Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

==== 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}}