The Khmer Rouge period (1975-1979) refers to the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Political party over Cambodia, which the Khmer Rouge renamed as Democratic Kampuchea.
The four-year period saw the death of approximately 2 million Cambodians through the combined result of political executions, starvation, and forced labor. Because of the large number of deaths, the deaths during the rule of the Khmer Rouge are often considered a genocide.The Khmer Rouge period ended with the invasion of Cambodia by neighbor and former ally Vietnam in the Cambodian-Vietnamese War, which left Cambodia under Vietnamese occupation for a decade.
