Khmer New Year, celebrated from 13 to 15 April, is usually a time of joy. But in 1975, it marked the beginning of one of the darkest chapters in Cambodia’s history. That year’s celebration coincided with the end of the Year of the Tiger and the start of the supposedly auspicious Year of the Rabbit — though nothing auspicious followed.
On 17 April 1975, just days after New Year festivities, the Khmer Rouge (KR) captured Phnom Penh.
What followed was a swift and brutal demonstration of the regime’s genocidal intent. Members of the Khmer military were rounded up and executed at the Olympic Stadium. Prime Minister Long Boret was taken away in a garbage truck to the Cité Sportif, where he was shot along with others. These were among the first public acts of terror by the Khmer Rouge, signalling the cruelty of the new rulers.
Embassies had evacuated most staff already. There were a number of French and other international people in the French Embassy, as well as Khmer staff and some Khmer married to French nationals. These people were taken in trucks to the Thai border.
The Khmer Rouge ordered everyone to leave Phnom Penh, supposedly based on a fear, possibly ‘fake news’, that the US would bomb the city. The US had extensively bombed Cambodia for some years, targeting North Vietnamese supply routes.
The nature of the new regime was first disclosed by French Priest François Ponchaud in his 1977 Book Cambodige annee zero (Cambodia: Year Zero). Fr Ponchaud was in the French Embassy at the time of the fall of Phnom Penh, and was part of the group of mainly French ex-pats expelled to Thailand. His book spoke of the horror of the genocide he partially witnessed, and also heard from many Khmer refugees in Thailand.
Fr Ponchaud wrote about the initial end of the war being a ‘relief’ to people in Phnom Penh. ‘no more rockets to fear. No more compulsory military service. No more of this rotten and loathed regime’. This soon changed with the forced evacuations, even of the sick from hospitals. An estimated 15,000–20,000 were forced from hospitals. Fr Ponchaud wrote: ‘Thousands of sick and wounded were abandoning the city. The strongest dragged themselves pitifully along, others were carried by friends, some lying on beds pushed by their families, with their plasma and IV drips bumping alongside.’
Fifty years after the fall of Phnom Penh, there are still Cambodians