Cambodia's government has been described by Human Rights Watch's Southeast Asian Director, David Roberts, as a "vaguely communist free-market state with a relatively authoritarian coalition ruling over a superficial democracy."[60]
Hun Sen has vowed to rule until he is 74. He is a former Khmer Rouge member who defected. His government is regularly accused of ignoring human rights and suppressing political dissent. After the 2013 election results, disputed by Hun Sen's opposition, demonstrators were injured and killed in Cambodia in protests in the capital where a reported 20,000 protesters gathered, with some clashing with riot police.[61] From a humble farming background, Hun Sen was just 33 when he took power in 1985, and is now in the company of other long ruling dictators such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Kazakhstan'scontrol of the country. He abdicated in 1955 in favor of his parents, remaining head of the government, and when his father died in 1960, Sihanouk became chief of state without returning to the throne. In 1963, he sought a guarantee of Cambodia's neutrality from all parties in the Vietnam War.
However, North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops had begun using eastern Cambodia as a safe haven from which to launch attacks into South Vietnam, making it increasingly difficult to stay out of the war. An indigenous Communist guerrilla movement known as the Khmer Rouge also began to put pressure on the government in Phnom Penh. On March 18, 1970, while Sihanouk was abroad, anti-Vietnamese riots broke out and Sihanouk was overthrown by Gen. Lon Nol. The Vietnam peace agreement of 1973 stipulated withdrawal of foreign forces from Cambodia, but fighting continued between Hanoi-backed insurgents and U.S.-supplied government troops.
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