The Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, led by Heng Samrin, establishes the People’s Republic of Kampuchea – Cambodia’s new official name. As it takes note of a major build up of forces on both sides of the Chinese-Vietnamese border, the US calls for restraint. The US suspects a Chinese punitive strike against Vietnam for leading the takeover against the Khmer Rouge. Thailand allows 922 foreigners – among them the Yugoslav ambassador as well as 861 Chinese advisors, 49 North-Koreans, 7 Burmese, 2 Romanians & one from Egypt cross from Cambodia. They were escorted to the border by Khmer Rouge soldiers. https://t.co/PFpUdWrSk7 The popular council of the revolution of Cambodia…

Vietnam’s Ambassador to France Vo Van Sung says “🇻🇳’s Armed Forces are defending our borders but we have not encroached on one centimetre of Cambodia” “We support Cambodian forces who today scored a victory for humanity over the barbarous regime of Pol Pot” https://t.co/DFqt5Gx168 With little resistance, Vietnamese troops take PhnomPenh ending the three years, eight months and twenty days the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia. At least 1.7 million people died in labor camps, prisons and killing fields due to executions, disease and starvation. https://t.co/meZoO0aJbH Despite Vietnamese forces arriving in PhnomPenh, Duch tells S-21 staff to work. By 3 p.m., Duch & other staff hurriedly leave S-21, leaving all documents…

“Although we don’t like the Pol Pot regime, I’m not certain that any new regime will be any better for the Cambodian people,” says Robert Oakley, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific on Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia As Chinese technicians reported from Chhup that there is “basically no more Khmer Rouge army”, China flies out Sihanouk & 100 Chinese experts, as well as group of hapless Chinese acrobats who had been touring Cambodia in its weekly flight from Phnom Penh. Thai PM Kriangsak urges: “I know that Mr Kurt Waldheim, the Secretary-General of @UN is scheduled to visit PhnomPenh. He should speed up his…

At the former French Governor-General’s Residence, now known as House No. 1, Pol Pot asks Sihanouk to go to the @UN to plead Cambodia’s cause before the Security Council. Pol Pot also tells him that it will take the Khmer Rouge only a few months to win the war.

The Vietnamese army captures the provincial capital of Takeo, less than 50 miles from PhnomPenh, toward which it sends a column on Highway 3. It reportedly also controls the entire east of the Mekong. MacNeil/Lehrer Report interviews @Elizbeckerwrite and R. Dudman on their recent trip to Cambodia and asks their judgement of Vietnam’s offensive and if the Khmer Rouge see it as a fight for survival: https://t.co/jltEUqlf9q @JimLaurie_Asia reports on Vietnamese airstrikes within thirty-five miles of PhnomPenh, that China is conditioning their citizens for war and that Pol Pot admits he might have to give up the east-part of the country: https://t.co/aqfq5VGGx9 Jan.4 ,1979: After hurriedly evacuating Chinese embassy staff…

French TV reports on the Vietnamese Invasion of Cambodia: That Lomphat (the capital of Ratanakiri) and Stung Treng were captured and that the Khmer Rouge asked the @UN Security Council to condemn the invasion https://t.co/aOZ8bLcCzY https://t.co/ej0pbgS3Xc “The Western press has jumped to the conclusion that the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed, because the Vietnamese took the main road & the cities, but those were empty anyways”, says R. Raishi, Chairman of the🇨🇦Communist League, who just visited Cambodia in “The Call” https://t.co/Cm6koakUcw

@UPI reports that Vietnam’s army moved into a position which could besiege and strangle PhnomPenh. “The ruthless, savage international enemies are certainly causing us a difficult time” says Khmer Rouge Head of State Khieu Samphan. https://t.co/s4TYbSRidM The Khmer Rouge tell Chinese diplomats & advisors to leave Cambodia. One will later say: “We did not have the slightest clue that the situation would suddenly turn upside down. On Jan. 2, the day we left, there was no possibility that Phnom Penh could be captured”

The Khmer Rouge call all male & female combatants and cadres to “strengthen the stance of constant and absolute fight against the Yuon [Vietnamese] enemy who is invading and swallowing Kampuchean (Cambodian) land and attempting to exterminate the Kampuchean race” The Salvation Front annuls the categorisation of Cambodians into “old” & “new” people, abolishes the local administrative structures of the Khmer Rouge, offers an amnesty to Khmer Rouge soldiers & admins and promises that Cambodians would have sufficient food. The United States and the People’s Republic of China establish diplomatic relations. The United States recognizes the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China.…

@VDacicus A testimony by S-21 guard PRAK Khorn suggests that only prisoners who worked for the Khmer Rouge as mechanics or painters, etc. are among the survivors. ASFAIK all known survivors had one of these jobs. Source https://t.co/uIu1OrkFZQ p.12 https://t.co/k9HFzZQw3P @VDacicus I misspelled her name, its Ho Nat alias Pha Va. I couldn’t find a date. https://t.co/nxNGs62qqR

After having been recalled from Hongkong to Cambodia on December 10, Ho Tat, whose shares of HongKong based “Ren Fung Company Limited’ (through which the Khmer Rouge traded with China & others) were transferred to Yim Krin, is brought to S-21. https://t.co/4yHiyxaFr5 Vietnam captures Cambodia’s Mekong river Town and provincial capital, Kratie. https://t.co/6PCtGFJA5T