Word: khmer
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...curtain of silence that has concealed Cambodia from Western eyes ever since the Khmer Rouge capture of Phnom-Penh on April 17 opened briefly last week, revealing a shocking portrait of a nation in torturous upheaval. Eyewitness reports by the few Western journalists who stayed on in the Cambodian capital after the closing down of the American embassy indicated that the country's new Communist masters have proved to be far more ruthless, if not more cruel and sadistic in their exercise of power than most Western experts had expected...
Phnom-Penh has become a ghost city, forcibly and quickly emptied of most of its 2 million inhabitants. Perhaps as many as half of Cambodia's 7.6 million people have become victims of a massive dislocation, a forced march of city dwellers who have been ordered by the Khmer Rouge government to take to the roads and paths and become rice growers in the countryside. Even hospitals have been evacuated, and doctors stopped in mid-surgery, so that the patients, some limping, some crawling, could take their part in the newly proclaimed "peasant revolution...
Naive Glee. Eyewitness accounts contained scenes of savage contrast. Many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers who first entered Phnom-Penh were country boys who joyfully climbed aboard abandoned automobiles and rammed them, more by accident than design, against walls or telegraph poles; with naive glee, they looted stores for wristwatches but threw jewelry away because they had no use for it. Yet their leaders appeared to be tough disciplinarians who were more concerned about ideology than about the plight of the country's war-weary people. There were also reports of public executions, but these were not confirmed...
...early hours of the rebel take-over were a time of wild unreality. Westerners and Cambodian civilians gathered at the Hotel Le Phnom cheered as the first Khmer Rouge soldiers arrived. They were smiling and friendly, and the euphoria lasted for several hours. Only later did foreigners and city dwellers alike realize that these first soldiers were actually members of a 200-man private band led by a daredevil freelance general, Hem Keth Dara, 29, and not really part of the Khmer Rouge at all. They were quickly replaced by tough, disciplined soldiers, heavily laden with arms, who swept through...
Fallen City. After the surrender of the city, Red Cross authorities had tried to convert the Hotel Le Phnom into a protected international zone. But at 5 p.m. on the day of the takeover, Khmer Rouge troops ordered the hotel evacuated within 30 minutes. Hundreds of foreigners fled to the French embassy compound; most of them remained there for 13 days, while fires and shooting broke out sporadically in the fallen city...