Cambodia marks 40 years since genocide

Cambodia's Khmer Rouge On April 17 1975, the Cambodian revolutionary movement known as the Khmer Rouge captured the capital Phnom Penh and launched a killing spree that was to claim the lives of almost a quarter of population.

It was the first of two key events in less than a fortnight that defined the conflict raging in the Mekong region as the US fought communist movements. On April 30, the Washington-backed regime in Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese army.

Over the next four years in Cambodia, at least 1.7m of the country's 8m people are estimated to have died, many from execution, starvation or exhaustion, as the new rulers evacuated towns and cities and sent the educated urban elites to work in labour camps.

Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, and his henchmen sealed off the country so effectively that it was not until after Vietnamese troops ousted the regime in 1979 that the full horrors of "year zero" and the "killing fields" became apparent.

Pol Pot died in 1998 but two of his top lieutenants were convicted last year by an internationally backed legal tribunal - and trials there continue today.

The near nine-year-old court has been heavily criticised over the time and money expended to bring only a handful of cases. Human Rights Watch, the New York-based campaign group, last month called for the UN and international donors to withdraw support from the court if its work continued to be obstructed by the Cambodian government.

Hun Sen, Cambodian's prime minister of 30 years, is himself a former Khmer Rouge commander.

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