Khmer Rouge

[kmair roozh, kuh-mair]

noun

plural

Khmers Rouges 

1. a Cambodian guerrilla and rebel force and political opposition movement, originally Communist and Communist-backed.

2. a member or supporter of this force.

Khmer Rouge

/ ruːʒ /

noun

1. the Kampuchean communist party, which seized power (1975) in a civil war: in exile since 1979, dispersed in 1999

Khmer Rouge

1. The communist movement in Kampuchea (Cambodia) in Southeast Asia. It came to power in 1975.

Led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, after it came to power, instituted one of the worst examples of genocide in world history. Estimates of the number of people killed under this regime vary from two million to four million.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Khmer Rouge¹

< French Khmer (or Khmère ) rouge literally, red Khmer

Example Sentences

But I was coming from a youth performing arts school where I was in a French play and then “A Cambodian Odyssey,” about the Khmer Rouge.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

He told Johnson about watching his baby sister starve to death and being orphaned by the Khmer Rouge.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

“The only time I was taught anything about Cambodia was the Khmer Rouge,” Thy said, referring to the communist regime that ruled the country in the 1970s.

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After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 to throw out the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, it was isolated and sanctioned by China and the West, and depended heavily on Soviet assistance.

Read more on BBC

The Khmer Rouge still posed a military threat into the late 1990s, and much of the early coverage focused on that conflict, aided by a multinational staff and freelancers.

Read more on Seattle Times