Kou Voravong
The political crisis caused by his assassination, barely two months after the Geneva Agreements which prepared to restore peace in Indochina, contributed to bring down the current neutralist government (pro-French) which was replaced by a progressive one (pro-American) in extremely tense atmosphere of the Cold War between Russia and the United States. From 1955 indeed, the political history of this small landlocked country fell trapped inexorably in the ideological confrontation between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union, annihilating any hope of national unification.
Hou Yuon
Yuon's death is thought to have been ordered by his fellow-members of the Khmer Rouge sometime after they seized power in 1975. His previous tendency to openly criticise the regime's excesses appears to have continued unabated: when entering Phnom Penh, which had been divided into several sectors each run by the administration of a different zone of the country, he is reported to have remarked "It's Berlin!". Several accounts exist of his death, the most common of which is related to the controversial order to evacuate Phnom Penh given after the communist victory, which Yuon is known to have opposed. In one version, related by a CPK cadre from Kampong Cham, Yuon was said to have been shot in August 1975 by a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers after he sympathetically addressed a group of evacuees at Prek Por, Srey Santhor District, and his body thrown into the Mekong.