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Today, in 1975…
On April 17, 1975, I was five years old. I lived on Long Island. My biggest concern was that the Mets weren’t going to make it to the World Series. (They didn’t.)
On the other side of the world, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia. Over the next three years, eight months, and 20 days, millions of people were taken from the cities and forced into labor camps. Between 1.5 and 2 million people were killed.
This is not something I have spent a lot of time thinking about. I knew it happened. I probably knew when it happened but I was writing about it for No Business with Genocide and this hit me harder than I expected. I read about pretty awful things a lot and sometimes I feel like I am getting desensitized.
Samatha Harward put this list together. Things you may not know about the Cambodian genocide:
Important Facts About the Cambodian Genocide
- Unlike other genocides in which specific ethnic groups are targeted for execution, the Cambodian genocide had no exceptions and would single out doctors, teachers, minorities, people with an education, children and even babies.
- Pol Pot wanted the nation to revert to a self-sufficient way of living where money had no influence in society. This led to the forced evacuation of cities into the rural communities…