Cambodia: The Unbearable Memory of the Khmer Rouge

Each year, as April 17 draws close, a letter from Prince Sirik Matak to then-U.S. Ambassador John Gunther Dean is habitually shared by Cambodians on social media.

Drafted five days before the fall of Phnom Penh to Khmer Rouge forces, the former prime minister of the doomed Khmer Republic declined the ambassador’s offer of political asylum in the United States. His words have since become famous:

“As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky. But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.”

The letter continues to resonate on multiple levels. Perhaps because it takes the Khmer Rouge period out of the almost unintelligible national frame of “Khmers killed Khmers” and places it in its true Cold War context. Perhaps also because it hints at the possibility of another scenario, still imaginable merely days before the Khmer Rouge takeover was a fact.

“We’d accepted responsibility for Cambodia and then walked out without fulfilling our promise,” Dean said in a 2015 interview to mark the 40th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh. “That’s the worst thing a country can do. And I cried because I knew what was going to happen.”

Sirik Matak was executed by the Khmer Rouge, likely on April 21.

This year, on the 50th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge victory, his letter has a particular resonance. Many Cambodians see a parallel betrayal unfolding in the U.S. backstabbing of Ukraine – it was widely shared following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s February 28 exchange with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

There are few conversations in Cambodia that do not at some point turn to the three years, eight months, and 20 days under Khmer Rouge rule that began on April 17, 1975.

On that day, the revolutionaries seized Phnom Penh after having encircled it. City dwellers were forced to evacuate by foot, pouring out of the capital with nothing more than the clothes on their bodies. Many had been told they would be able to return a few days later. Instead, the entire population was mobilized toward building a communist utopia through hard agrarian labor.

An estimated 1.7 to 2 million people lost their lives in Democratic Kampuchea (DK).

In January 1979, the Khmer Rouge were deposed by the National Salvation Front, led by former Khmer Rouge fighters with Vietnamese backing. They went on to found the socialist People’s Republic of Kampuchea and have remained in power ever since, through the transformation in the early 1990s to a formally multiparty democratic system with the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) as their party vehicle.

Under the “win-win policy,” defecting former Khmer Rouge were integrated into national society from the 1990s onward.

There is no “community” of revolutionaries anymore, and no shared interpretation of the significance of April 17. But there is solidarity and mutual understanding between former revolutionaries and their families of the unfathomable tragedy that April 17 unleashed in their lives.

Some of these networks stretch across the diasporas in France, the United States, and Canada. In Cambodia along the border with Thailand, some areas are dominated by former Khmer Rouge families.

A decade ago, I spent time there, guided at first by a dear friend who himself was a prime example of the winding paths taken by revolutionaries post-DK. He had stayed with the Khmer Rouge under Ieng Sary until 1991 – then returned to Cambodia proper, and years later started working for the (now recently terminated) Khmer Rouge Tribunal (officially the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, ECCC) as a translator. Assisting my novice enquiries into the thinking of former revolutionaries on the revolution and nationalism likely gave him yet another welcome opportunity to grapple with a not-so-distant past.

Bringing me to the houses of former revolutionaries, including Meas Muth (Case 003, which hovered over the ECCC for 13 years before being terminated), my friend would then drive off, leaving me on my own to converse. There were few commonalities to these conversations ⎯ except for the overall lack of nostalgic reference to the revolution, as well as a belief that it had faltered because of Vietnamese infiltration.

Even those who remained faithful to a revolutionary ideal could not take any pride in the victory of April 17.

One enigmatic exception came in July 2013, at Freedom Park in Phnom Penh. At the time, I was standing in front of a sea of Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) supporters, who were ready to take on the long-ruling CPP in the upcoming elections.

“They remind me of us – but they are more colorful,” a former Khmer Rouge diplomat told me with a tinge of pride in his voice. He invoked the original impulse of standing against oppressive powers. The colors, for him, referred to how unlike the death-producing discipline of the Khmer Rouge, manifested in their uniform black clothing, the young CNRP supporters radiated free spirit and individual expression.

The simplicity of his comment hinted at the sense of a just struggle aspired to by hopeful intellectuals before they and their loved ones were churned into the Khmer Rouge death machinery.

