I’m no expert, but I’m 449 pages further along in my education of how that nightmarish saga went down. That’s thanks to an incredible book I finally finished a couple months ago.
Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short is an absolute must read if you want to understand how Cambodia was ripped apart in the 1970’s and the road leading up to and following its unraveling.
Yes, Short is a good writer, but more than that, it’s the substance that is utterly fascinating and horrific. Here are some quotables:
“The CPK (Communist Party of Kampuchea) became the first and only Party in the history of international communism to terminate its own existence.”
“In a civilized society, people understand what justice is. In our Khmer society, we do not… We still like to follow the savage ways of ancient times. If a man is condemned, we kill all his relatives lest one day they take revenge. If we knock down an opponent, we beat him until he dies. Victory to us, means that our adversary is dead. If he lives, it is not victory. That is our Khmer mentality.” –ex-Issarak leader Bunchan Mol
“The rest of the population relied on rural clinics, where untrained nurses administered intravenous drips of coconut juice, vitamin injections and pills containing a herbal remedy against malaria.”
“Picking a coconut without authorization was an anti-revolutionary act… Fruit that fell to the ground should be allowed to rot, rather than be gathered for individual use. ‘That belongs to Angkar,’ the soldiers would say as they forbade anyone to touch it.”
"Language was stripped bare of incorrect allusions. Instead of ‘I’, people had to say ‘we.’”
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