CAMBODIA. Province of Takeo. South of Phnom Penh. 1996. Between 1975 and 1979 Cambodia was governed by a totalitarian regime led by the Khmer Rouges under the direction of Pol POT. Over half a million people died under the regime. An American research team from Yale University, the Cambodian Research Program, has begun to search for those who took part in the genocide operation.