But that finespun comparison was distorted. Following the real challenge that the CNRP went on to deliver against the ruling party in the 2013 elections, the CPP alleged a “color revolution,” simply likening the opposition supporters to the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries past. Associating CNRP co-founder Sam Rainsy’s political agenda with that of the Khmer Rouge had been a long-standing CPP trope to scare voters away from the opposition, invoked also during the 2013 election campaign.

Alleging a U.S.-backed conspiracy to topple the CPP government, opposition leader Kem Sokha was arrested in September 2017, and two months later, the CNRP was dissolved by a Supreme Court order. Kem Sokha was later convicted of treason and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

In the official memorialization of Democratic Kampuchea, April 17 was never singled out for commemorating the horrors of the regime. Likely because of the shared revolutionary origins, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea instead designated May 20, the day when mass killings were said to have started, as “The National Day of Hatred Against the Genocidal Pol Pot-Ieng Sary-Khieu Samphan clique and the Sihanouk-Son Sann Reactionary Groups.”

The awkward name is an indication that anger was to be channeled toward a small genocidal clique, rather than the Khmer Rouge movement as a whole.

Throughout the next two decades, May 20  commanded mass attendance, and included fiery speeches by government officials as well as the burning of paper effigies of Pol Pot. Up to the present, the government continues to organize events across the country on the day, which has included reenactments of violence at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center south of Phnom Penh.

Through the ECCC, which would die with a whimper in 2022, civil parties requested to rename the day as the National Day of Remembrance and make it an annual public holiday. According to media reports, victims preferred for the holiday to fall on April 17, the real start of their trauma, but the Victims Support Section at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal agreed to the government’s preference to maintain May 20.

The day was renamed the National Day of Remembrance and declared a public holiday in 2018 – but after merely a year, it was canceled from the list of public holidays.

April 17 can perhaps never be fully reappropriated because of the strong sense of shame and pain that surrounds it. The sense of collective culpability for having believed in the Khmer Rouge extends beyond the circles of revolutionaries. Hungry for peace, Phnom Penh gave in to the Khmer Rouge without putting up a fight. Its residents welcomed the cadres into the city, hopeful that a new chapter had opened, putting an end to the bloodshed of civil war. The memory of that innocent optimism is forever attached to the day.

Despite the existential difficulty in relating to April 17, references to Khmer Rouge history have been mobilized toward radical changes in the country’s politics over the last decade. The 2017 dissolution of the CNRP was argued by means of likening the so-called “color revolutionaries” to the Khmer Rouge. The dissolution left the CPP without a real electoral challenger in the 2018 elections, for the first time since the 1993 reintroduction of multiparty elections. The CPP consequently swept 125 out of 125 National Assembly seats.

The government following the 2018 elections was the last one headed by Hun Sen – by then, one of the longest-serving prime ministers in the world – and his generation of revolutionary fighters (neak tosour). They oversaw a large-scale project of defining their legacy as peacemakers, to ensure that they would go down in history as such. In equal measure, this was meant to smooth the upcoming broad-scale generational transition of power to their children – which ultimately took place in 2023 – by informing the young generation of the perils of social unrest. This manifested in an unprecedented historiographical drive, which has mobilized academics, politicians, and members of the armed forces in a multitude of interconnected fact-finding missions to map out the events of the 1970s and ingrain them in the public consciousness.

Concurrently, there has been a shift in official discourse from a focus on expected gratitude to the CPP for liberation from the horrors of Democratic Kampuchea, to gratitude to the CPP for the joys of peace. In 2013, the CPP learned the hard lesson that liberation from the Khmer Rouge on January 7, 1979 was an underwhelming achievement in the eyes of young voters born decades later. In response, the CPP has constructed a new peace discourse, which contrasts through its unbridled positivity. The national conversation is dominated by a didactic project of explaining the value of today’s peace, a nearly all-encompassing notion that subsumes even everyday normality under its umbrella.

In none of these stories is April 17 paramount. The outgoing generation of revolutionary fighters tells Cambodia’s history in terms of war, peace, and development.

