p The life in these “communes” was described by some of the refugees who managed to escape from Kampuchea into Vietnam and Thailand.

p According to Run Dun, a former Kampuchean serviceman, the Pnom Penh authorities, who took their orders from Peking, deliberately misapplied the lofty goals of socialism in order to force everyone to join co-operatives (which is an euphemism for concentration camps). As a result, both old and young people can be seen working like convicts.

p Though virtually the entire population has been forced to work, irrigating farm fields and cultivating the land, the annual grain output is only 60-70 per cent of the prewar level, according to the Yugoslav journalists.

p The religious feelings of the people are trampled upon. “All monks and nuns have been driven out of their pagodas,” said Soen Son, a Buddhist monk and dean of the Piem Pen Pagoda in the Sempriem District, Swairieng Province. “The Buddhist statues and altars have been smashed or thrown into rivers and ponds.” The aged monk, together with a number of other men of religion, was compelled (“as a prisoner of war”) to do backbreaking work for 13 hours a day for only meagre foodrations. “We were always hungry. Those who complained were arrested and taken away somewhere. . .” he said.

p Paul Wedel, a UPI correspondent, cited similar statements by refugees from western Kampuchea whom he met and interviewed in the Aranyaprathet camp in Thailand. They told him that the only reason people did all that work for virtually nothing was fear of death.

p There has been no mention of intellectuals in any recently published Kampuchean official documents. A Yugoslav correspondent who visited Pnom Penh concluded that “officially, intellectuals no longer exist”. To prevent new intellectuals emerging in the country, the Pnom Penh authorities have 18 closed down not only higher, but also secondary schools, and have reduced the number of primary schools to a minimum. “We saw boys working together with grown-ups, building dikes and cultivating paddy fields. In villages we saw more boys and girls holding shovels than school bags,” wrote D. Rancic.

At the water pump manufacturing factory in Pnom Penh he saw youths, even 12-year-olds, “who had to stand on a platform so they could reach the machines they were operating”. They work nine hours a day and, in addition, cultivate the communal kitchen garden. Their staple diet is boiled rice and fish. Meat is issued twice a week, and milk only twice a month.