"When we first arrived in Khum Speu village, men and boys had joined wholeheartedly in soccer matches after a hard day's work, but soon these games were prohibited. Players were told that if they had energy enough to play, then they had energy enough to work longer hours. Angka claimed that it was wrong to waste 'the water that comes from the skin' when it could be expended instead in productive labor. Sweat was to be spent in useful work, not decadent play." (63)
"Dissatisfied with our makeshift huts, people were anxious to qualify for better housing. Some even volunteered information about themselves to prove they belonged to the favored groups allowed to move. Over three million took part in this migration.
In the past, people had been suspicious of the calls for workers, since most men failed to return. We had concluded that such calls were often a ruse to permanently remove selected individuals. However, this new resettlement call for entire familes was viewed differently; it matched our expectations for a return to normality. Conditions had to be better in newly constructed villages, we'd reasoned. Perhaps families would be reunited with missing fathers and husbands after all. Tossed a crumb of hope, we built a feast of optimism.
Close friends and relatives, who did not want to be separated from each other, had timidly asked to be allowed to resettle with those who had been called to transfer. To our surprise, many had been allowed to leave. Most of us jumped to the conclusion that this new leniency must be a turning point toward a decrease in arbitrary rule.
[...] Told to leave bulky household possessions behind, since the new villages had everything provided, those who qualified had willingly lined up to board the waiting vehicles with only a few personal belongings.
Ox carts, trucks, and buses arrived on the appointed day in each village; the average-sized truck held about eighty people. Each vehicle filled rapidly and pulled out of village squares amid tears and cheering.
Typically, a few miles from the village, the vehicles stopped along a tree-lined road. Greeted by stirring music, blaring from loudspeakers, people eagerly piled out of the trucks and lined up to register. A handful of soldiers escorted the women and children, a few at a time, down the winding forest paths or through the abandoned rubber plantations. Hurrying behind the soldiers, excited villagers wondered aloud about their new village.
Upon arrival in the clearing, they hesitated, then tried to retreat. Before them gaped newly dug trenches, an abandoned reservoir, a well, or an old mine shaft. Horrified, villagers were ordered at gunpoint to line up. Their elbows were tied behind their backs with red cord and they were made to kneel along the open trench. Dumbfounded, most obeyed without complaint or struggle. Soldiers administered a quick blow to the back of the head or neck with a heavy wooden hoe or a machete. Each soldier was able to kill villagers at the rate of twenty to thirty per minute with little noise or wasted bullets. The red parachute cords were retrieved for future use.
After the women and children were dispatched, their husbands and fathers were ushered into the clearings. Seeing their massacred loved ones, their own will to live weakened. Most submitted in mute silence, kneeled, and were clubbed.
[...] During French colonial rule, hundred of exploratory mine shafts had been sunk in the plantations as men searched for gemstones. These old shafts were over one hundred feet deep; the bottom could not be seen from the upper edge. Truckload after truckload of victims was dumped into each shaft. When soldiers finished, the shafts, reservoirs, and wells of Cambodia were full." (144-146)
"When the mass graves were finally discovered, the justification given us by Angka for killing women and children was that anyone associated with a "guilty person" [the educated; anyone literate; skilled workers (plumbers, technicians, etc); old government officials; anyone who had lived and worked and been schooled in the cities, basically] was tainted.
Keang had information that eventually everyone over the age of twelve at the time of the takover was ultimately scheduled to be killed [...]. Then there would be left only pliable youth who did not remember the former way of life and had no training or ability to organize resistance against Angka and its plans for a 'perfect society'." (147)
(2nd Edition. Auke Bay: East/West Bridge, 1998)
A very succinct history of what happened: http://www.dithpran.org/killingfields.htm
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