The start date of war and turmoil is typically set to the 1970 coup. The ousting of the royalist regime of Prince Sihanouk plunged the country into civil war and inaugured Lon Nol’s U.S.-backed Khmer Republic. Hun Sen and the other future CPP leaders claim to have heeded Sihanouk’s call to arms in response. In the now abundant accounts of Hun Sen’s personal story, the narrative emphasizes the struggle against the Khmer Republic, diluting his participation in the Khmer Rouge movement, and then really takes off again with what is framed as Hun Sen’s peacemaking mission from 1977 onward.

For example, in the recent book ”Hun Sen’s Thought and Vision for Cambodia,” authored by leading government intellectuals, a chapter on the birth of Hun Sen’s political thought covers the period up until 1973, whereas the next chapter picks up in 1977 with Hun Sen’s decision to escape to Vietnam and the foundation of an anti-Pol Pot revolutionary front.

Hun Sen himself did not experience April 17, 1975. The day before, he sustained the injury that eventually blinded his left eye, and it left him in a weeklong coma. Cambodians are used to hearing about Hun Sen’s life during the revolution through the prism of his budding love with his future wife Bun Rany, then a young medic working at a district hospital in Kampong Cham province. The hospital was near the battlefield, and soldiers under Hun Sen’s command would be sent there in case of injury or illness.

In his recent biography of Hun Sen, titled in English “Hun Sen: War and Peace in Cambodia and Southeast Asia,” prolific biographer Chhay Sophal included April 17, 1975 under the chapter ”Hun Sen’s Love Story.” He recounted how Hun Sen, because of his coma, was not able to come to Phnom Penh to celebrate the victory, and found out about the capital’s evacuation only after regaining consciousness.

Quoting Hun Sen, Chhay Sophal wrote:

“When I gained consciousness, my left eye was already blind while my right eye could only see about 10 meters away. I realized that Phnom Penh and the whole country had been liberated from the American followers. The worlds ‘love’ and ‘caring for you like the apple of my eyes’ could not be said anymore because I had already lost my eye. In only a few days, the world had changed and people had been evacuated from the cities. They embarked on a journey without food or water. I myself had become disabled.”

Despite being a revolutionary cadre himself, Hun Sen’s suffering at the time paralleled that of the stumbling evacuees of Phnom Penh.

The start date of Cambodia's journey toward peace is now set to July 20, 1977, centering on Hun Sen's personal role in securing that peace. On that day, Hun Sen left the Khmer Rouge base and crossed to Vietnam to build the resistance that would topple Democratic Kampuchea. In 2017, an order came from Hun Sen to find and develop the area where he crossed the border. A research team identified it as the village of Koh Thmar, also referred to as X16. The same year, the anniversary of Hun Sen’s crossing started being celebrated at the site.

In 2019, General Sao Sokha, commander of the Royal Gendarmerie, requested to take over the development and management of the site from the Ministry of National Defense, and construction started soon thereafter. A primary school has been built on the site of the former Khmer Rouge headquarters; the compound also houses the Koh Thmar Documentation Center. Opposite stands the Techo Museum of Koh Thmar, dedicated to Hun Sen.

Continuing down the road, a visitor finds several buildings and constructions that encircle a large field straddling the Vietnamese border. These include a June 20 pavilion; a pond named after Hun Sen and his long-time Minister of Defense Tea Banh, proclaiming their brotherhood steeped in arms; a small sanctuary to Preah Ang Kok Thlok, invoked as protector of Khmer territorial integrity; and a large hall gifted by Vietnam. In the middle of the field towers a stupa, with the remains of soldiers fallen in the liberation struggle against the Khmer Rouge.

The development of Koh Thmar is an outcome of the sustained focus on beefing up the narrative of peace in recent years. The timeline of peace now stretches from July 20, 1977 to December 2, 1978, when the National Salvation Front was formed, to January 7, 1979, with the liberation of Phnom Penh, and on to December 29, 1998, when top Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan defected to Hun Sen in his residence at Ta Khmao under the win-win policy. In 2024, December 29 was designated “Day of Peace in Cambodia” and declared a public holiday.

The peace trajectory as a whole is celebrated at Phnom Penh’s Win-Win Memorial, which at a comfortable distance from the bustle of the city offers a relaxing area of recreation to the capital’s residents. The win-win policy has been subject to intense historiographic and academic attention, even before but certainly after 2013.

