the khmer rouge regime a personal nightmare enotes

In this notebook a Khmer Rouge cadre named Ly Sok Khy, completes his biography and answers questions from a special questionnaire ( Figure 1). In addition, Khmer Rouge cadres were required to complete an eleven page questionnaire describing their family backgrounds and personal histories.Īn important example of this kind of document is a notebook that was obtained in 1979 in the headquarters of the Khmer Rouges Department of Information and Propaganda.

We also know that children were taught to read and write under the auspices of the regime, and that Khmer Rouge cadres kept extensive notebooks from indoctrination sessions. It is thus surprising to learn that the Khmer Rouge produced at least three monthly publications. On the basis of these facts, many have concluded that the Khmer Rouge were against education in principle and preferred to rule over illiterate people. One way of doing this was erasing all signs of education under the previous regime.īut was the ability to read and write grounds for persecution under the Khmer Rouge? To avoid being targeted, people did not wear glasses no one dared speak French and reading a novel was considered a capital offense. To avoid being targeted, “new people” tried to hide their group identity and be as inconspicuous as possible. “New people” as a group provided an easy target and were increasingly singled out as traitors intent on sabotaging the goals of the revolution. While “capitalist imperialists” were a standard target of Party rhetoric, the Center looked increasingly inward rather than outward to find enemies. When villages and regions were not able to fulfill the Center’s expectations for rice production, for example, the Party looked for scapegoats rather than reassessing its goals. As such, their commitment to the Party Center and its policies was considered suspect. It has been established that the Khmer Rouge targeted particular groups of people, among them Buddhist monks, ethnic minorities, and educated elites, who were referred to as “new people.” 1 Unlike the “base people” who joined the revolution prior to 1975, “new people” did not take part in “the struggle” to defeat the US-backed Lon Nol regime. It is estimated that over 1.7 million people died from starvation, execution, disease, and over-work during the Cambodian genocide, which took place between 19. (Featuring an overview of Revolutionary Flag Magazine) The Cambodian Genocide Program, Yale University

The khmer rouge regime a personal nightmare enotes