Dap Prampi Mesa Moha Chouk Chey

The story

"Dap Prampi Mesa Moha Chokchey" ("The Glorious Seventeenth of April") was the national anthem of Democratic Kampuchea, the state of the Khmer Rouge. Its title refers to 17 April 1975, the day the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia and set up a communist dictatorship of Maoist inspiration under Pol Pot. The anthem may have been in use in the Khmer Rouge's "liberated zone" much earlier, but it was proclaimed the national anthem by article 18 of the Constitution of Kampuchea, promulgated on 5 January 1976. The Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot himself, is supposed to have written it, but its origin remains unknown.

The regime emptied the cities and marched Cambodians to labour camps in the countryside, with mass executions and forced labour: by January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people, a fifth to a quarter of the population of 1975, had died as a result of its policies, in what is known as the Cambodian genocide. From 1977 Pol Pot also carried out a series of purges and had many anti-personnel mines laid, especially along the border with Vietnam, and relations with Vietnam broke down. In 1979 Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from most of the country; the People's Republic of Kampuchea that they set up adopted a new anthem.

The Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, formed in exile, kept "Dap Prampi Mesa Moha Chokchey" as its state anthem. Because many Western nations and the United Nations recognised that government as the legitimate government of Cambodia, its anthem went on being presented in the West as the national anthem of Cambodia until the monarchy was restored in 1993.

What it says

A state anthem celebrating the Khmer Rouge's seizure of power on 17 April 1975 and its revolution; martial and exultant in tone.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words.