Khieu Samphan
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Khieu Samphan (born July 27, 1931) was the president of the state presidium of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) from 1976 until 1979. As such, he served as the country's head of state and was one of the most powerful officials in the Khmer Rouge movement, though Pol Pot was the group's true political leader and held the most extensive power.
A prominent member of the circle of leftist Khmer intellectuals studying in Paris in the 1950s, Khieu Samphan studied economics and politics there. His successful 1959 doctoral thesis, "Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development" advocated national self-reliance and generally sided with dependency theorists in blaming the wealthy, industrialized states for the poverty of the Third World. He was one of the founders of the Khmer Students' Association (KSA), out of which would grow the left-wing revolutionary movements that would so alter Cambodian history in the 1970s, most notably the Khmer Rouge. Once the KSA was shuttered by French authorities in 1956, he founded yet another student organization, the Khmer Students' Union. Khieu's links with fellow revolutionaries Pol Pot and Ieng Sary extended to the familial domain as well, for both men married members of his family.
Returning from Paris with his doctorate in 1959, Khieu held a faculty position at the University of Phnom Penh and started L'Observateur, a French-language leftist publication that was viewed with hostility by the government. His first important conflict with the anti-Communist Cambodian authorities came the following year, when L'Observateur was banned and Khieu was arrested, forced to undress, and photographed in public.
After the coup of 1970 overthrew the government of Prince Sihanouk, the Khmer Communists, including Khieu Samphan, joined forces with the now-deposed monarch in establishing an anti-government coalition known as the Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchéa (GRUNK). In this alliance with his former enemies, Khieu served as deputy prime minister, minister of defense, and commander-in-chief of GRUNK military forces. (However, Pol Pot exercised real control over the latter.) In fact, Khieu's appointment to these posts and residence inside the country were instrumental in allowing GRUNK to argue that it was not only a government-in-exile.
During the years of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), Khieu remained near the top of the movement, taking the post of president of the central presidium in 1976. His loyalty and closeness to Pol Pot and apparent dedication to the former's harshly doctrinaire vision of the revolution meant that Khieu survived the bloody purges of the last few years of Khmer Rouge rule.
After the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and subsequent fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Samphan led a rebel government which maintained some international recognition until 1982. In 1985 he officially succeeded Pol Pot as leader of the Khmer Rouge, and served in this position until he surrendered to the Cambodian government in 1998.
[edit] References
| Preceded by Penn Nouth |
Prime Minister of Cambodia 1976–1976 |
Succeeded by Pol Pot |
| Leaders of Cambodia since 1970 |
|---|
 Khmer Republic, Lon Nol • Sisowath Sirik Matak • Son Ngoc Thanh • Hang Thun Hak • In Tam • Long Boret • Sosthene Fernandez Penn Nouth
|
| Prominent Members of the Khmer Rouge |  |
|---|---|
| Pol Pot | Khieu Samphan | Nuon Chea | Ta Mok | Son Sen | Ieng Sary | Hu Nim | Khang Khek Ieu | Ieng Thirith | Hun Sen (defected) |
