Word: evening
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Khmer Rouge took power. Phnom-Penh, once a placid, luxury-loving city of broad avenues and towering hibiscus trees, became a ghost town as the Khmer Rouge force marched the city's refugee-swollen population to resettlement on rural communes that were no better than slave-labor camps. Even the wounded were prodded at gunpoint from hospital beds ?and left to die along the roadside if they were too weak to walk. At the camps, Cambodians of all ages were forced to work from dawn until after dusk planting rice. Families were separated, Buddhism abolished as the state religion...
...dogged Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who still control much of the countryside. As a result of the continuing war, food has become a weapon on both sides. The Khmer Rouge routinely ravage the new paddyfields planted under the Vietnamese occupation. Not only are the Cambodians starving, but even the Vietnamese troops are said to be on short rations. Many of the Khmer Rouge have been pressed back into hilly, thickly jungled areas where rice cannot be grown. Still, the Khmer Rouge eat almost as well as they always have; it is the civilian slave laborers they force to accompany them...
Systematic pillaging by Vietnamese troops has compounded the country's plight. Cambodian shops, homes and Buddhist temples have been stripped by Hanoi's invaders. Machines, household appliances, furniture and Buddha heads have been loaded aboard planes and trucks and shipped to Viet Nam. There are even reports that the Vietnamese are loading rice intended for refugees aboard carriers headed for Hanoi...
...Vietnamese might not want supply trucks rolling down the Cambodian highways because they are engaged in military operations on those roads. They also may not want outsiders to see that it is Hanoi that is righting the war against the Khmer Rouge and not Phnom-Penh. They fear that even if the food is distributed to Cambodian civilians, some of those civilians may pass it on to the Khmer Rouge, or have it seized. Finally, the Vietnamese simply don't give a damn about what happens to the Cambodians...
Though adaptive responses keep the body running for a while, even for months if some food and water are available, prolonged starvation eventually disrupts vital processes. Says Dr. Buford Nichols Jr. of Houston's Baylor College of Medicine: "You keep falling back, like a military withdrawal, but finally the body just collapses." Adds Dr. Myron Winick of New York City's Columbia University Institute of Nutrition: "Victims of starvation have to adapt. But once they do, they have a very small margin for error." Death comes in many ways. The intestinal walls become damaged; severe and constant diarrhea...