Editing Khmer Rouge (section)

==== KPRP Second Congress ====
After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first, he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of [[Kampong Cham Province]]. After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee", where he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement.<ref name="Short">{{cite book|title=Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XW24koscGMkC&q=pol+pot+viet+minh&pg=PR11|first=Philip|last=Short|publisher=Macmillan|year=2007|chapter=Initiation to the Maquis|page=95|isbn=9781429900935|access-date=18 October 2020|archive-date=13 October 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231013183141/https://books.google.com/books?id=XW24koscGMkC&q=pol+pot+viet+minh&pg=PR11#v=snippet&q=pol%20pot%20viet%20minh&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>

His comrades Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing French-language publication, ''L'Observateur''. The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Samphan by beating, undressing and photographing him in public; as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget".<ref name="Shawcross 1979">{{cite book|last=Shawcross|first=William|title=Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and The Destruction of Cambodia|publisher=Cooper Square Press|year=1979|isbn=978-0815412243}}</ref>{{rp|92–100, 106–112}} Yet the experience did not prevent Samphan from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government.<ref name="Tyner" />

In late September 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention and considerable historical rewriting between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions.<ref name="Tyner" /> The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers' Party of Kampuchea (WPK). His ally [[Nuon Chea]], also known as Long Reth, became deputy general secretary, but Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Political Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the renamed party's hierarchy. The name change is significant. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. The pro-Vietnamese regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea implied in the 1980s that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second congress of the KPRP.<ref name="Tyner" />

On 20 July 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. At the WPK's second congress in February 1963, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Samouth's allies Nuon Chea and [[Keo Meas]] were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by [[Son Sen]] and [[Vorn Vet]]. From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from his Paris student days controlled the party centre, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.<ref name="Kiernan 2004" />{{rp|241}} In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in [[Ratanakiri Province]] in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of 34 leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country. Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police.<ref name="Frey" />