bun Heang

EVENTS ON 17 APRIL 1975 - by Mony Visal Khouy

KR soldiers entering Phnom Penh along Monivong Blvd

Source: DC-Cam

17 April 1975 is the day of victory over the U.S. imperialists. The Khmer Liberation Army, “or the Khmer Rouge army,” was able to eliminate the pain and suffering of the Cambodian people during a war that lasted five years, since 1970-1975. 17 April 1975 gave the people of Cambodia much hope, motivation, and happiness knowing that their country had achieved peace and prosperity. It became a peaceful country after people united from their separation from parents, families, and relatives during the war.

My mother and father, as well as the rest of the people in the city of Phnom Penh, came out to congratulate and welcome the Khmer Liberation Army that entered and filled the entire city of Phnom Penh. They felt joyful and happy. My father, like other people in the city of Phnom Penh, raised a white flag, screaming, “Bravo to victory and peace!” with a beaming face filled with hope for the future. But it was not too long after people had become excited and joyful about this peace, that the Khmer Liberation Army, or the Khmer Rouge, began ordering people out of their homes. For three days they would leave Phnom Penh. The Khmer Liberation Army said, “The Americans are going to drop bombs on the city of Phnom Penh. The Khmer Liberation Army will stay to clear out all the imperialists in the city of Phnom Penh and then you can return. Therefore, we ask all brothers and sisters to leave without taking any of your belongings, because you will only leave for three days.” With the threats of their guns, the Khmer Liberation Army forced my family and our neighbors to quickly leave our homes. Anybody or any family that was not willing to leave, the Khmer Rouge Liberation Army would threaten and if they remained stubborn and were not willing to leave their homes, they would be shot and killed.

Exodus from Phnom Penh: A CNN Video

Rev. Francois Ponchaud describes the scene as the Khmer Rouge emptied the Cambodian capital.

Cambodians Mark Khmer Rouge Anniversary

April 18, 2008
NTDTV

Opposition leaders, monks and villagers took part in a somber ceremony. Today is the 33rd anniversary of the day the Khmer Rouge started their regime in the capital's infamous killing fields.

The 33rd anniversary of "Year Zero," when the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule in Cambodia began, has been marked by criticism because of the slow process to prosecute the group's leaders.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy criticizes the government for the long delay of the trial. He told mourners not to forget the killing fields and urged the tribunal to prosecute the former Khmer Rouge leaders.

[Sam Rainsy, Opposition Leader]:
"We must never forget this day and we ask the Khmer Rouge tribunal with the participation of the United Nation to prosecute the former Khmer Rouge leaders in an effective way so as to bring justice to the victims of the Khmer Rouge and their families."

No Khmer Rouge leader has ever faced trial. During the rule, an estimated 1.7 million people died of starvation, forced labor... and many were executed.

Survivors of the genocide want justice to be served.

[Yeng Phai, Khmer Rouge Regime Survivor]:
"I want the tribunal to prosecute the Khmer Rouge leaders soon so that I know how they tortured and killed my children and husband. I want the tribunal to punish them the same as when they killed the victims."

A U.N.-backed court recently unveiled a proposal to extend the long-awaited tribunal's three-year life span by two years and drag out the proceedings until 2011.

Thinking of Cambodia

17 - 04 - 2008
David Hayes
Posted on openDemocracy

On 17 April 1975, Khmer Rouge soldiers entered Phnom Penh to force Cambodia’s people into a nightmare lasting almost four years.

(This article was first published on 17 April 2003)

I was thinking about Cambodia tonight.

I remembered the Ben Kiernan story about his first visit back after the genocide, and how he asked a Khmer Rouge cadre what had happened to an arrested man in a village. “We killed him for the time being”.

I remembered the story of how the peaceable Cham were hunted down and massacred because they were not pure Khmer.

I remembered reading Francois Ponchaud and Lek Hor Tan on the pathology of absolute power, and then finding a leftist magazine discussing the Kampuchean “workers’ state”.

I remembered the story of how the graduates, technicians and intellectuals answered the call to return from Paris after liberation in 1975, and were met at the airport to be taken away to be tortured and murdered.

I remembered Malcolm Caldwell, who never got the chance to report on his last interview with Pol Pot in December 1978, and whose farewell words on the night he was murdered compared Cambodia to Scotland.

