Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

=== Origins ===
==== Early history ====
The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into six phases, namely the emergence before [[World War II]] of the [[Indochinese Communist Party]] (ICP), whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese; the 10-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) [[Cambodian People's Party|People's Revolutionary Party]] (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices; the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when Saloth Sar gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967–1968 to the fall of the Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea regime from April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when [[Hanoi]] effectively assumed control over Cambodia's government and communist party.<ref name="Morris">{{cite news|url=http://editorials.cambodia.org/2007/04/vietnam-and-cambodian-communism.html|publisher=Cambodian Information Center, Source: The Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association|first=Stephen J.|last=Morris|title=Vietnam and Cambodian Communism|date=20 April 2007|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=8 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190808180119/http://editorials.cambodia.org/2007/04/vietnam-and-cambodian-communism.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1930, [[Ho Chi Minh]] founded the Communist Party of Vietnam by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in northern, central and southern Vietnam during the late 1920s. The party was renamed the Indochinese Communist Party, ostensibly so it could include revolutionaries from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, all of the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the Indochinese communist movement as well as their influence on developments within Cambodia was negligible.<ref name="Tyner">{{cite book|title=The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmaking of Space|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gfac3N6GOYAC|first=James A.|last=Tyner|publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.|year=2008|isbn=978-0754670964|pages=44, 51, 54–55, 60–62, 68|access-date=2 June 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183134/https://books.google.com/books?id=Gfac3N6GOYAC|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Viet Minh]] units occasionally made forays into Cambodian bases during their war against the French and in conjunction with the leftist government that ruled Thailand until 1947. The Viet Minh encouraged the formation of armed, left-wing [[Khmer Issarak]] bands. On 17 April 1950, the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the [[United Issarak Front]] was established. Its leader was [[Son Ngoc Minh]], and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups aided by the Viet Minh occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952, and on the eve of the [[1954 Geneva Conference|Geneva Conference]] in 1954, they controlled as much as one half of the country.<ref name="Chandler 2007" />{{rp|180–1}} In 1951, the ICP was reorganized into three national units, namely the [[Vietnam Workers' Party]], the [[Lao Issara]], and the Kampuchean or Khmer People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP). According to a document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have been either [[Khmer Krom]] or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

According to Democratic Kampuchea's perspective of party history, the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside, and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a Long March into [[North Vietnam]], where they remained in exile.<ref name="Tyner" /> In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature.<ref name="Doyle">{{cite book|title=Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GNC-XxHxIdYC&q=cambodia+September+1955+election+Pracheachon+Party&pg=PA31|last1=Doyle|first1=Michael W.|last2=Johnston|first2=Ian|last3=Orr|first3=Robert C.|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1997|chapter=Politics in Cambodia|page=31|isbn=9780521588379|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183136/https://books.google.com/books?id=GNC-XxHxIdYC&q=cambodia+September+1955+election+Pracheachon+Party&pg=PA31#v=snippet&q=cambodia%20September%201955%20election%20Pracheachon%20Party&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> Members of the [[Pracheachon]] were subject to harassment and arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's political organization, [[Sangkum]]. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labelled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and their associates.<ref name="Morris" />

During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth) and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line endorsed by North Vietnam recognized that Sihanouk by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/9610196/Norodom-Sihanouk.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/9610196/Norodom-Sihanouk.html |archive-date=11 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Norodom Sihanouk Obituary|publisher=Telegraph Media Group Limited|work=The Telegraph|date=15 October 2012|access-date=30 July 2019}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Advocates of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right-wing and to adopt leftist policies. The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the "[[Feudalism|feudalist]]" Sihanouk.<ref name="Yimsut">{{cite book|title=Facing the Khmer Rouge: A Cambodian Journey|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jSdYz91-sJYC&q=khmer+rouge+struggle+to+overthrow+feudalist+Sihanouk&pg=PR11|first=Ronnie|last=Yimsut|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2011|chapter=Forward|page=forward xi|isbn=9780813552309|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183137/https://books.google.com/books?id=jSdYz91-sJYC&q=khmer+rouge+struggle+to+overthrow+feudalist+Sihanouk&pg=PR11#v=snippet&q=khmer%20rouge%20struggle%20to%20overthrow%20feudalist%20Sihanouk&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

