Word: phnom-penh
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...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 Doc province...
Frequently Wept. Forced into exile in Peking by the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime that ousted him in 1970, Sihanouk had backed the Communist Khmer rebels. But since their capture of Phnom-Penh, the prince has reportedly been unhappy about the new regime's ruthless campaign of intimidation and reprisals against everyone with any connection to Cambodia's past. On a world tour last year, friends say, Sihanouk frequently wept over the course of events...
Since the Communist victory last year, an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 people-one-tenth of Cambodia's population-have died from political reprisals, disease or starvation. After the Khmer Rouge takeover, the authorities ordered a shocking forced march of 25,000 patients from their Phnom-Penh hospital beds to work in the countryside. This set the pattern. The populations of every city have been evacuated-young, old, sick, well-and forced, at rifle point, to work in the rice fields. All shops, schools and hospitals have been closed. Phnom-Penh has shrunk from a war-swollen population...
These warnings are reminiscent of Administration pleas in early 1975 for last-ditch aid to failing anti-Communist governments in Saigon and Phnom-Penh. In the Wall Street Journal last week, Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., charged the Administration with unnecessary hyperbole and suspect logic. "I strongly doubt," he argued, "that anyone in the Soviet Union is concluding today that . . . the Senate's action on Angola gives Moscow a blank check for foreign adventures...
There has been no evidence of the massive bloodbath that many Americans predicted would follow the collapse of the Thieu regime, and no tales to match the stories of mass executions being brought out of Cambodia by refugees from the Khmer Rouge in Phnom-Penh. Nonetheless, the new Communist government has taken some tough measures to discourage resistance. A few wealthy Chinese-traditional scapegoats of the Vietnamese-have been executed. Summary executions of petty criminals and looters have served as warnings that disorder will not be tolerated, though thievery and muggings still take place. Attacks on North Vietnamese troops continued...