Word: cambodia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Visitors to Cambodia have come away charmed by the lush beauty of the countryside and the smiling people. But the violent side of Cambodian life can manifest itself almost without warning. "Cambodians have this darkness, which is part of the shadow of their sweetness," says David Chandler, who has written a biography of Pol Pot and several histories of the country. "Many of us who keep going there still find it hard to understand." Chandler observes that Pol Pot, with his gentle voice, never failed to charm those he met. He liked to quote French poetry. This was the same...
When the Vietnamese communists took Saigon in 1975, they put their "class enemies" into re-education camps. In neighboring Cambodia, Pol Pot built extermination camps. Teachers, doctors, people who could speak a foreign language, even people who wore glasses, were purged as he sought to reduce all of Cambodia to the level of the peasant class. The Vietnamese could be cruel captors, but their Confucian heritage left them open to educational reform. In Cambodia, by contrast, Buddhism encouraged a belief in the ineluctability of karma and the idea that evil suffered is evil deserved. "The idea of karma goes very...
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: In what may require the biggest leap of faith so far this year, Cambodian leader Hun Sen is asking members of parliament who fled his bloody coup to return and endorse his choice for a new co-prime minister. The offer comes just weeks after Hun Sen took power from former co-prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a bloody action in which 40 of Ranariddh's supporters were killed in custody, according to the U.N. Human Rights Center. For Hun Sen, the push is a move to legitimize his government in the face of his violent...
...either that he was dead, or that one or another splinter group had him in custody. Turns out, according to Thayer, that Pol Pot's former Khmer Rouge comrades have held him prisoner since June, when a violent split in the group developed as it negotiated peace terms with Cambodia's government. On Saturday, his alleged captors said via their clandestine radio station that Pol Pot had been sentenced to life for his crimes against the Cambodian people and that the Khmer Rouge movement would be terminated. The broadcast seemed to be an attempt by surviving members of the Khmer...
...associates belies that promise. Late last week a replacement for Ranariddh stepped forward: Toan Chay, governor of Siem Reap province. A former ally of the prince's who split with him and formed a rival faction in May, Toan Chay told TIME, "I already consider myself the leader of Cambodia." The best outcome would be for King Sihanouk to mediate, as he has done in many past crises, but he is currently in Beijing and ill with cancer...