Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors
by Dith Pran
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dith PranEditor: Kim DePaul
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-04-10
ISBN: 0300078730
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors
Book Review: Human life wasn't even worth a bullet
Summary: 5 Stars
These children's memoirs give a human face to the unacceptable genocide committed by the Red Khmer in Cambodia in the name of a Western totalitarian ideology (Marxism - Leninism), which the top cadres `learned' in western universities (Paris).
As Dith Pran explains in his introduction, children were at the heart of the Red Khmer's fanatical ideological policies. The Red Khmer mounted an all out attack on family life. Children didn't belong anymore to their parents, but to the Red Khmer's ruling organization. Children were deprived of real knowledge of their natural parents.
The aim of the ideologues was to indoctrinate completely all `clean' newborn members of the population in order to build a `Brave New World'.
But the top of the Party themselves contradicted these unnatural and inhuman policies. Ieng Sary (Pol Pot's brother-in-law) put his sons at the helm of the province he controlled, while Ta Mok put all his siblings in high positions in his province. Nepotism at the top was rampant!
As one of the children remarks, the victory of the Red Khmer was positively greeted by the majority of the population, because people wanted `peace at any price'. But afterwards, of course not at any price.
The Red Khmer regime turned into a butchery, an endless slaughtering (clubbing to death, not shooting, because gunshots would have sown panic among the victims in waiting), a genocide through outright executions, overwork, exhaustion, starvation and illnesses. Whole families (women, children and babies) were killed because the rulers feared `revenge'.
But ultimately, the most cynical aspect of this atrocious story is the fact that this regime was supported by the West, because the Red Khmer were an enemy of Vietnam, which was an ally of the USSR. In fact, the Red Khmer mass murderers could escape to an ally of the West, Thailand.
One needs a strong stomach to digest these memories of an ideological and partisan genocide. They are a must read for all those who want to understand who we are and of what mankind is capable of doing when it disposes of unlimited powers.
Summary of Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors
This extraordinary book contains eyewitness accounts of life in Cambodia during Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, accounts written by survivors who were children at the time. The book has been put together by Dith Pran, whose own experiences in Cambodia were so graphically portrayed in the film The Killing Fields.The testimonies related here bear poignant witness to the slaughter the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the Cambodian people. The contributors -- most of them now in the United States and pictured in photographs that accompany their stories -- report on life in Democratic Kampuchea as seen through children's eyes. They speak of their bewilderment and pain as Khmer Rouge cadres tore their families apart, subjected them to harsh brainwashing, drove them from their homes to work in forced-labor camps, and executed captives in front of them. Their stories tell of suffering and the loss of innocence, the struggle to survive against all odds, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.
Dith Pran, the Cambodian photojournalist portrayed by Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields, compiled this collection of eyewitness accounts to the genocide perpetrated by Pol Pot's regime from 1975 to 1979. All of the survivors who recount their stories here were children when the Khmer Rouge took power, and the horrific images from a time when an estimated third of the Cambodian population died of disease, starvation, and execution remain fixed in their minds to this day.
The bleakness of evil made commonplace permeates these testaments. "There was a man who was friends with a woman, and they had a friendly chat under a tree," one woman writes. "Pol Pot saw them and accused them of having an affair... Pol Pot tied them up on a cross and then told everyone to watch the couple being questioned and hit. The lady was pregnant and was hit until she lost the baby and died. The man was also beaten to death." As Cambodians struggle to rebuild their lives and nation, books such as this make sure that they--and we--will never forget the depths from which they have been forced to rise.
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