Time line of the Cambodian genocide
1970 Sihanouk the King of Cambodia who was in exile in China, forms a guerrilla movement.
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1975 April 17 Pol Pots Khmer Rouge army seized control of Cambodia.
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1975 Khmer Rouge coin the phrase "year zero" Lon Nol is overthrown as the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot occupy Phnom Penh.
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1975 Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000 Chinese living in Cambodia perished. Khmer Rouge also forced Muslims to eat pork and shot those who refused.
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1976 January The Vietnamese take Phnom Pehn. Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge forces flee to the border region with Thailand.
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1998 April 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79
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1978 December 25 Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia looking to stop the Khmer Rouge border attacks.
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1979 January The Vietnamese take Phnom Penh. Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge forces flee to their border region with Thailand.
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DEath Toll and other facts
- By massacre forced marches, slave labor, starvation and disease, at least 1.5 million Cambodians were killed in the four years.Roughly 20% of the 8 million people total
- All foreigners expelled, embassies closed, and any foreign economic or medical assistance was refused.
- The use of foreign languages was banned
- Newspapers and television stations were shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone usage curtailed
- Money was forbidden
- All businesses were shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care eliminated, and parental authority revoked
- At Phnom Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into the countryside at gunpoint. As many as 20,000 died along the way.
Cambodia has been relatively based on the demographic transition model in stage one due to its high death rates and infant mortality rate and that leads to a higher birth rate.