A story that needs to be told

There is a very powerful story on Open Democracy in the wake of the trials of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia this week.

Var Hong Ashe came from a priveleged background,was an English teacher and was married to a UNESCO worker.

Exactly the class of people that Pol Pot's regime sought to extinguish.

Within hours of their victory in April 1975,

The Khmer Rouge ordered us to leave the city “for three hours only” and to carry nothing with us so that they could search the place for republican soldiers who had gone into hiding. This order applied to all towns and cities, small or large, throughout the country. Of course, people did what they were ordered to do.

But it was a trip of no return

Five hours passed, one day, two days, three days…. We realised by now that this was a trip without return. The Khmer Rouge fired machine-gun rounds in the air to force us to advance under the intense heat of the scorching sun (April is the hottest month of the year in Cambodia). The children cried of thirst and hunger; the elderly were exhausted; pregnant women gave birth on the roadside; young people broke into houses along the road – empty since their owners had been evacuated ahead of us – to seek food.

And of the horrors

It was common to see a man whose face was pale, trembling with fear, being paraded through the village with his hands bound behind the back, guarded on either side by Khmer Rouge cadre carrying large machetes. It was terrifying: everyone knew that they were going to decapitate this man. The scene served its purpose of warning us that the Khmer Rouge wielded absolute power. We lived from one day to the next. We had no idea what might happen to us in the night or on the following day.

It is a story that needs to be told over and over again just so that these circumstances can never happen again