==== Paris student group ====
During the 1950s, Khmer students in [[Paris]] organized their own communist movement which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975 and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.<ref name="Cambodiatribunal">{{cite web|url=http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/|title=Khmer Rouge History|last=Dy|first=Khamboly|publisher=Cambodia Tribunal Monitor|date=2013|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=21 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321195205/http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/history/cambodian-history/khmer-rouge-history/|url-status=live}}</ref> Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for fax machines and also studied civil engineering). Described by one source as a "determined, rather plodding organizer", Pol Pot failed to obtain a degree, but according to [[Society of Jesus|Jesuit]] priest Father François Ponchaud he acquired a taste for the classics of [[French literature]] as well as an interest in the writings of Karl Marx.<ref name="Bartrop">{{cite book|title=A Biographical Encyclopedia of Contemporary Genocide: Portraits of Evil and Good|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=55NPpA6EvyMC&q=Pol+Pot+%C3%89cole+FRan%C3%A7aise+d%27%C3%89lectronique+et+d%27Informatique&pg=PT256|first=Paul R.|last=Bartrop|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2012|isbn=978-0313386794|chapter=on Pol Pot|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183138/https://books.google.com/books?id=55NPpA6EvyMC&q=Pol+Pot+%C3%89cole+FRan%C3%A7aise+d%27%C3%89lectronique+et+d%27Informatique&pg=PT256|url-status=live}}</ref>

Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary, a Chinese-Khmer from South Vietnam. He attended the elite [[Lycée Sisowath]] in [[Phnom Penh]] before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Paris Institute of Political Science (more widely known as [[Sciences Po]]) in France. Khieu Samphan specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bartrop |first=Paul R. |title=A biographical encyclopedia of contemporary genocide portraits of evil and good|year=2012|publisher=Abc-Clio |isbn=978-1-78539-448-5|oclc=915350384}}</ref> [[Hou Yuon]] studied economics and law; Son Sen studied education and literature; and [[Hu Nim]] studied law.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://d.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/Confessions/Confessions_Hu_Nim.htm|title=Confession of Hu Nim|translator=Eng Kok Thay|work=The Confession of Hu Nim, aka Phoas (Arrested: April 10, 1977; Executed: July 6, 1977)|publisher=Documentation Center of Cambodia|date=18 April 1975|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=3 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203014412/http://www.d.dccam.org/Archives/Documents/Confessions/Confessions_Hu_Nim.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> Two members of the group, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned doctorates from the [[University of Paris]] while Hu Nim obtained his degree from the [[Royal University of Phnom Penh|University of Phnom Penh]] in 1965. Most came from landowner or civil servant families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal family as an older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of King [[Sisowath Monivong|Monivong]]. Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married [[Khieu Ponnary]] and Khieu Thirith, also known as [[Ieng Thirith]], purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/world/khieu-ponnary-83-first-wife-of-pol-pot-cambodian-despot.html|title=Khieu Ponnary, 83, First Wife Of Pol Pot, Cambodian Despot|last=Becker|first=Elizabeth|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=3 July 2003|access-date=30 July 2019|archive-date=6 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191206145612/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/03/world/khieu-ponnary-83-first-wife-of-pol-pot-cambodian-despot.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party. In 1951, the two men went to [[East Berlin]] to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (but subsequently judged them to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas.<ref name="Frey">{{cite book|title=Genocide and International Justice|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m569AfPJkB4C&q=Cercle+Marxiste+Khmer+Students+Association&pg=PA267|first=Rebecca Joyce|last=Frey|publisher=Infobase Publishing|year=2009|isbn=978-0816073108|pages=266–267|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183140/https://books.google.com/books?id=m569AfPJkB4C&q=Cercle+Marxiste+Khmer+Students+Association&pg=PA267#v=snippet&q=Cercle%20Marxiste%20Khmer%20Students%20Association&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

Inside the KSA and its successor organizations, there was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste (Marxist circle). The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952, Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy". A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA, but Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish in 1956 a new group, the Khmer Students Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste.<ref name="Frey" />

The doctoral dissertations which were written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that would later become the cornerstones of the policy that was adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, ''The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization'', which challenged the conventional view that [[urbanization]] and [[Industrialisation|industrialization]] are necessary precursors of development.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|63}} The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, ''Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development'', was that the country had to become self-reliant and end its economic dependency on the [[Developed country|developed world]]. In its general contours, Samphan's work reflected the influence of a branch of the [[dependency theory]] school which blamed lack of development in the [[Third World]] on the economic domination of the industrialized nations.<ref name="Becker 1998" />{{rp|63}}