HISTORY OF HUN SEN ( The strong man in the world )

Hun Sen(born 5 August, 1952)[1] is the current Prime Minister of Cambodia.Hun Sen´s political career started as member of Khmer Rouge, achieving the rank of battalion commander. Together with Heng Samrin and Chea Sim he was charged with implementing forced labor camps and exterminating 'undesirables' in eastern Cambodia.[2] In 1977 he fell out of grace with Pol Pot and was forced to flee to Vietnam. There he joined the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea (UFNSK). He returned to Cambodia in 1978 when Vietnam invaded and overthrew the Pol Pot regime. The Vietnamese established the People's Republic of Kampuchea of which Hun Sen became a prominent member.[3] Supported by the Vietnamese, Hun Sen quickly gained the position of prime minister of the People´s Republic.[4] He has been the sole leader of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), which has governed Cambodia since the Vietnamese-backed overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. Since the restoration of multi-party democracy in 1993, the CPP has been in a coalition with the royalist Funcinpec party.

His current, full, honorary title is Samdach Akeak Moha Sena Thapdey Decho Hun Sen. The titlePersonal life

Hun Sen is married to Bun Rany. They have six children, 3 sons and 3 daughters: Manet, Mana, Manit, Mani, Mali and Malis. The youngest, Malis was adopted. Hun Manet is a 1999 West Point Academy graduate and obtained his PhD in Economics at the University of Bristol.

In October 2007, Hun Sen made a surprise announcement at a graduation ceremony, in front of an audience of nearly 3000, that his adopted daughter was a lesbian. He had taken legal steps to disown Malis and to prevent her from receiving any inheritance. Nonetheless, he asked the audience to accept homosexuals.

Pol Pot in Cambodia 1975-1979 ( 2,000,000 Deaths )

An attempt by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming society resulted in the deaths of 25 percent of the country's population from starvation, overwork and executions.

Pol Pot was born in 1925 (as Saloth Sar) into a farming family in central Cambodia, which was then part of French Indochina. In 1949, at age 20, he traveled to Paris on a scholarship to study radio electronics but became absorbed in Marxism and neglected his studies. He lost his scholarship and returned to Cambodia in 1953 and joined the underground Communist movement. The following year, Cambodia achieved full independence from France and was then ruled by a royal monarchy.

By 1962, Pol Pot had become leader of the Cambodian Communist Party and was forced to flee into the jungle to escape the wrath of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia. In the jungle, Pol Pot formed an armed resistance movement that became known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) and waged a guerrilla war against Sihanouk's government.

In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was ousted, not by Pol Pot, but due to a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup. An embittered Sihanouk retaliated by joining with Pol Pot, his former enemy, in opposing Cambodia's new military government. That same year, the U.S. invaded Cambodia to expel the North Vietnamese from their border encampments, but instead drove them deeper into Cambodia where they allied themselves with the Khmer Rouge.

From 1969 until 1973, the U.S. intermittently bombed North Vietnamese sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, killing up to 150,000 Cambodian peasants. As a result, peasants fled the countryside by the hundreds of thousands and settled in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh.

All of these events resulted in economic and military destabilization in Cambodia and a surge of popular support for Pol Pot.

By 1975, the U.S. had withdrawn its troops from Vietnam. Cambodia's government, plagued by corruption and incompetence, also lost its American military support. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, consisting of teenage peasant guerrillas, marched into Phnom Penh and on April 17 effectively seized control of Cambodia.

Norodom Sihanouk ( King of Cambodia )

Norodom Sihanouk, in full Preah Bat Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk (born October 31, 1922, Phnom Penh, Cambodia—died October 15, 2012, Beijing, China) twice king of Cambodia (1941–55 and 1993–2004), who also served as prime minister, head of state, and president. He attempted to steer a neutral course for Cambodia in its civil and foreign wars of the late 20th century.

Sihanouk was, on his mother’s side, the grandson of King Monivong (reigned 1927–41), whom he succeeded to the throne at age 18. At the time Cambodia was a French protectorate, and Sihanouk wielded little power. However, near the end of World War II, the occupying Japanese encouraged the young king to declare Cambodia’s independence from France. When French military forces moved back into the region, Sihanouk decided to wait until France’s retreat from Indochina, which occurred in 1954. He founded the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (“People’s Socialist Community”) in January 1955, won a referendum in February approving its program, and on March 2 abdicated in favour of his father, Norodom Suramarit, becoming the new monarch’s prime minister, foreign minister, and subsequently permanent representative to the United Nations. Five years later, after the death of his father (April 3, 1960), he accepted the role of head of state (June 13).

