p By 1976, Angka Loeu’s domination of Cambodia was beyond challenge. And the New Villages, hewn from the wilderness, were, in their fashion, functioning. The December rice crop, described by the communists as “not a bumper one but sufficient for self-supply”, had been harvested. Now Angka Loeu seemingly could afford to stabilise the country and ameliorate the deathly rigors. But that was not to be.
p In October 1975, monitors abroad listened as the commander in Sisophon received radio orders to prepare for the extermination, after the harvest, of (ill former government soldiers and civil servants, regardless of rank, and their families. Soon word spread among the communist soldiers that teachers, village chiefs and students were to be included in the toll.
p The killing began during early 1976. Before, the organised slaughter largely had been confined to officers and senior civil servants. Now the lowliest private, the most humble civil servant, the most innocent teacher, even foresters and public health officials, became prey.
p Father Francois Ponchaud, a French authority on Cambodia, reports that on January 26, a communist official in the Mongkol Borey district declared: “Prisoners of war (people expelled from cities and villages controlled by the Lon Nol government on April 17) are no longer needed, and local chiefs are free to dispose of them as they please.” And after that, the killing rose steadily as Angka Loeu strove to obliterate every human trace of the old government by the first anniversary of its victory. . . .
p . . .After interviewing Cambodian refugees given asylum in France and studying the daily broadcasts of Radio Pnom Penh, Ponchaud concluded that between April 1975 and 99 February 1976, at least 800,000 Cambodians died as a consequence of famine, disease and execution. Last summer, after one month in Thailand eliciting fresh data from refugees, he concluded that his earlier evaluation was now “far below reality".
p The authors, on the basis of their interviews, estimate that, at minimum, 1.2 million men, women and children died in Cambodia between April 17, 1975, and December 1976 as a consequence of the actions of Angka Loeu. ...
p . . .After the desolation of the cities, the early massacres and in the midst of the first famine, one of the Angka Loeu bosses, Jeng Sary, flew to a special session of the United Nations General Assembly. He left behind a country without universities, commerce, art, music, literature, science or hope....
. . .Upon landing in New York, Ieng Sary boasted, “The towns have been cleaned”. . . .
Notes