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Profile
Cambodia (capital city, Phnom Penh) is a kingdom
the origins of which go all the way back to the time of the Ancient
Greeks. It has common frontiers with Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
After being a French colony, Cambodia became politically independent
in1953. Its population of 11 million essentially stems from the
Khmer, Chinese and Vietnamese ethnic groups.
A
bit of History
In the 1970s, a civil war was ended with arrival
to power of the Khmer Rouge’s Democratic Kampuchea regime,
headed by Pol Pot. The subsequent extermination of the population
(nearly 1,7 million people were killed) and the exodus of tens of
thousands of refugees devastated the country, especially the artistic
and intellectual communities.
In 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown by the Vietnamese.
After that, twelve years of armed opposition and warfare among the
various factions were ended with the signature of the Paris Peace
Accord, in 1991, which proclaimed the United Nations Treansitional
Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). In May 1993, UNTAC supervised the
first democratic elections in Cambodian history.
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