In 2014, Hun Sen issued a directive to the Ministry of National Defense to build a structure to commemorate the ending of civil war in Cambodia. Inaugurated in 2018, the Win-Win Memorial is managed by a unit created for the purpose at the Ministry of National Defense. The monument is adorned by Angkorean-style bas-reliefs, which present the story of the termination of civil war in Cambodia. Smaller win-win monuments are being built in Anlong Veng, Pailin, and Koh Kong.

This is an alternative timeline to the one that made it into the English-language orthodoxy of an elusive international community: that of the United Nations-brokered peace, established by the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements (PPA). Particularly for the political opposition, the PPA became an important point of reference for holding the government accountable to the promise of free and fair elections. But the PPA failed to establish the peace it promised, as the Khmer Rouge returned to arms.

The historical fact that the war was ended domestically by the win-win policy is now increasingly framed as a national achievement in the face of international incapacity. The peacemaking mission of the neak tosour generation is stressed – so that by overlay their military identities and histories become associated with peace. As General Nem Sowath wrote about Hun Sen in his book “Civil War Termination and the Source of Total Peace in Cambodia”: “As a weapon-bearing commander of troops, he devoted his life to bringing peace for the Cambodian people.”

Peace is presented as Hun Sen’s supreme political goal, replacing and surpassing the political belief systems of Cambodia’s violent past in ways that are supra- or anti-ideological.

Today, the main political identity of the government is that of peace – seen in the ubiquitous slogan “thank you peace” (orkon santepheap).

Ministries started putting up banners with the slogan after 2018, followed by police stations, markets, schools and universities, and then private companies. To the banners were soon added chiseled marble inscriptions. Many banners explain that absolutely everything in the current society is attributable to this peace, through formulations such as “Thank you peace – because there is peace there is everything that we have today.” The Prime Minister’s Office is named the Peace Palace. In 2024, Tea Banh, now president of the Win-Win Monument Foundation, instructed all provinces to build 667-square-meter Techo Peace Parks (named after Hun Sen).

It is in this spirit that any political opposition is considered to oppose Cambodia’s current stable peacetime order.

The ambiguous formulation “thank you peace” neither specifies the object of gratitude, nor pins peace down in time. From the outset, therefore, the peace discourse has been bound up with tying military-defined peace to the quashing of the alleged color revolution and consequent annihilation of political party competition.

In January 2025, a draft law was approved by the government that punishes those who deny or condone atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge with one to five year prison terms and hefty fines. The law is to replace the 2013 Law Against Non-Recognition of the Crimes Committed During the Democratic Kampuchea Period, which punishes statements denying Khmer Rouge crimes by up to two years in prison.

Speaking at the ”Future of Cambodia Without Genocide” conference held on May 20-22, 2024 at the former courtroom hall of the ECCC – now renamed Yutti Techo Hall (standing for justice and Hun Sen) of the Army Headquarters of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces – Hun Sen charged that some politicians still did not recognize Khmer Rouge atrocities and wanted to start a color revolution. He proposed drafting a law to punish them and prevent the recurrence of genocide.

This raises the question of whether the law may be applied to those accused of sympathizing with a color revolution, a more nebulous ground, as indicated by the Khmer expression “painting someone with color” (leap por) – the act of charging that someone is a color revolutionary.

Just as April 17, 1975 was globally created by a supposedly Cold War that scorched the earth in Cambodia, its legacy is today inserted into global discourses of war and peace.

Fifty years later, Cambodia seeks to be a global model for peacemaking, through promoting the example of the win-win policy, mediation in regional conflict, and taking part in U.N. peacekeeping missions.

Networks of government intellectuals work with organizations and political parties abroad to this effect. In 2022, Hun Sen received the Universal Peace Federation’s Sunhak Peace Prize, the prize selection committee for which is chaired by former President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso. In November 2024, the “Phnom Penh Peace Charter” was adopted by the so-called International Parliament for Tolerance and Peace on Cambodia’s initiative. In a world under threat of large-scale conflict, Cambodia now seeks to insert itself into global peace conversations.

The unbearable memory of April 17 shows the propinquity of peace and conflict. What many bewildered and warworn Phnom Penh residents briefly hoped would be a day of peace can inform global musings on peace at a time when peace plans are flaunted that appear as blueprints for genocide, but its particular pain can never be redeemed or recovered.