The Bandage of the Genocide

This is the diary of Poch Younly, a former school officer. He kept a journal and wrote about the terrible conditions. In one passage he wrote, “Everyone works like animals, like machines, without any value, without hope for the future…”  The neverending working conditions devalued Cambodians humanity. They were not seen as people; they were workers, animals, means to an end. Therefore their lives were replaceable. However, this did not stop the survivors; documentation such as this one proposed a promise that one of the atrocities would be uncovered. 

A famous survivor of the Cambodian genocide is Dith Pran. He managed to save a handful of western journalists from an executioner by persuading and pleading the soldiers who had captured them. Small acts of solidarity and morality are what encouraged one another to find the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Cambodian Genocide Survivor, Chan Pay was forced to marry a Khmer Rouge officer named Pao; he brutally beat and raped her every night. She was saved an old villager named Ta Roeun requested her and took her in. He fed, nourished, and tended to her and eventually helped her escape. Small unrecognized actions of compassion and morality upheld the standard of humanity.

Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos took in several groups of refugees escaping the Khmer Rouge, mostly educated or religious men, and women. Eventually, the Khmer Rouge was completely monitoring the border, making it difficult for them to escape, nevertheless, people still managed to flee.

Cambodia was eventually liberated in 1979 due to Vietnamese troops invading Cambodia in 1978 and eventually recapturing the capital, Phnom Penh. A stable Communist government was established and the Khmer Rouge retreated back to the jungles of Cambodia. If the intervention from Vietnam never happened, the Khmer Rouge could have stayed in power for much longer.