Cambodia

Territory in southeast Asia, ruled since 1993 by the Preăh Réachéanachâk Kâmpŭchéa

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Cambodia (Khmer: កម្ពុជា, or Kampuchea, French: Cambodge), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia (Khmer: ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជា, prĕəh riəciənaacak kampuciə, French: Royaume du Cambodge), is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is 181,035 square kilometers in area, bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. The sovereign state of Cambodia has a population of over 15 million. The official religion is Theravada Buddhism, practiced by approximately 95 percent of the population. The country's minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams and 30 hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, the political, economic and cultural center of Cambodia. The kingdom is an elective constitutional monarchy with a monarch, currently Norodom Sihamoni, chosen by the Royal Throne Council as head of state. The head of government is the Prime Minister, currently Hun Sen, the longest serving non-royal leader in Southeast Asia, ruling Cambodia since 1985. In 802 CE, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name "Kambuja". This marked the beginning of the Khmer Empire, which flourished for over 600 years, allowing successive kings to control and exert influence over much of Southeast Asia and accumulate immense power and wealth. The Indianized kingdom facilitated the spread of first Hinduism and then Buddhism to much of Southeast Asia and undertook many religious infrastructural projects throughout the region, including the construction of more than 1,000 temples and monuments in Angkor alone. Angkor Wat is the most famous of these structures and is designated as a World Heritage Site. After the fall of Angkor to Ayutthaya in the 15th century, a reduced and weakened Cambodia was then ruled as a vassal state by its neighbors. In 1863, Cambodia became a protectorate of France, which doubled the size of the country by reclaiming the north and west from Thailand.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 13° N — Longitude: 105° E

Area: 181,035 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: KH

Measures of Freedom

Cambodia | Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2022
2016: Status: Not Free, Aggregate Score: 32, Political Rights: 6, Civil Liberties: 5

Although the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) ended its boycott of Parliament after reaching an agreement with the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) in 2014, the fragile truce quickly eroded in 2015. The authorities sentenced 11 opposition activists to prison on insurrection charges and arrested a CNRP senator for posting a disputed diplomatic document online. An arrest warrant was issued for opposition leader Sam Rainsy on defamation charges, and he remained outside the country at year's end.

Human Freedom Index [PDF], The Human Freedom Index 2021
2019: 6.47, Rank: 115, Personal Freedom: 5.94, Economic Freedom: 7.22

Level of Economic Freedom, Economic Freedom of the World
2014: 7.20, Rank: 68

Articles

Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it, by Chalmers Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Feb 2004
Lists countries where the CIA conducted subversive operations and recommends abolishing the agency.

Since the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the CIA has engaged in similar disguised assaults on the governments of Guatemala (1954); the Congo (1960); Cuba (1961); Brazil (1964); Indonesia (1965); Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-73); Greece (1967); Chile (1973); Afghanistan (1979 to the present); El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s); and Iraq (1991 to the present) -- to name only the most obvious cases.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cambodia" as of 29 Sep 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.