Sihanouk steered a neutralist course in his foreign policy. In return for a North Vietnamese pledge to respect Cambodia’s frontiers, he allowed Vietnamese communists to operate covertly from bases inside eastern Cambodia. He subsequently rejected U.S. aid and assistance, relying on his immense popularity with the Cambodian people to keep radicals of both the right and the left under control. Under Sihanouk’s benign rule, Cambodia experienced 15 years of fragile peace and mild prosperity while much of Southeast Asia was in a state of upheaval.

Sihanouk’s maintenance of Cambodian neutrality in the Vietnam War ended in 1970 when he was ousted in a U.S.-supported coup led by General Lon Nol. He then lived in Beijing as the titular head of a government-in-exile.

Phnom Penh: History

Phnom Penh’s history is both riveting and tragic. While Cambodia has breath-taking oldest cultural artifacts and world heritage sites, for instance, in Angkor Wat in the North of Cambodia, the rest of the country tends to be very agricultural and rural. Phnom Penh has international fame, however, not for its monuments necessarily, but for its bloody history, as headquarters for the Pol Pot regime during the 70s.

Phnom Penh's history begins when King Ponhea Yat abandoned Angkor Wat, the palatial colony in 1422, decided to begin his capital, Phnom Penh, on the strategic shores where two huge rivers in Cambodia join. For the next four hundred years, the reigning kings moved the capital several times, until it was recognized as the official seat of government until 1866. At this time, however, Phnom Penh was nothing like the bustling city it is today. Instead, it was really just a few, informal, huts lining the riverbed and most of the locals were fishermen or farmers. When the french colonialists entered Phnom Penh, they gave the city the civic structure that it has now. The french built canals for irrigation, roads and buildings, most of which still remain. Thanks to this energetic construction, daring Europeans flocked to Phnom Penh, which was thought to be exoitc and glamorous, hence nicknamed the “Peal of Aisa”. This allure and popularity continued to burgeon until it abruptly ented in the 1960s when the Vietnam War erupted.

Due to its close proximity to Vietnam, the first affect of the war was the thousands of refugees whom fled over the borders of Vietnam and crowded into Phnom Pehn. In a short period of time, North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong took over the city,  as the South Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge fought. At the tragic date, April 17, 1975, known as the Cambodian New Year, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge. (This day and the events to follow was commenorated in the Oscar-winning film "The Killing Fields"). Phnom Penh was completely evacuated by force so that all the foriegners in the city were forced to return back home and all the residents were pushed up into the farm lands of Cambodia where they were forced to labor for the Khmer Rouge. At this time the Khmer Rouge believed intellectuals and teachers, essentially any one who was not a farmer, was a dissident, and those they could find, they captured, tortured and killed. As the Khmer Rouge turned Phnom Penh into their headquarters, the Pol Pot regime converted Tuol Svay Prey High School into a grisley torture and prison camp, where Cambodians of all ages were imprisoned and brutally tortured. (Visitors can see pictures of the thousands of Cambodians imprisoned on these grounds today as the camp has been turned into a prison, where the beds with blood stains and nearby torture weapons are exposed for all visitors' view, so this terror can not be forgotten.

Jayavarman VII ( King of Khmer empire )

Jayavarman VII, (born c. 1120/25—died c. 1220) one of the most forceful and productive kings of the Khmer (Cambodian) empire of Angkor (reigning 1181–c. 1220). He expanded the empire to its greatest territorial extent and engaged in a building program that yielded numerous temples (including Angkor Thom), highways, rest houses, and hospitals.

Early life
Jayavarman was born into the royal family of Angkor. He married a very religious and strong-minded princess named Jayarajadevi, who exerted an important influence on him, both before he gained the throne and during the early years of his reign. Following her death he married her older sister, a very pious and learned woman whom he had previously installed as the head professor in an important Buddhist monastery.

