Cambodians begin to learn of bloody past [... some of the former KR are still in power]

Monday, August 3rd, 2009
AFP

ANG SNUOL (Cambodia): It plunged their country into a communist “Year Zero” in the late 1970s and killed about a third of the population, but most young Cambodians shrug when asked about the Khmer Rouge.

“I never learned about the regime and my parents never told me about it either,” says 15-year-old Si Phana. Her schoolmate Ang Pheaktra, 17, knows only a little more about that bleak time which traumatised a generation.

“My parents only told me that the Khmer Rouge were very cruel,” Ang Pheaktra says.

Even though there’s a war crimes tribunal for senior leaders of the movement, most here are unaware the regime killed up to two million people and enslaving the population on collective farms. Read more!