Khmer Rouge survivors speak out

[Coventina]

Source: Boston Globe

LONG BEACH, Calif. - At night, the old woman hears the voices of her children crying out for her. She knows they will never stop.

Um Sath is 89, and three decades have passed since the Khmer Rouge laid waste to Cambodia. But she shuts her eyes and taps her temples to show where the genocidal regime still rules with impunity.

(snip)

Since February, a UN-backed tribunal in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh has put on trial the first of five Khmer Rouge leaders charged with crimes against humanity, for the brutal experiment in communism that took at least 1.7 million lives between 1975 and 1979.

Activists in the United States want refugees outside Cambodia to submit testimony in an effort to spur a judicial process beset by delays, limited funds, and allegations of corruption. They hope, along the way, to relieve the emotional torture of survivors.



Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/04/26/khmer_rouge_survivors_speak_out/

---

Please read the entire article.

:cry:

[tiddlywinks]

1. The Killing Fields movie is about the Khmer Rouge

just be prepared to be ill over what they did to those ppl
no real explanation (imagine that)

[InternalDialogue]

8. In addition to The Killing Fields, I'd recommend a documentary from 2003:

S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368954/

It's not comprehensive and it suffers some structural problems, but it features face to face interviews with survivors and guards alike, including allowing a survivor to interview guards (who were young teenagers at the time) who imprisoned and tortured him.

Fascinating psychological exhibition.

[Sandrine for you]

2. Pol Pot: political potential...China don't like his close neighborhood people.

An autogenocide....

[eridani]

4. Not really. China was Pol Pot's most important ally

We backed the Chinese in this when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and disposed of Pol Pot.

[grantcart]

5. Which led to the little known "Third Indochinese War"

Also called the Sino-Vietnamese War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

[eridani]

6. Do you remember that 1979 cartoon featuring Premier Deng on a psychiatrist's couch?

The caption was "I wisited Washington DC, talked to the president, and had a burger at McDonald's. And the next thing you know, I invaded Vietnam."

[grantcart]

9. No, I actually was in Vietnam at the time lol

The People's Republic of Vietnam didn't appreciate cartoons very much, lol.

[readmoreoften]

3. The Khmer Rouge was just pure opportunistic insanity thrown under a red flag./nt

[YOY]

7. I read a book recently that pushed the notion that it was very ethnically motivated

And that certain ethnicities, regardless of just how well they complied to the KR were killed regardless.