Word: khmer
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Choan See was just 12 years old when he became a Khmer Rouge soldier in 1983. See was proud "to kill Vietnamese" in the war to end the occupation of his country, but after Hanoi finally withdrew its troops in 1989, he longed for an end to the fighting. His wife and three children, however, were kept as virtual hostages in the Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng, close to the Thai border, and he had little choice but to stay with the guerrilla army in its fight against the Phnom Penh government. "Life was very hard," See says...
Three weeks ago, See and his family were awakened by the sound of gunfire--but the shots were coming from the north, inside Anlong Veng, and not from the south, where he knew government troops had their front lines. A mutiny had split the ranks of the Khmer Rouge, and See and his family, along with thousands of other inhabitants of the village, fled south, where they found government trucks waiting to drive them to safety. "People were shouting, 'If you move south, you will live--if you move north, you will...
...began the final chapter in the three-decades-long history of the Khmer Rouge, one of the century's most brutal, self-destructive regimes. More than a million people died during the rule of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. Since then tens of thousands more have been killed and maimed by the guerrilla war and the country's treacherous minefields...
...rest of Cambodia held elections in 1993 and received millions of dollars in aid and investment, the Khmer Rouge found itself on the sidelines politically and economically, unable to buy the motorcycles and television sets that were proliferating across the country. A small trickle of defectors in the early '90s became a flood by 1996, when cadres in the gem-mining town of Pailin, the other principal Khmer Rouge base, joined the government side...
...thought this would let them off the hook, they were sadly mistaken. President Clinton pledged Thursday to hold the other Khmer Rouge leaders accountable for the 1975-79 genocide -- which, if all goes well, will mean the same kind of international tribunal intended for Pol Pot. More importantly, Cambodian government forces are closing in. ?We will persuade whoever can be persuaded to defect,? said Khieu Kanharith, a spokesman for the Phnom Penh regieme that already includes a number of Khmer Rouge turncoats. ?But Ta Mok, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, as well as Pol Pot, must be brought to trial...