p . . .The communists also killed some students, teachers and other “intellectuals” for no apparent reason other than the Jact that they were educated. Approximately 2,000 schoolteachers were incarcerated at Wat Ek monastery north-west of Battambang, another 1,000 or so at a camp north-east of the city. A driver for the communists who later escaped to Thailand claimed that in May he saw soldiers kill 17 teachers from the Wat Ek camp with axes.

p . . .One evening in May, a squad of communist soldiers appeared at Khal Kabei in the Thmar Puok district. “Stay close to home tonight,” they said. And a tractor drove past, towing a trailer carrying a group of women aged 18 to 25.

p As dawn came, the villagers discovered why the Khmer Rouge had wanted the night to themselves. About 500 yards along a cart track east to Khal Kabei, where all could see, were the remains of the young women. “They had been buried up to the necks,” said a villager. “You could see only their heads.” Each had been stabbed in the throat.

For more than a week, as the heads became swollen with putrefaction and the smell of death permeated the village the Khmer Rouge refused to let Khal Kabei arrange a proper burial. . . .