Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero

Date

1975

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Southeast Asia (Cambodia)

Era

Contemporary

Significance

The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, launching one of the twentieth century's deadliest social experiments.

Within seventy-two hours, Pol Pot's cadres emptied the capital at gunpoint, forcing roughly two million residents—including hospital patients pushed into the streets—into the countryside to build an agrarian utopia. The regime abolished money, markets, private property, schools, and religion, declaring the calendar reset to "Year Zero." Over the next three years and eight months, execution, forced labour, starvation, and disease killed an estimated 1.7 to 2 million people, about a quarter of Cambodia's population, in the killing fields. Intellectuals, ethnic minorities, monks, and anyone wearing glasses were targeted as enemies of the revolution. The genocide reshaped Southeast Asia, triggered a refugee exodus, and ended only when Vietnamese forces toppled the regime in 1979. It remains a defining case study in ideological mass violence and the failures of international response.

Empires active in 1975

• Soviet Union
  1922 CE – 1991 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Dutch Empire
  1581 CE – 1975 CE
• Yugoslavia
  1918 CE – 1992 CE

Related military & conflict events

• Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam
  30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
• Cuban Missile Crisis
  16–28 October 1962
• The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi
  7 April – 19 July 1994
• Korean War
  25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953
• The September 11 attacks
  11 September 2001
• Creation of Israel and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War
  14 May 1948 (war May 1948 – July 1949)

Further reading

A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads

The wider story

A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads

Anthony Reid

Authoritative yet readable history of the whole region, mainland and maritime.

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