The following year, the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Khieu by beating, undressing and photographing him in public — as Shawcross notes, " not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget.

However, despite his open public disagreements with Sihanouk-he once accused Sihanouk of using scarce electric power to light his own street, and was the target of Sihanouk's most furious personal tirades-he approved of the Sangkum policies of nationalisation implemented after 1964.

The Khmer Republic's leadership was plagued by disunity among its three principal figures: Lon Nol, Sihanouk's cousin Sirik Matak, and National Assembly leader In Tam.

* Khmer Bleu, Sihanouk's domestic opponents on the right, whom he so named to distinguish them from his domestic opponents on the left, the ' Khmer Rouge '

The Khmer Republic ( 1970 – 1975 ) was founded in order to do away with Cambodia's widespread corruption and to restore Cambodia's sovereignty in its eastern regions, occupied by Vietnamese communist insurgents as a result of Sihanouk's " neutrality " policies.

Predominantly animist peoples, with few ties to the Buddhist culture of the lowland Khmers, the Khmer Loeu had resented Sihanouk's attempts to " civilise " them.

Funcinpec had the benefit of traditional peasant Khmer loyalty to the crown and Sihanouk's widespread popularity in the countryside.

A civil war raged during the 1980s opposing the government's Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Armed Forces against the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, a government in exile composed of three Cambodian political factions: Prince Norodom Sihanouk's Funcinpec party, the Party of Democratic Kampuchea ( often referred to as the Khmer Rouge ) and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front ( KPNLF ).

In the September election, Sihanouk's new party decisively defeated the Democrats, the Khmer Independence Party of Son Ngoc Thanh, and the leftist Pracheachon Party, winning 83 % of the vote and all of the seats in the National Assembly.

The Khmer Rouge, now realising that Sihanouk's status as a figurehead would help their cause internationally, asked Sihanouk to plead the case of Democratic Kampuchea at the United Nations.

The princes who headed the party-Ranariddh, Sihanouk's half-brother Norodom Sirivudh, and Sisowath Sirirath ( the son of Sirik Matak, who deposed Sihanouk in the 1970 coup )-disagreed violently over corruption, Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge, land reform, and other issues.

The Khmer Rouge's forces were soon to be swelled by thousands of new recruits, attracted in part by Sihanouk's name.

Sihanouk, then acting as Prime Minister, placed him in charge of defence in 1952, formally appointing him Minister of Defence in the interim government set up after independence in 1954 ; Sihanouk's Sangkum movement absorbed the Khmer Renovation Party prior to the Sangkum victory in the 1955 elections.

The character of the new regime was right-wing and nationalist ; most significantly, it ended Sihanouk's period of covert cooperation with the North Vietnamese regime and the Viet Cong, and aligned Cambodia with South Vietnam in the ongoing Second Indochina War.

Meanwhile, the mutineers had turned the ship over to Prince Norodom Sihanouk's government, declared themselves anti-war revolutionaries, and were granted asylum.

Despite these actions, which directly contradicted Sihanouk's policy of partial tolerance of North Vietnamese activity, it appears that Lon Nol himself had great personal reluctance to depose the Head of State: he initially may merely have wanted Sihanouk to apply more pressure to the North Vietnamese.

The relatively small royal army, which at the time of the coup had around 35, 000 troops ( in accordance with Sihanouk's stated policy of neutrality ), was greatly expanded.

Almost from the start, the Republic was plagued by many of the same political divisions and infighting that had marked Sihanouk's regime ; primary among these was a damaging power struggle between Lon Nol and Sirik Matak.

Voters were intimidated by a voting system involving colored pieces of paper that had to be put into a box in full view of Sihanouk's political figures, soldiers and local police.

A third development was Sihanouk's own belief that he had been targeted by United States intelligence agencies for replacement by a more pro-Western leader.

During the early-to-mid-1960s, Prince Norodom Sihanouk's leftist policies had protected his nation from the turmoil that engulfed Laos and South Vietnam.

Neither the People's Republic of China ( PRC ) nor North Vietnam disputed Sihanouk's claim to represent " progressive " political policies and the leadership of the prince's domestic leftist opposition, the Pracheachon Party, had been integrated into the government.

