PHNOM PENH — The word to use to describe the events that took place on March 18, 1970, will no doubt remain controversial for as long as the people involved 55 years ago or their direct descendants will be alive to voice their opinion. 

On that day at the National Assembly and Senate in Phnom Penh, Prince Norodom Sihanouk was voted out of power. The vote to depose him took place behind closed doors and was unanimous. 

Some will say that this only happened because the parliament building was surrounded by military vehicles and armed soldiers, and that what happened was a coup.  

Others will point out that, even though the economic situation in the country was in a terrible state—the casino Prince Sihanouk had ordered to open in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville had not prompted the economic recovery hoped for— and decisions had to be made, he had been out of the country for more than two months. Prince Sihanouk, who ran the country as leader of the political party in power, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum he had founded, had refused to return in spite of repeated appeals made by members of his government. 

Prince Sihanouk, who had left France for the Soviet Union a few days earlier, was said to have heard the news of his destitution in Moscow as he was boarding a plane for Beijing. 

Upon arriving in China, he would immediately call the vote anti-constitutional. He had first thought of seeking political asylum in France. But, as historian David Chandler explains, after talking to Chinese President Zhou Enlai and North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong, he decided to remain in Beijing. 

“[H] he agreed to take command of a united front government allied to North Vietnam, whose Cambodian forces would consist largely of the communists his [Cambodian government] army had been struggling to destroy,” Chandler writes. 

So, Prince Sihanouk set up his government in exile in the Chinese capital and, on March 23, 1970, the prince broadcast an appeal to his “brothers and sisters” to take up arms against Lon Nol. This would lead a number of Cambodians in the countryside to join in when the Khmer Rouge came to enroll them. 

During the following five years, Prince Sihanouk—he had reverted to the title of prince after stepping down from the throne to enter politics in 1955—headed a government in Beijing, explained during an interview Julio Jeldres, a historian and researcher with the Monash University’s School of Historical Studies and International Relations in Australia. 

“China at the time was still going through the Cultural Revolution, and yet, they allowed this little kingdom in the middle of Beijing with its own ministry of foreign affairs, ministry of finance and so on,” Jeldres said. 

So, while the Khmer Rouge soldiers, backed by the Vietcong forces at China’s request, were fighting against the Cambodian government’s army to gain control of the country, Prince Sihanouk ran his “government in exile” from Beijing. 

The economic situation in the country in the late 1960s

One of the things that historians mention regarding Prince Sihanouk is that in 1968 and 1969, he spent a great deal of his time making movies. And by 1969, the gross national product was below zero. 

The economy in Cambodia had taken a turn for the worst when Prince Sihanouk had broken relations with the United States in November 1963. As historian David Chandler writes, “the U.S. military aid program…had provided the pay for his armed forces and, in effect, a 15 percent subvention to the national budget. 

“No similar patron stepped forward,” he said, although China would provide some military equipment over the following years. 

Prince Sihanouk had made that decision, Chandler said, to stay out of the war next door where North Vietnam backed by China was fighting South Vietnam supported by the United States. Among other measures, he had also nationalized the import-export sector and closed the privately-owned banks. 

Since 1961, Cambodia had been part of the Non-Aligned (country) Movement. But this was the Cold War with the United States and many Western countries on one side and the Soviet Union and its the communist allies on the other. Keeping neutral in Southeast Asia in the 1960s was easier said than done.  

“[And yet] for senior Cambodian army officers in the late 1960s, there was no insuperable contradiction between thinking of a future in which close relations with the United States might be resumed and engaging in large-scale contraband with the Vietnamese communists” as they had been doing, writes historian Milton Osborne.  

But the situation had changed in the course of the 1960s. By then, he writes, “the Vietnamese communists [supported by China] who had proved such a useful source of additional illegal income for the army were no longer confined to a limited number of border regions.” The military now had to suppress domestic resistance as well as a growing Vietnamese military presence in the country, Osborne writes. 

In his book “Derriere le Sourire Khmer” [behind the Khmer smile] on King Sihanouk, Charles Meyer—speech writer, press secretary and adviser to Prince Sihanouk in the 1950s and 1960s—asks the question: could Prince Sihanouk have prevented his ousting from power. Probably, but the internal degradation, economic deterioration and social unrest could no longer be handled through haphazard measures, he writes. 

In fact, Prince Sihanouk had overestimated his power and thought that civilian and military leaders would never dare question it, Meyer writes. Would he have been able to regain power if he had returned after the vote in parliament?  Civilian and military leaders involved in his ousting were petrified as to what to do if he returned, Meyer writes. “Actually, we are lost in conjecture,” he writes. 

The First Years of Prince Sihanouk’s Life in Exile

As Julio Jeldres explained, Prince Sihanouk established his government in exile with the support of China. “There were all these ministries…run by Cambodians,” he said. China had provided huge assistance to make this [happen] and not only in Beijing…they had at least 10 embassies. 

“These included embassies in Cuba and Chili; Dakar in Senegal; Congo, Mauritania and Tanzania; Algeria and Egypt; Albania, Romania and Yugoslavia; plus a diplomatic mission in Paris,” Jeldres said. Cambodia’s seat at the United Nations was occupied by a representative of the Lon Nol government in Phnom Penh, not by Prince Sihanouk’s government in exile, he said.

As time went by, the importance of Prince Sihanouk diminished for the Khmer Rouge in the field. During the first two months of war, the “Vietcong allies” were using a lot of the name and photos of King Sihanouk as symbols of the fight against the Lon Nol regime,” writes Charles Meyer. Then this personalization faded away and even disappeared in regions having reached “a high degree of political conscience,” he writes.   

Brought to Phnom Penh following the Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975, he was to spend the regime in his palace under guard. He would meet Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot for the first time on Jan. 5, 1979, and be told that a plane sent by China was to take him away to Beijing the following day. 

On Jan. 7, 1979, the Vietnamese army and a Cambodian military division would seize control of Phnom Penh, putting an end to the Khmer Rouge regime.  

For King Sihanouk, his departure for China in 1979 was the beginning of more than a decade he would spend away from his country. 

It is only on Nov. 14, 1991, that he would return to Cambodia, following the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements on Oct. 23, 1991. 

After the national elections of May 1993 and the promulgation of the new constitution in September 1993, King Sihanouk was crowned king on Sept. 24, 1993. He would abdicate in early October 2004 and be succeeded by his son King Norodom Sihamoni who was crowned on Oct. 14, 2004.

King Norodom passed away in October 2012. In his book “Facing the Cambodian Past,” Chandler wrote “[h]ere was a man with a quick intelligence, genuine fondness for his people, a lively sense of realpolitik, and an overwhelming, even suffocating style.

“Here was a man who was overtaken in 1970 by his shortcomings,” Chandler writes, “by treacherous colleagues and by forces larger than himself: what could have been more tragic.”