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Chapter 7 Confronting Genocide Their skimpy food ration would last about a day, with no assurance that more would get through the choppy seas tomorrow. Medicines and drugs in short supply. A meager and polluted water supply, with the dry season a month or so away. Sanitation? Imagine 16 toilets for 26,000 people. In one week the number of infectious-hepatitis cases—108 of them—had almost doubled. New arrivals sleep on the open beaches under heavy monsoon rains. . . . As I left Pulau Bidong, an island about two and a half hours by fishing boat from the Malaysian resort town of Trenggenau, aVietnamese refugee said to me:‘Please don’t pity us in spite of what you saw here.We’re alive, unlike our people who drowned trying to reach land, any land. But when you return to America, please try to make your people understand.’ —Leo Cherne, “Hell Isle,” NewYorkTimes, February 3, 1979 Prologue A s the last American helicopter lifted off from the top of the U.S. embassy in Saigon on April 29, 1975, about 130,000 refugees were in motion, fleeing any way they could.Those who left Indochina in 1975 were brought to military bases in Guam, the Philippines, and the United States, and most were resettled in the United States. For many people remaining in Indochina, the nightmare had just begun. This was particularly so for Cambodians.The country had gained its independence from France at the same Geneva conference that dividedVietnam . Like SouthVietnam, Cambodia was founded as a kingdom, with Prince Sihanouk as its head of state. During the 1960s, Sihanouk concluded that the Communists were going to conquer SouthVietnam and clandestinely allowed the NorthVietnamese andViet Cong to station troops in Cambodia. He also permitted sending supplies to them through the Cambodian harbor of Sihanoukville .The NorthVietnamese used their bases in Cambodia as staging areas for assaults against SouthVietnam. By 1969, the NorthVietnamese had established five divisional bases with 50,000 military personnel in Cambodia. 113 The Khmer Rouge, the indigenous Cambodian Communist forces seeking the overthrow of Sihanouk, consisted of about 2,000 diverse individuals and were militarily insignificant. Ho Chi Minh had withdrawn Cambodian Communist cadres in 1954, and the Khmer Rouge considered this a betrayal. Out of appreciation for Sihanouk’s clandestine support for the Communist war effort in SouthVietnam, the NorthVietnamese did not offer substantial support to the Khmer Rouge.1 Sihanouk was overthrown in 1970 by military officers led by General Lon Nol, who tried to rid Cambodia of the NorthVietnamese military.The United States openly bombed the NorthVietnamese bases in Cambodia, and American military forces were sent into those areas of Cambodia controlled by the Communists.The NorthVietnamese retaliated by stepping up support to the Khmer Rouge. Communist forces in Cambodia seeking the overthrow of Lon Nol swelled into an army of nearly 100,000 men.2 Cambodian Holocaust The Khmer Rouge were obsessed with creating the world’s first pure Communist society. For starters, Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, planned to evacuate all Cambodian cities and establish an agrarian nation. When the Khmer Rouge occupied Cambodia in 1975, Cambodians, regardless of age, medical condition, or previous occupation, were forced out of all cities and sent to work in rural rice paddies. Most had only minutes to prepare for this trek. To express a clean break with the past, the Khmer Rouge leaders changed the name of their country to Kampuchea. When the capitol, Phnom Penh, fell to the Khmer Rouge, about twenty international journalists remained in the city. Among the journalists was Sidney Schanberg of the NewYorkTimes. Schanberg’s aide and Cambodian photographer, Dith Pran, had wanted to depart Phnom Penh with his family, but Schanberg requested that he remain. Luckily for Schanberg, Pran honored his request. Pran intervened to save Schanberg from the Khmer Rouge in the days just before the fall of Lon Nol.When the Khmer Rouge interned journalists and other non-Cambodian citizens in the French embassy, Dith Pran was not permitted to remain with them. Like other Cambodians, he was forced to leave Phnom Penh. On May 11, 1975, one month after the fall of Phnom Penh, the journalists were evacuated overland to Thailand. They passed through deserted cities and towns with looted shops. Upon arrival inThailand, Schanberg wrote a series of articles for the NewYorkTimes detailing the Cambodian holocaust. 114 Rescuing theWorld: The Life andTimes of Leo Cherne [3.22.171.136] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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