Word: khmers
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...miles south of Phnom Penh, seem half empty. The government says there are 20,000 people in Kampot province, which once had a population of 420,000. It is possible to stand on a main street now and not see a soul. The reduction of urban populations by the Khmer Rouge was so thorough that towns have been largely taken over by peasants and displaced persons. They squat in empty houses or in lean-tos they have erected in abandoned gardens...
Fear lingers everywhere. Hardly anyone is eager to talk politics, or about the dreaded Khmer Rouge, during whose five-year reign an estimated 2 million of Kampuchea's 7 million people were killed. An exception is Bour-Chinell, 64, chief of the provincial public works department in Kampot, who says, "I want national reconciliation. It's a good idea to bring Prince Sihanouk back. The old people still love him, and the young people have all heard...
Kampot's Revolutionary Hospital, filled with victims of the war, offers ample evidence of the need for peace. A small Polish surgical team has saved many lives, but the wards remain crowded with soldiers and civilians who stepped on mines laid by the Khmer Rouge and others during the war. "What kind of life do I lead now?" asks Nget Run, 20, who lost a leg while gathering firewood...
Sihanouk claimed that the Khmer Rouge, the strongest but least palatable of his coalition partners, was trying to "liquidate" the prince's rebel faction. Predicting that Sihanouk would ultimately attend the peace talks, Foreign Minister Siddhi Savetsila of Thailand saw his resignation as a way to gain leverage in shaping his country's future...
Viet Nam invaded Kampuchea, formerly Cambodia, in late 1978, eventually driving the murderous Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot into exile along the Thai border. The new government of Heng Samrin was itself composed of former Khmer Rouge leaders who had revolted against Pol Pot. In the aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion, the world learned for the first time that in a population of more than 7 million, the Khmer Rouge had slaughtered between 1 million and 2 million of their countrymen...