What happened at the fall of Phnom Penh?
On 17 April 1975, after a siege of more than three months, Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh, the capital of the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic, ending Cambodia's five-year civil war. Many residents first greeted them with relief. Within hours the new rulers ordered the entire population, about two million people, out of the city at gunpoint, emptying even the hospitals. It was the first act of a regime under which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died.1
Most cities that fall in war are occupied. Phnom Penh was emptied. On the day the Khmer Rouge marched in, they ordered its people into the countryside, and the evacuation of a capital of two million became the first act of one of the deadliest regimes of the twentieth century.2
A capital under siege
By 1975 the Khmer Rouge had overrun almost all of Cambodia except Phnom Penh. The city's lifeline was the Mekong, along which convoys brought supplies up from South Vietnam. By January the Khmer Rouge held both banks downstream of the capital; in late January only seven ships of a 16-ship convoy survived the 62-mile run, and in February the river was mined. The NHHC notes that the Khmer navy had by then lost a quarter of its 178 vessels and suffered 70 percent of its men killed or wounded. With the river cut, the city depended on an airlift into Pochentong airport.3
Around the capital, by Cambodgemag's count, some 40,000 Khmer Rouge fighters faced about 20,000 defenders. Refugees crowded into the city, and attempts to negotiate a peace through Beijing were rejected. On 1 April President Lon Nol left the country. On 10 April rocket and artillery fire closed the airport.4
Eagle Pull
On 12 April the United States carried out Operation Eagle Pull. Marine helicopters from the ships Okinawa and Hancock in the Gulf of Thailand landed on a football field near the U.S. embassy, and in a few hours flew out 289 people, among them Ambassador John Gunther Dean, his staff, the acting president Saukam Khoy and 36 journalists. Several senior Cambodian leaders refused the offer to leave, the NHHC records, a decision that proved fatal. Prince Sirik Matak was among those who stayed; he later took refuge in the French embassy.5
17 April
The Genocide Watch timeline, drawn from the Documentation Center of Cambodia, traces the last hours. At 1 a.m. two jeeps flying white flags left the city with a call for all forces to lay down their arms and talk. By 6 a.m. helicopters were flying west carrying those who could get out. At 6.15 the Khmer Rouge entered the city in black uniforms and tire sandals, carrying Chinese rifles, and marched toward Wat Phnom.6
Many residents cheered, hoping the war was over. The mood changed with the radio. A first broadcast invited officials of the old government to gather for peaceful negotiations; at 7.15 a second announced that victory had been won at gunpoint and that there would be no negotiation. At 7.30 loudspeakers on scooters told the population to prepare for a temporary evacuation, and by 7.45 soldiers were going through the alleys turning people out of their homes. Those who refused were shot.7
The emptying of the city
About two million people were driven out on foot. Hospitals were emptied, and even the gravely ill were pushed into the streets; thousands died on the crowded roads from exhaustion, hunger and violence. The stated reason was the danger of American bombing. The director of DC-Cam, Youk Chhang, notes that many historians now see it as a pretext for a wider purge and for terrorizing the population into obedience. Scholars still debate how the evacuation should be explained; a 2018 study in Genocide Studies and Prevention retraced the routes of six evacuees to examine Khmer Rouge practice in detail.8
Captured officials and soldiers were executed, many of them at the Olympic stadium. Some 600 foreigners and about 1,000 Cambodians crowded into the French embassy. On 18 April the Khmer Rouge demanded the surrender of the Cambodian dignitaries inside, and Sirik Matak and others were handed over; the foreigners were trucked to the Thai border at the end of the month.9
Year Zero
The Khmer Rouge declared 1975 Year Zero, the start of a new society to be built from nothing in the countryside. The regime lasted nearly four years. Estimates of its victims differ: DC-Cam's director gives about 1.7 million dead from execution, starvation and overwork, Cambodgemag more than two million, and the NHHC as many as three million, some 40 percent of the population. For Cambodians, 17 April 1975 remains, in Youk Chhang's words, one of the darkest days in the nation's history.10
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”; Genocide Watch, “April 17, 1975”; Samuel J. Cox, “H-090-1”. ↩
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”; Genocide Watch, “April 17, 1975”; Samuel J. Cox, “H-090-1”. ↩
- Samuel J. Cox, “H-090-1”; Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”. ↩
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”; Samuel J. Cox, “H-090-1”. ↩
- Samuel J. Cox, “H-090-1”; Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”. ↩
- Genocide Watch, “April 17, 1975”. ↩
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”; Genocide Watch, “April 17, 1975”. ↩
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”; Genocide Watch, “April 17, 1975”; Genocide Studies and Prevention 12, “The Evacuation of Phnom Penh during the Cambodian Genocide”. ↩
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”. ↩
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975”; Genocide Watch, “April 17, 1975”; Samuel J. Cox, “H-090-1”. ↩
Sources
- Cambodgemag, “17 April 1975: How Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge”
- Genocide Watch, with Youk Chhang, Documentation Center of Cambodia, “April 17, 1975: The Khmer Rouge enter Phnom Penh”
- Samuel J. Cox, Naval History and Heritage Command, H-Gram 090, “H-090-1: Operations Frequent Wind and Eagle Pull”
- Genocide Studies and Prevention 12, no. 3 (2018), University of South Florida, “The Evacuation of Phnom Penh during the Cambodian Genocide: Applying Spatial Video Geonarratives to the Study of Genocide”
