ABSTRACT

Chea Sim and Heng Samrin led the Khmer Rouge mutiny against Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea regime (DK) described in chapter 1. It was a regional rebellion in the Eastern Zone, a response to massive repression by regular troops from the Party Center and DK’s Central and Southwest Zones. Killing most of the Eastern Zone CPK leaders within a week, the Center’s murder machine quickly turned on the Zone’s civilian population of about 1.7 million, massacring over 100,000 easterners, possibly as many as 250,000 by December 1978. 1