The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer: អគ្គលេខាធិការគណៈកម្មាធិការមជ្ឈិមបក្សកុម្មុយនីស្តកម្ពុជា) was the highest office in the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The General Secretary was elected at plenary sessions of the party's Central Committee, and chaired the Secretariat and Politburo. The office was abolished when the CPK dissolved in 1981, two years after being removed from power in the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.
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👉 General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Pol Pot
Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr; 25 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian politician, revolutionary, and dictator who ruled the communist state of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 until his overthrow in 1979. During his reign, his administration oversaw mass atrocities and he is widely believed to be one of the most brutal despots in modern world history. Ideologically a Maoist and 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. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5–2 million people died—approximately one-quarter of the country's pre-genocide population. In December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power. Within two weeks Vietnamese forces occupied most of the country, ending the genocide and establishing a new Cambodian government, with the Khmer Rouge restricted to the rural hinterlands in the western part of the country.
Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools. Arriving in Paris in October 1949 on an academic scholarship, he later joined the French Communist Party in 1951 while studying at École française de radioélectricité. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he involved himself in the Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Viet Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped formalise the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party, which was later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). To avoid state repression, in 1962 he relocated to a jungle encampment and in 1963 he became the CPK's leader. In 1968, he relaunched the war against Sihanouk's government. After Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk in a 1970 coup, Pol Pot's forces sided with the deposed leader against the new government, which was bolstered by the United States military. Aided by the Viet Cong militia and North Vietnamese troops, Khmer Rouge forces advanced and controlled all of Cambodia by 1975.
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea
- 👉 General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Pol Pot
- General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Cambodian genocide
- General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Democratic Kampuchea
- General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Nuon Chea
- General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Khieu Samphan
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Cambodian genocide
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the general secretaryship of Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia's population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were supported for many years by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), led by Chairman Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution. Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and marched Cambodians to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, torture, malnutrition, and disease were rampant. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Democratic Kampuchea
Democratic Kampuchea was the official name of the Cambodian state from 1976 to 1979, under the general secretaryship of Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), 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 (PAVN). The Khmer Rouge subsequently established a government-in-exile in neighbouring Thailand and retained Kampuchea's seat at the United Nations (UN). In response, Vietnamese-backed communists created a rival government, the People's Republic of Kampuchea, but failed to gain international recognition.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Nuon Chea
Nuon Chea (Khmer: នួន ជា; born Lao Kim Lorn; 7 July 1926 – 4 August 2019), also known as Long Bunruot (Khmer: ឡុង ប៊ុនរត្ន) or Rungloet Laodi (រុងឡឺត ឡាវឌី Thai: รุ่งเลิศ เหล่าดี), was a Cambodian politician and revolutionary who was the chief ideologist of the Khmer Rouge. He also briefly served as acting Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea. He was commonly known as "Brother Number Two" (Khmer: បងធំទី២), as he was second-in-command to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, General Secretary of the Party, during the Cambodian genocide of 1975–1979. In 2014, Nuon Chea received a life sentence for crimes against humanity, alongside another top-tier Khmer Rouge leader, Khieu Samphan, and a further trial convicted him of genocide in 2018. These life sentences were merged into a single life sentence by the Trial Chamber on 16 November 2018. He died while serving his sentence in 2019.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in the context of Khieu Samphan
Khieu Samphan (Khmer: ខៀវ សំផន; born 27 July 1931) is a Cambodian former politician, economist, and revolutionary who was Chairman of the State Presidium of Democratic Kampuchea from 1976 until 1979. As such, he served as Cambodia's head of state and was one of the most powerful officials in the Khmer Rouge movement, although Pol Pot remained the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. On 7 August 2014, along with other members of the regime, he was convicted and received a life sentence for crimes against humanity during the Cambodian genocide, and a further trial found him guilty of genocide in 2018.
Prior to joining the Khmer Rouge, he was a member of Norodom Sihanouk's Sangkum government. After the 1967 leftist rebellion, Sihanouk ordered the arrest of leftists including Samphan, who fled into hiding until the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. Samphan succeeded Pol Pot as leader of the Khmer Rouge in 1985, and served in this position until 1998.