The Khmer Rouge Army during the regime...

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After controlling Phnom Penh, the control of Battambang followed. On April 19, 1975, the KCP ordered more than three hundred former Lon Nol army officials, collected from Battambang, to put on their finest uniform and greet Prince Sikanouk near Kbal Damre. When the officials arrived there, they were actually in an area where all sides were machine-gunned. Only two of the three hundred officials survive. This event was actually Pol Pot’s plan to eliminate some of the people that he sees as a threat to him.

Though a small number of analysts argued that the killings of the soldiers, governments, and civilians in the “immediate aftermath” of April 17 victory was not a systematic extermination ordered by the party leadership. They said that it was actually the result of “unplanned, spontaneous exercises by a vengeful and war-crazed army of ignorant, teenaged peasant soldiers.” This analysis being correct or not, on May 28, orders were out to cease the actions. During the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s army had many “foes” such as the Vietnamese.

Source: Etcheson, Craig. The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984.

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