The Khmer Rouge captures the capital Phnom Penh and Cambodian government forces surrender.

Prince Sihanouk, facing internal struggles of his own, due to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, did not want Cambodia to be involved in the conflict.

Sihanouk called these insurgents the Khmer Rouge, literally the " Red Khmer.

The relationship between the massive carpet bombing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians.

Some historians have cited the U. S. intervention and bombing campaign ( spanning 1965 – 1973 ) as a significant factor leading to increased support of the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry.

Craig Etcheson agreed that it was " untenable " to assert that US intervention caused the Khmer Rouge victory while acknowledging that it may have played a small role in boosting recruitment for the insurgents.

" When Congress, in the summer of 1973, legislated an end to U. S. military action in, over, or off the shores of Indochina, the only U. S. military activity then going on was air support of a friendly Cambodian government and army desperately defending their country against a North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge onslaught ... What destabilized Cambodia was North Vietnam's occupation of chunks of Cambodian territory from 1965 onwards for use as military bases from which to launch attacks on U. S. and South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam.

The Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia, launched at the request of the Khmer Rouge, has also been cited as a major factor in their eventual victory, including by Shawcross.

China " armed and trained " the Khmer Rouge during the civil war and continued to aid them years afterward.

Former businessmen and bureaucrats were hunted down and killed along with their entire families ; the Khmer Rouge feared that they held beliefs that could lead them to oppose their regime.

A few Khmer Rouge loyalists were even killed for failing to find enough ' counter-revolutionaries ' to execute.

Modern research has located 20, 000 mass graves from the Khmer Rouge era all over Cambodia.

Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces retreated rapidly to the Thai border.

The Khmer Rouge and the PRK began a costly struggle that played into the hands of the larger powers China, the United States and the Soviet Union.

Over 4 million Cambodians ( about 90 % of eligible voters ) participated in the May 1993 elections, although the Khmer Rouge or Party of Democratic Kampuchea ( PDK ), whose forces were never actually disarmed or demobilized, barred some people from participating.

On October 4, 2004, the Cambodian National Assembly ratified an agreement with the United Nations on the establishment of a tribunal to try senior leaders responsible for the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.

The tribunal started trials of senior Khmer Rouge leaders in 2008.

Cambodia is also recovering from the land mines which were used heavily by the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese ; it will take approximately a decade to remove most of the land mines from Cambodia.

* Khmer Rouge

* Selective Mortality During the Khmer Rouge Period in Cambodia

* Crossroads in Cambodia: The United Nation ´ s responsibility to withdrawn involvement from the establishment of a Cambodian Tribunal to prosecute the Khmer Rouge

By 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took power, it was estimated at 7. 3 million.

For instance, in 1976, the New York Times published 66 articles on alleged human rights abuses in Chile and only 4 on Cambodia, where the communist Khmer Rouge killed some 1. 5 million people of 7. 5 million people in the country.

This usually occurred when towns and villages were under Khmer Rouge control, and food was strictly rationed, leading to widespread starvation.

He also insisted on directing many of the Khmer National Armed Forces () operations personally.

The Phimai historical park () protects one of the most important Khmer temples of Thailand.

In some English texts, the plant or the fruit may be called by its local names, which include kugua (, pinyin: kǔguā, " bitter gourd "); parya ( Ilokano ), pare or pare ayam ( Javanese and Indonesian ), pavayka or kayppayka ( Malayalam: പ ാ വയ ് ക ് ക, കയ ് പ ് പക ് ക ), goya ( Okinawan: ゴーヤー ) or nigauri (; although the Okinawan word goya is also used in Japanese ), paakharkaai ( Tamil: ப ா கற ் க ா ய ்), hāgalakāyi ( Kannada: ಹ ಾ ಗಲಕ ಾ ಯ ಿ), ma ' reah ( Khmer: ម ្ រ ះ), kaakarakaya ( Telugu: క ా కరక ా య ), করল া ( korola ) ( Bengali ), ampalaya ( Tagalog ), muop dang () or kho qua ().

The Bayon () is a well-known and richly decorated Khmer temple at Angkor in Cambodia.

Ta Prohm () is the modern name of a temple at Angkor, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia, built in the Bayon style largely in the late 12th and early 13th centuries and originally called Rajavihara ( in Khmer: រ ា ជវ ិ ហ ា រ ).

Preah Ko () ( Khmer, The Sacred Bull ) was the first temple to be built in the ancient and now defunct city of Hariharalaya ( in the area that today is called Roluos ), some 15 kilometers south-east of the main group of temples at Angkor, Cambodia.

Bakong () is the first temple mountain of sandstone constructed by rulers of the Khmer empire at Angkor near modern Siem Reap in Cambodia.

Although Isan is not thought to have been a part of the Sukhothai kingdom due to the lack of clear evidence, the Khmer empire became weaker and retreated to its Cambodian heartlands, leaving Isan in the hands of fragmented muang () city-states or statelets.

Srey Snom () is the Cambodian term used to describe the Khmer " lady-in-waiting ".

Suryavarman II () ( posthumous name Paramavishnuloka ) was king of the Khmer Empire from 1113 AD to 1145-1150 AD and the builder of Angkor Wat, which he dedicated to the Supreme God Vishnu.

It is called a " Wihan " () in Thai, and a " Vihear " in Khmer.

Samlar machu () is the Khmer language term for a category of sour ( machu ) soups ( samlar, also samlor, salaw, or salor ) popularly known in English as simply " Cambodian sour soup ".

Cambodian New Year () or Chaul Chnam Thmey in the Khmer language, literally " Enter Year New ", is the name of the Cambodian holiday that celebrates the New Year.

According to Chuon Nath's renowned Khmer dictionary, the ' pinpeat ' is composed of the Sanskrit terms vina () referring to a chapey which was formerly used as the premiere instrument in this ensemble and vadya () referring to an ensemble of instruments.

Pre Rup () is a temple at Angkor, Cambodia, built as the state temple of Khmer king Rajendravarman and dedicated in 961 or early 962.

A weather-worn and now nearly illegible marker erected by Thailand's Fine Arts department () for a Khmer chedi by Wat Sing Tha, related that during the Thonburi Era, grandson Thao Kham Su () called the settlement Ban Sing Thong ().

The Songkran festival (, Khmer: សង ្ រ ្ ក ា ន ្ ត ; from the Sanskrit word, or literally " astrological passage ") is celebrated in Thailand as the traditional New Year's Day from 13 to 15 April.

The Gulf of Thailand (,, ), also known to Malays as Teluk Siam, literally meaning Gulf of Siam, and Boeung Tonle Siem in Khmer is a shallow arm of the South China Sea.

Angkor Thom (; literally: " Great City "), located in present day Cambodia, was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer empire.

For example, the Khmer word for 6, pram muoy, literally means five one.

The name of the dish translates literally as Cantonese-style noodles in Khmer, revealing its origin amongst the early Cantonese community in Cambodia who arrived between the late sixteenth and early twentieth centuries, and is essentially similar to the Thai dish rad na.

The Khmer and Laotian names, bok l ' hong and tam mak hoong, respectively, both literally mean " pounded papaya ".

For two weeks, ending April 30, 1978, the Khmer Rouge tore through Ba Chuc slicing to bits anything that breathed, literally ripping apart young children limb from limb and hacking the adults to pieces with machetes.

In the Vietnamese language, they are known as Khơ-me Crộm or Khơ-me dưới, which literally means " Khmer from below " (" below " referring to the lower areas of the Mekong Delta ).