Word: phnom-penh
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...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...
...will the millions of refugees in the countryside eat between now and then? If the new government refuses foreign aid, as it has said it will do, who will provide the seed for next year's crop? "Was this just cold brutality," wrote Schanberg, who stayed behind when Phnom-Penh fell last month, "a cruel and sadistic imposition of the law of the jungle? ... Or is it possible that, seen through the eyes of the peasant soldiers and revolutionaries, the forced evacuation of the cities is a harsh necessity? Or was the policy both cruel and ideological...
...fate of the Cambodian people that he and other foreigners left behind is an agonizingly unanswerable question. The makeup of the new government is not yet clear, and the danger of factional fighting appears great. A fortnight ago, the Khmer Rouge leadership reportedly held a "national congress" in Phnom-Penh, with Khieu Samphan, the military commander and Deputy Premier, in attendance. Few Khmer Rouge leaders have publicly mentioned Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Though he remains the titular head of the new government, it is hard to imagine the temperamental but still popular prince fitting easily into the present company in Phnom...
...carry out vengeful reprisals. The foreign evacuees saw a few bodies on the roads and highways last week, but these could have been "accidental" victims of the forced march to the countryside. What seems certain is that Cambodia's period of zealous self-imposed isolation will continue. Radio Phnom-Penh reported last week that the nation's new leaders were busy campaigning to "clear the country of the filth and garbage left behind by the war of aggression." Though it also spoke of rebuilding the country's industry, the broadcast left little doubt that the government...