Hem Keth Dara

Hem Keth Dara is the son of the interior minister under Lon Nol , Hem Keth Sana. Hem Keth Dara preceded the advancing combat units of the Khmer Rouge during the capture of the capital of Cambodia , Phnom Penh . He was the leader of the Montio Movement , which, as a group of 200 soldiers in black Khmer Rouge uniform , conquered the Ministry of Information on April 17, 1975. They were accompanied by around 500 students and so occupied downtown Phnom Penh within a few hours. The group confiscated weapons from soldiers who holed up in the government district and then surrendered. Within the surprising bloodless conquest, Hem Kath Dara and his followers managed to get the government radio station under control. There he performed a four-minute broadcast explaining that he was the leader of a nationalist movement called MONTIO, which was responsible for the conquest. He called on government soldiers to lay down their arms and in his address also informed the Khmer Rouge units standing in front of the city: "I have taken measures to enable our elderly brothers waiting outside of Phnom Penh to easily enter the city to arrive without the innocent being killed or harmed. " Hem Keth Dara was subsequently disarmed by the Khmer Rouge because the MONTIO movement was not one of them and so he had acted without authorization.

Dara was married to a French woman and had two children.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ CAMBODIA: Blood exchanged . In: Der Spiegel . tape May 20 , 1975 ( spiegel.de [accessed February 7, 2019]).
2. ^ “Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia”, page 281 By Arnold R. Isaacs (1983), JHU Press.
3. ↑ Ben Kiernan: The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, p. 37 . Yale University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-14299-0 ( google.de [accessed February 7, 2019]).
4. ^ Jean-Jacques Cazeaux and Claude Juvenal: Phnim Phen fell first to obscure playboy. Agence France-Presse, May 8, 1975, accessed February 7, 2019 .