I remembered the shopkeeper (and ex-ambassador) in Paris who had been to school with Saloth Sar, recalled him as "kind and gentle", and blamed the genocide on the fact that Ieng Sary was a Khmer Krom and thus half-Vietnamese.

I remembered the Michael Vickery story of the Young Pioneers at Saigon airport on their way to Moscow in the 1980s who asked him and David Chandler: “Does everyone in Australia speak Khmer?”

I remembered my friend Thavary telling me the story of how she had lost everything, and how the kitchen where we sat became colder and colder as the heating was turned up higher and higher.

I remembered the moment we were introduced, when Thavary offered to show me some photographs of her country. She returned with some postcards of Angkor. It was only then, years after reading all those books on what happened in Cambodia, that I started to understand.

**** **** ****

Cambodia

One man shall smile one day and say goodbye.
Two shall be left, two shall be left to die.

One man shall give his best advice.
Three men shall pay the price.

One man shall live, live to regret.
Four men shall meet the debt.

One man shall wake from terror to his bed.
Five men shall be dead.

One man to five. A million men to one.
And still they die. And still the war goes on.

James Fenton (reproduced by kind permission of the author)

Cambodians ignore anniversary of Khmer Rouge victory

Thu, 17 Apr 2008
DPA

"The Khmer Rouge bombed Phnom Penh all New Year and marched in the day New Year ended. I can't forget" - Bunna

Phnom Penh - Cambodians as a nation virtually ignored the 33rd anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge Thursday, preferring to celebrate Khmer New Year. The Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh April 17, 1975, almost immediately emptying the city to begin a brutal four-year reign that would leave up to 2 million dead.

It was the same determined national amnesia that surrounded Tuesday's 10th anniversary of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's death, and faith in the tribunal set up to try surviving leaders of the former regime is wavering.

Prime Minister Hun Sen had already urged people to celebrate the New Year and focus on the present, in a time of booming economy.

Even the former Khmer Rouge have reluctantly given up commemorating the day in former strongholds in the remote north and north-west such as Anlong Veng and Pailin.

"We would celebrate it if we could, but the government has forbidden it," said My Mak, deputy governor of Pailin and now a member of the ruling Cambodian People's Party.

"We don't celebrate what happened afterwards, but on that day we believed we had liberated the country, and it was everything we had been fighting for," he said in a recent interview. "It was the best day of my life."

Mak served as a radio operator at the capital's airport during the regime's reign, which ended in January 1979, watching his colleagues disappear one by one and wondering when he would be next.

For Bunna, 44, it was the beginning of four years of hell. He celebrates Pchum Ben - the festival of the dead - instead.

He lost his mother in a Khmer Rouge rocket attack in 1973, and then watched his brother and sister slowly starve to death, forced to walk nearly 200 kilometres to labour in rural rice fields.

His father was executed in 1978 by troops loyal to Khmer Rouge military commander Ta Mok, leaving him alone in the world. Ta Mok died in hospital in 2006.

"The Khmer Rouge bombed Phnom Penh all New Year and marched in the day New Year ended. I can't forget."

A call by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for the joint UN-Cambodian court to try former leaders to hurry forward also makes Bunna and many other Cambodians bitter.

Five defendants have been jailed awaiting trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes, but Bunna notes that many of the same five were being feted by the UN and recognized as Cambodia's true government during the Cold War in the 1980's.

Political expedience meant the world refused to recognize the Vietnamese-backed government that toppled the Khmer Rouge. Bunna said the resulting international sanctions left millions starving.

The court has garnered as many headlines over corruption and kickback allegations and budget woes as it has for its defendants.

"Buddhists believe justice is more than one lifetime long," Bunna said. "I want to get on with living this life."

SRP to commemorate the victims of the mass killings under the KR regime following their 17 April 1975 takeover

SRP commemoration on 17 April 2007 (Photo: AFP)

Phnom Penh, 15 April 2008

INVITATION TO THE CEREMONY TO COMMEMORATE
THE 33rd ANNIVERSARY OF THE KHMER ROUGE TAKEOVER

The Sam Rainsy Party invites all Cambodian citizens and any interested persons to attend a SRP-organized ceremony to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover and the beginning of the mass killings perpetrated under Pol Pot.

The ceremony to pay respect to the memory of the victims and to ask for a faster prosecution of all the former Khmer Rouge surviving leaders will take place at the Choeung Ek genocidal Memorial on the outskirts of Phnom Penh on Thursday, 17 April 2008 at 08:00 am.

SRP Members of Parliament