Word: khmer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...said Cambodia's Premier Pol Pot at a banquet in Peking some weeks ago. After the leader of Kampuchea, as Cambodia was renamed when its Khmer Rouge Communists seized power in 1975, visited China, some changes in Southeast Asia's most militantly xenophobic regime appeared. Obviously at Peking's urging, the government once again acknowledged, though not diplomatically, neighboring Thailand, with whom it had previously had little contact. Last month the country's Foreign Minister, Ieng Sary, came to New York City, where he played host at a United Nations cocktail party for 200 diplomats...
Backward is one way to describe the country. Brutal, according to those who have escaped, is more apt. Significantly, the escapees include more and more former Khmer Rouge fighters who once served as the enforcers for Angka Loeu, the "Organization on High," which runs the country as a Communist fiefdom...
During the three weeks that the ambassador and his family spent in Phnom Penh, they were virtually imprisoned. Every morning a Khmer Rouge soldier arrived on a bicycle and took orders for the day's meals. Several hours later, he would return with the cooked dishes. On only a few occasions did the ambassador have appointments with Cambodian officials-and he was whisked to them in a curtained limousine. Managing a few peeks out, he saw nothing more than shimmering hot, nearly deserted streets...
Others resist more directly by heading for the hills and jungles to mount armed insurgencies. Emulating the tactics of the Pathet Lao, Khmer Rouge or the Viet Cong, supporters of the old regimes are carrying on a guerrilla war that the new Communist police states have so far been unable to bring under control...
Hanoi has been unable to devote its full attention to these pockets of armed resistance because much of its army is tied down battling a onetime ally: Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, who are trying to annex Vietnamese districts contiguous to Cambodia in order to regain control over the tens of thousands of Cambodians who fled the new Phnom-Penh regime. Viet Nam's Quang Due province has been repeatedly attacked by the Khmer Rouge, while Hanoi's forces have made counterthrusts into Cambodia's Svay Rieng. Neither government seems to have clear control of Chau...