Cambodia history khmer rouge

Members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

This article is about the regime in general. For the political party of the Khmer Rouge regime, see Communist Party of Kampuchea.

For nation of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime, see Democratic Kampuchea.

The Khmer Rouge^[a] is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the Democratic Kampuchea through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

The name was coined in the 1960s by Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after the 1970 Cambodian coup d'état.^[16]

The Kampuchea Revolutionary Army was slowly built up in the forests of eastern Cambodia during the late 1960s, supported by the People's Army of Vietnam, the Viet Cong, the Pathet Lao, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).^{[17][18][19][20]} Although it originally fough