Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had been evacuating captured urban areas for many years, but the evacuation of Phnom Penh was unique in its scale.
In 1976, Pol Pot's régime reclassified Kampucheans into three groupings: as full-rights (base) people, as candidates and as depositees, so-called because they included most of the new people who had been deposited from the cities into the communes [REF].