Word: khieu
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ideological guru of the Khmer Rouge was Cambodia's former head of state, Khieu Samphan. While a graduate student in France during the 1950s, he argued in a doctoral dissertation that a Communist-run Cambodia should "withdraw from the world economy and restructure the local economy on a self-centered basis" in order to purge the country of "decadent colonial influences." With unspeakable brutality, this deceptively bland program was imposed on "Democratic Kampuchea" (as that country was renamed) by the government of Premier Pol Pot after the Khmer Rouge took power. Phnom-Penh, once a placid, luxury-loving city...
...additional provincial cities. So grave was the threat to Phnom-Penh even then that Premier Pol Pot, 53, who has ruled Cambodia since the Communists came to power in 1975, was said to be preparing a speedy escape to China with his chief comrades. Desperate, Cambodian Head of State Khieu Samphan appealed by radio to "all friends, far and near, to give aid and support of all kinds and forms...
...just that. What matter that hundreds of thousands died as the cities were depopulated? It apparently meant little, if anything, to Premier Pol Pot and his shadowy colleagues on the politburo of Democratic Kampuchea, as they now call Cambodia. When asked about the figure of 1 million deaths, President Khieu Samphan replied: "It's incredible how concerned you Westerners are about war criminals." Radio Phnom Penh even dared to boast of this atrocity in the name of collectivism: "More than 2,000 years of Cambodian history have virtually ended...
...When they no longer need me, they will spit me out like a cherry pit," Prince Norodom Sihanouk once said about Cambodia's new Khmer Rouge rulers. Last week the prince's pithy prediction came true. In a radio broadcast, Vice Premier Khieu Samphan, the iron-fisted guerrilla who has ruled the country since the Communist takeover a year ago, announced that Sihanouk had resigned as chief of state, even though he had been reconfirmed in that post by the National Assembly on March 20. Samphan said that the prince, heir to a long line of Khmer royalty...
...executed many of the Khmer rebels. But last week the past was officially forgotten-at least temporarily. After more than five years of exile in China, Sihanouk and his wife, Princess Monique, made a triumphal return to Phnom-Penh. Traveling from Peking with the royal family was Deputy Premier Khieu Samphan, who is believed to be the real power in the new Cambodian regime...