Sunday, April 17

More About "Year Zero"

Today marks 30 years ago since the communist Khmer Rouge seize Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, in 1975.

Looking for mentions in the world press, I've found:

1: Available at SignOnSanDiego.com by the Union-Tribune is "Khmer Rouge foot soldiers rue their revolution that became mass murder". Written by Ker Munthit of Associate Press.

Among the biggest losers are guerrillas like Nai Oeurn, many of whom have moved back to their impoverished villages and face suspicious neighbors who still remember the Khmer Rouge days.
...
Pol Pot died in the jungle in 1998, and about a dozen top Khmer Rouge aides may face a U.N.-assisted tribunal that is supposed to open this year. The foot soldiers, however, have been left to make their own peace with the past.


2: Available through AlertNet, a service of Reuters is "30 years after "Year Zero", Cambodia seeks justice". By Lach Chantha (with additional reporting by Ek Madra).

It follows Bou Meing, 64, as he returns to Tuol Sleng, the high school which became "Cambodia's Auschwitz".

As an artist who could churn out portraits of Pol Pot, the ultra-Maoist regime's reclusive leader, he is one of seven out of an estimated 17,000 Tuol Sleng inmates who lived to tell the tale.

"Whenever the Khmer Rouge tribunal happens, I'll stand as a witness and point to those who arrested me and my wife and I will ask them: 'Where is my wife?' If they say she was killed, then the court should sentence them," Bou Meing said.

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