Though practically nothing is known of Jayavarman’s childhood and youth, it is clear that during his late 30s and early 40s he settled in the neighbouring kingdom of Champa, in what is now the central region of Vietnam. At the time of the death of his father, King Dharanindravarman II (ruled 1150–60), Jayavarman was engaged in a military campaign in Champa, and, after the accession of his brother (or possibly his cousin), Yasovarman II (ruled 1160–66), he chose to remain there, returning to Cambodia only when he received word that a palace rebellion was in progress. Although Jayavarman arrived at Angkor too late to prevent the murder of Yasovarman and the accession of the rebel Tribhuvanadityavarman (ruled 1166–77), he decided to remain in his homeland and to await an opportunity to assert his own claim to the throne.

Some 12 years later, when Jayavarman was in his late 50s, that opportunity came as a result of a Cham invasion, which brought about the demise of Tribhuvanadityavarman, the sacking of Angkor, and its subjection to foreign rule. In this situation Jayavarman organized a struggle for independence and in less than five years’ time succeeded in driving out the invaders and establishing his hegemony over all his Cambodian rivals. Finally in 1181, at the age of 61, he was crowned king of a reconstituted Khmer empire and began a brilliant reign of more than 30 years, during which he brought the empire to its zenith, both in terms of territorial expansion and of royal architecture and construction.

Jayavarman II (Birth of Angkor 802 - 834)

Jayavarman II, posthumous name Paramesvara (literally, Supreme Lord) (born c. 770—died 850, Hariharalaya, Cambodia) founder of the Khmer, or Cambodian, empire and outstanding member of the series of rulers of the Angkor period (802–1431). Among Jayavarman II’s accomplishments were the deification of the Cambodian monarchy, the establishment of the devarāja cult as the official state religion, and the reunification of the old kingdom of Chenla, which he expanded and formed into the Khmer empire.

Possibly of Khmer descent, Jayavarman II came from Java, where he had been in captivity or exile, to succeed to the throne as Java’s vassal around 800. An unwilling puppet, he defied the Javanese and asserted Khmer independence in 802, when he also was installed under Hindu rites as devarāja, or god-king. He established a series of capitals, first at Indrapura, on the lower Mekong River east of Kâmpóng (Kompong) Cham; then, moving northwards, at Hariharalaya, southeast of present-day Siĕmréab (Siem Reap); and then at Mahendraparvata, in the region just north of the Tonle Sap (Great Lake), not far from Angkor, the next seat of the Khmer empire, which remained its capital for 600 years.

Funan (Pre-Angkor Era) 1st Century

That portion of Asia which today hears the name of Cambodia, is comparatively small in area and sparsely populated. Its greatest length does not exceed two hundred and seventy miles, and its breadth one hundred and thirty. Despite the obscurity hanging about its early history, it is certain that Cambodia, though now reduced to insignificance, in ages long past was a great and mighty empire. Sometimes a person can get lost; sometimes even a city in a jungle or a desert can get lost. In Southeast Asia empires sometimes got lost. Funan is a lost empire that rose to prominence, declined and then was forgotten over the centuries. Funan existed along the southern edge of Southeast Asia in what is now Cambodia and southern Vietnam and extending an uncertain amount to the west into what is now Thailand even perhaps into what is Myanmar (Burma).

At about the time that the ancient peoples of Western Europe were absorbing the classical culture and institutions of the Mediterranean, the peoples of mainland and insular Southeast Asia were responding to the stimulus of a civilization that had arisen in northern India during the previous millennium. The Britons, Gauls, and Iberians experienced Mediterranean influences directly, through conquest by and incorporation into the Roman Empire. In contrast, the Indianization of Southeast Asia was a slower process than the Romanization of Europe because there was no period of direct Indian rule and because land and sea barriers that separated the region from the Indian subcontinent are considerable. Nevertheless, Indian religion, political thought, literature, mythology, and artistic motifs gradually became integral elements in local Southeast Asian cultures. The caste system never was adopted, but Indianization stimulated the rise of highly-organized, centralized states.

Funan was a Hindu kingdom founded in the first century AD with its capital Vyadhapura, close to the Mekong River near the border with Cambodia. The first kingdom of Southeast Asia was Phnom (the Cambodian word for "mountain"), or Funan (the Chinese name for the region). Both names refer to Mount Meru, the home of the gods in Hinduism. The kingdom formed when the lower Mekong delta was united under a city called Vyadhapura ("hunter city" in Sanskrit).