PHNOM PENH • Thousands of Cambodian survivors of the Khmer Rouge yesterday marked 39 years since the fall of the brutal regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million people.

Up to 40,000 people attended an event in capital Phnom Penh organised by the ruling Cambodian People's Party of Prime Minister Hun Sen - who was installed by Vietnam, which invaded Cambodia on Jan 7, 1979, and put an end to the regime. The gathering on Victory Over Genocide Day attracted a much larger turnout than in previous years.

"The Jan 7 victory saved the lives of people who survived the killings and brought back to the Cambodian people rights lost under the regime of Pol Pot," Mr Hun Sen said at the ceremony.

Most of the victims of the regime died of torture, starvation, exhaustion or disease in labour camps, or were beaten to death during mass executions in the "killing fields".

The day is controversial in Cambodia, with Mr Hun Sen's party celebrating it as a day of liberation while others mourn it as the start of a 10-year occupation by their hated Vietnamese neighbours.

The rise and fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge was initiated by Vietnam to "divide and weaken" Cambodia to keep it under Vietnamese control, former opposition leader Sam Rainsy said in a Facebook post last Friday.

The anniversary comes amid a crackdown on the opposition by Mr Hun Sen's government ahead of a July general election.

Speaking before a sea of supporters, he took credit for the stability and growth his government has overseen since the Khmer Rouge era.

The United States and the European Union withdrew support for the vote following the dissolution of the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party last year, but China, Cambodia's biggest foreign backer, said last Thursday that it believes the polls this year will be fair.

Pol Pot's three surviving top henchmen are serving life sentences on convictions by a joint Cambodian-United Nations tribunal for various crimes, including crimes against humanity.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE