Tou Samouth was the current leader of the KPRP and a large influence on Pol Pot for trying to make the party an official Cambodian organization. During 1960, followers of the party met in Phnom Pen’s railroad station to create and organize the"Workers Party of Kampuchéa," or WPK. Samouth was the secretary general for the WPK until 1963 rolled around, then Pol Pot replaced Samouth as the party’s secretary. Coincidently, Samouth mysteriously* disappeared soon after. Now that he was of higher authority, Pol Pot went to Beijing, China for organizational training and steered clear of Vietnamese communist groups who were trying to increase their hold on Cambodian communist groups for power to avoid …show more content…
The CPK soon began to have demonstrations against the Sihanouk administration which led to the execution of many CPK members. Nonetheless, the group still continued and during December 1969 began a plan to get rid of Prince Sihanouk. Unfortunately*, they weren’t they were too late as the military had overthrown the prince before the CPK could do anything. By 1970 Cambodia had Lon Nol as the Cambodian president. After five years, Phnom Pen fell to several communist groups making pro-Sihanouk parties and Pol Pot race to obtain more power. This led to Pol Pot’s reelection as secretary general in January 1976. April of that same year, Shanouk stepped down from being head of state of the new Democratic Kampuchéa (DK) making Pol Pot the new head. With his new upgrade in authority, Pol Pot started removing Vietnamese-influenced party leaders so he could begin enforcing his policies with less resistance. His reform policies were mostly against teachers, shop owners, government workers, landlords, doctors, lawyers, ethnic minorities, teachers, and basically anyone with an education. These people were marched to death camps and if they could survive the trip there then they were starved, worked to death, tortured, etc. This happened from 1975 to 1978 with little to no outside countries knowing about it. Eventually, Pol Pot went away to hide from