Word: samphan
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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...
...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...
...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...
Whether or not the resignation was voluntary-and there were widespread doubts that it was-Sihanouk seemed to accept his fate. Shortly after Samphan's broadcast, the prince declared: "I request the representatives of the people to allow me to retire, while remaining to the end of my life an ardent supporter of the Khmer revolution, the democratic people and the government." There were subsequent but unverified reports that Sihanouk had left the country for China...