Sihanouk: Twice the King of Cambodia

Sihanouk, the former king of Cambodia, who died yesterday, in Beijing, is that he was the titular head of the Khmer Rouge in the nineteen-seventies, when it held power under the command of Pol Pot, and presided over the extermination of nearly two million Cambodians. Never mind that Pol Pot (who was raised in the royal palace in Phnom Penh before being sent to school in Paris, where he became a Communist) called for regicide in his first published writing, declaring in 1952 that the monarchy was “a running sore that just people must eliminate.” Sihanouk was always in it for Sihanouk.