Word: khmers
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During the four years that the Khmer Rouge cadres of ousted Premier Pol Pot ruled Cambodia, perhaps half the country's 8 million people died as a result of war, disease or starvation. That enormous death toll has grown since the Vietnamese invasion eleven months ago, which imposed Heng Samrin as Cambodia's new leader. Either because crops had not been planted, or because rice fields were destroyed in the fighting, Cambodia's next rice harvest will be sufficient for only 1.75 million people. The remaining 2.25 million Cambodians face death from starvation or related diseases unless...
Famine has plagued Cambodia since Vietnamese forces invaded last December and overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime. The refusal of the current Heng Samrin regime to send food to supporters of ex-Premier Pol Pot has complicated international relief efforts...
Until now, attempts to get food to the starving Khmers have been hampered by red tape and the anarchic conditions inside Cambodia. The World Food Program, UNICEF and the International Red Cross have been supplying emergency rations to the refugees who have fled into Thailand as well as to the 80,000 Thais who have been displaced from their border villages by the fighting. Initially, Hanoi and the regime of Heng Samrin in Phnom-Penh objected to the relief operation because many of the refugees being helped were considered members or supporters of the Khmer Rouge. But it now appears...
Famine is only the latest in a series of wrenching tragedies that have befallen Cambodia since it first became engulfed by the Indochina war in 1970. Following the Communist takeover by China-backed Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in 1975, between 2 million and 3 million Cambodians were systematically murdered or otherwise eliminated under a genocidal "purification" policy. It was aimed at destroying the educated class and creating a peasant society. Some journalists who have visited the country have seen mass graves and torture camps reminiscent of Dachau and Auschwitz...
...December 1978, Viet Nam invaded Cambodia, swiftly managed to depose Pol Pot and installed Samrin as President. In fierce fighting against the surviving Khmer Rouge cadres, food became a military weapon on both sides. Explained a Western military analyst in Bangkok last week: "If you can't grow food, you can't eat, and if you can't eat, you can't fight." Rice crops have been destroyed and planting new fields has become dangerous. Pol Pot's forces harass farmers in areas controlled by Viet Nam, while the Vietnamese do their best to prevent...