Word: cambodias
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...Khmer Rouge took root in Cambodia's northeastern jungles as early as the 1960s, a guerrilla group driven by communist ideals that nipped the periphery of government-controlled areas. The flash point came when Cambodia's leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was deposed in a military coup in 1970 and leaned on the Khmer Rouge for support. The prince's imprimatur lent the movement legitimacy, although while he would nominally serve as head of state, he spent much of the Khmer Rouge's rule under house arrest. As the country descended into civil war, the Khmer Rouge presented themselves...
...Simultaneously, the Khmer Rouge were planning the steps necessary for a radical shift to an agrarian society. During the Khmer Rouge's nascent days, the movement's leader, Pol Pot, had grown to admire the way the tribes on the outskirts of Cambodia's jungles lived, free of Buddhism, money or education, and now he wanted to foist the same philosophy on the entire nation. Pol Pot envisioned a Cambodia absent of any social institutions like banks or religions or any modern technology. He sought to triple agricultural production in a year, absent the manpower or means necessary...
...deadly arrogance. With the cities emptied and the population under Khmer Rouge control, Pol Pot's means of implementation was to begin exterminating anyone who didn't fit this new ideal. He declared that he was turning Cambodia - now renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea - back to "Year Zero," and intellectuals, businessmen, Buddhists and foreigners were all purged. "What is rotten must be removed," read a popular Khmer Rouge slogan at the time, and remove they did, often by execution but sometimes simply by working people to death in the fields...
...pictures from a border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand...
...Capitol steps on which the president-elect would take his oath. Here I broke off from my unticketed acquaintances. My older brother’s hard work on the New Hampshire senate campaign had left him with a purple standing room ticket, and his post-campaign travels in Cambodia left him unable to claim it. I made my way up parallel to Constitution Avenue, passing streets still populated by more police than civilians and eventually reaching the intersection at 7th Street. The time was 6:35 am. The gate for purple ticket-holders was at Constitution Avenue and 1st Street?...