Hun Sen (1951?-…) was the prime minister of Cambodia from 1985 to 1993, and again from 1998 to 2023. From 1993 to 1998, he served as joint prime minister, and then as second prime minister, in a coalition government.
Hun Sen was born to a poor peasant family in Kompong Cham province in southeastern Cambodia. Official documents give his date of birth as April 4, 1951, but he may have been born on some other date in 1951 or 1952. He attended school in Phnom Penh. When he was a teenager, he joined the Khmer Rouge, the Communist movement that opposed the government of President Lon Nol. Hun Sen rose to the rank of Khmer Rouge division commander. The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, took control of Cambodia in 1975. Under the harsh rule of the Khmer Rouge, more than 1 1/2 million Cambodians died as a result of execution, starvation, disease, or hard labor.
In 1977, Hun Sen broke with Pol Pot and went to Vietnam with a group of other Cambodians opposed to the Khmer Rouge. There, they formed a guerrilla army and, with Vietnamese troops, ousted Pol Pot’s regime in 1979. Hun Sen then helped form a new Vietnamese-backed Cambodian government and was named foreign minister. In 1985, he became prime minister.
During the 1980’s, the Khmer Rouge and non-Communist groups carried out guerrilla warfare against Cambodia’s government. In 1991, the government and opposition groups signed a peace treaty. As a result of the treaty, elections were held in May 1993. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) came in second behind Funcinpec, a party led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh. From July to September, Hun Sen was joint prime minister with Ranariddh. After a new constitution was put into effect in September, Hun Sen became second prime minister, and Ranariddh became first prime minister. The Khmer Rouge did not join the government, and the failure of the organization to give up its weapons led to fears of continuing instability in Cambodia’s government.
Hun Sen and Ranariddh’s uneasy coalition government benefited from foreign aid, and the power of the Khmer Rouge began to weaken. Hun Sen negotiated the surrender of hundreds of Khmer Rouge guerrillas in 1996. That year, Funcinpec and the CPP became increasingly hostile to each other. Members of the two parties clashed in Phnom Penh in June 1997. Seeing his supporters killed, jailed, and tortured, Ranariddh fled into exile in July 1997. Bitter fighting followed, during which Hun Sen’s forces seized control of the country. The National Assembly chose Ung Huot to take Ranariddh’s place as first prime minister.
In elections held in 1998, the CPP won the most seats in the National Assembly but did not win enough seats to govern alone. A coalition government was formed, and Hun Sen became sole prime minister. In National Assembly elections held in 2003, the CPP again won the most seats, but not enough to govern alone. In 2004, after months of political struggle, the CPP and Funcinpec finally agreed to form a power-sharing government, with Hun Sen remaining as prime minister. In 2008 and 2013, the CPP won enough National Assembly seats to govern alone, and Hun Sen remained prime minister. Hun Sen stepped down as prime minister in 2023. His son Hun Manet succeeded him as head of the government.