Sihanouk's suspicions seem to have rooted in fact: Prom Thos, one of Lon Nol's ministers, later told the historian Ben Kiernan that in around March 1969 Sirik Matak had argued that Sihanouk should be assassinated, Lon Nol rejecting the plan as " criminal insanity ".

Sam Rainsy's father, Sam Sary had served as a minister in the Education, planning and finance portfolios before becoming a Deputy Prime Minister in Sihanouk's government in the 1950s.

In 1964, Yuon was also to publish a revision of his 1956 book The Co-Operative Question, which now formally proposed an alliance between socialists and Sihanouk's regime.

However members of the government and army, who resented Sihanouk's ruling style as well as his tilt away from the United States, did have a motivation to overthrow him.

In the meantime, disagreements between Sihanouk and In Tam led to the latter's removal, and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, one of Sihanouk's sons, took control of the ANS.

Following the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia, Sihanouk's son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, served as co-prime minister with Hun Sen from 1993 to 1997, and led the party until October 2006 ; current leader Keo Puth Rasmey succeeded Ranariddh.

Despite Sihanouk's allegations, there is no evidence that this coup was planned by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

On October 9, Sihanouk was condemned to death in absentia by a military court ; his mother, Queen Kossamak-the symbolic representative of the monarchy under Sihanouk's regime-was placed under house arrest, and his wife Monique was sentenced to life imprisonment.

After the event was over, the participants were dragged from their cars and beaten with rifle butts by Sihanouk's police and army.

Within days, l ' Observateur and two other papers were closed by the government, fifty people were detained indefinitely for questioning and the political director of Sihanouk's own newspaper was fired for an editorial objecting to heavy-handed political intimidation.

These developments, magnified by Sihanouk's abiding suspicions, eventually undermined Phnom Penh's relations with Washington.

He was eventually forced to resign after losing a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly ; he was considered to have committed lèse majesté by not following Sihanouk's demands closely enough.

At the time, he was widely rumoured to have been murdered by Sihanouk's security forces.

On March 12, 1970, while Sihanouk was on a trip abroad, Sirik Matak canceled Sihanouk's trade agreements and Lon Nol demanded that all North Vietnamese and NLF troops leave Cambodia by dawn on March 15 ( the deadline passed without any response from the Vietnamese ).

Kang's backing of Pol Pot was an effort to back his own cause within the Chinese Communist Party, as his touting of Pol Pot as the true voice of the Cambodian revolution was in large part an attack on the Chinese Foreign Ministry, whose pragmatic support for Prince Sihanouk's regime was thereby presented as reactionary.

Prince Sihanouk's powers of prognostication some day may be confirmed but history is not likely to praise the courage of his convictions.

Sihanouk's " royal crusade for independence " resulted in grudging French acquiescence to his demands for a transfer of sovereignty.

Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's political organization, Sangkum.

* Kingdom of Cambodia ( Cambodia, March – August 1945 ) – King Norodom Sihanouk's regime with Son Ngoc Thanh as Prime Minister after proclaiming independence from France.

However, events rapidly developed far beyond the original plan, and with the encouragement of Sirik Matak – who wished to see Sihanouk deposed as Head of State – Lon Nol was ultimately to engineer Sihanouk's removal.

Two suitcases were delivered to the Sihanouk's palace, one addressed to the head of state, and the other to Prince Vakrivan, his head of protocol.

Sihanouk's package contained a bomb, but the other did not ; however, Vakrivan opened both on behalf of the monarch and was killed instantly, as was a servant.

The explosion happened adjacent to a room in the palace where Sihanouk's parents were present.

The main causes of the coup were Norodom Sihanouk's toleration of North Vietnamese activity within Cambodia's borders, allowing heavily armed Vietnamese Communist outfits de facto control over vast areas of eastern Cambodia.

Another important factor was the dire state of the Cambodian economy, an indirect result of Sihanouk's policies of pursuing neutrality through virulent anti-Americanism.

Sihanouk's domination of political life during the 1950s and 60s meant that there were few confident or experienced Cambodian politicians.

Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's Sangkum.

Khieu Samphan was the only person to serve in this office, which he assumed after Sihanouk's resignation.