Welcome to Who Killed Haing Ngor?

Let’s face it, this story is a complicated web, spanning decades. This timeline will help you keep track of it all.

  • The Khmer Rouge seize control of Phnom Penh.

  • The Khmer Rouge are overthrown by the Vietnamese military. Pol Pot and his top aides flee to Cambodia’s “Wild West” border with Thailand. Cvil war erupts and a massive refugee crisis ensues.

  • “The Killing Fields,” a Roland Joffe film starring Haing Ngor as “The New York Times” reporter Dith Pran is released.

  • Haing Ngor wins the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Dith Pran.

  • After 10 years of occupation, Vietnam withdraws from Cambodia. The conflict risked becoming such a quagmire it was dubbed “Vietnam’s ‘Vietnam.’”

  • The Berlin Wall falls. The East-West stalemate that saw Cambodia used as a proxy-war for the big powers has crumbled. The international community turns its attention toward “fixing” long-neglected Cambodia.

  • Cambodia’s four warring factions - including the Khmer Rouge - sign the Paris Peace Accords, ushering a massive United Nations peacekeeping mission into Cambodia.

  • The Khmer Rouge pull out of the peace deal. This will eventually be seen as a gross strategic miscalculation on their part.

  • The UN-supervised elections are hailed as a massive success.

    Cambodia begins to form its new government. The only hitch? Incumbent Prime Minister Hun Sen refuses to step down. The UN cobbles together a compromise: election winner, Prince Norodom Ranariddh is the First Prime Minister; Hun Sen is the Second Prime Minister.

  • United Nations peacekeepers withdraw from Cambodia, once again heralding their $2 billion mission a success.

  • Second PM Hun Sen overthrows Prince Ranariddh in a coup-d’état.

    Hun Sen overturned the results of the Cambodia’s first ever democratic election - and its a $2 billion price tag.

    With compassion fatigue setting in, the UN, ASEAN, EU and the rest of the international community go through the motions of objecting. But ultimately - they collectively shrug.

  • Haing Ngor is murdered in Los Angeles in what authorities call a robbery gone wrong.

  • Journalist Nate Thayer “finds” Pol Pot - the first outsider to see him since 1978.
    The Khmer Rouge put Pol Pot on “trial” in their stronghold, Anlong Vent - a gambit intended to help the Khmer Rouge maneuver their way back into mainstream Cambodian politics.

  • Pol Pot dies in Anlong Veng, a Khmer Rouge stronghold. It was later confirmed to be a suicide, assisted by his wife.

  • Kaing Guek Euv, also known as “Duch”, testifies before Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge tribunal that Pol Pot ordered the murder of Haing Ngor.