Cambodia, 1977 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
The dataset records an event coded as an attempted military coup in Cambodia, then Democratic Kampuchea, on 17 April 1977, during the genocidal rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, whose regime was consumed by paranoid purges of its own ranks. By 1977 the Khmer Rouge leadership was convinced that traitors and enemy agents had infiltrated the party and army, and it conducted waves of arrests, torture, and execution of cadres accused of plotting against the center, many processed through the notorious Tuol Sleng, or S-21, interrogation prison. Any coup attempt in April 1977, on the second anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh, came within that atmosphere of internal terror, and the alleged plotters, whether genuine dissidents or victims of manufactured conspiracies, were crushed.
Pol Pot survived the internal purges that decimated the regime's own leadership until the Khmer Rouge was driven from power not by a coup but by the Vietnamese invasion of December 1978 to January 1979, which ended the killing fields.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
81104171977
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Pol Pot survived the alleged April 1977 plotting amid the Khmer Rouge's internal purges.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
LA Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →