Arn manages to survive all of this, and eventually manages to get to the Thailand border where he is found and taken to a hospital. He and the remaining children who don’t run into the woods in the confusion are given guns and sent out to discover the locations of their ‘enemies’. When the Vietnamese come to help Cambodia rid the country of the Khmer Rouge, Arn has been with them for so long that it is easy to convince him that the Vietnamese are the threat. Arn has no idea if any of his family survives. The children are taken from the parents, boys going to one encampment, and girls to another. They are starved and still expected to work. Those who remain after this cull are expected to work in rice fields for the good of all, given little if anything to eat, and constantly filled with the terror that they will be the next ones singled out to be beaten or worse. They are taken and slaughtered, left in piles barely covered over, if at all. First they are cataloged, during which process all those likely to revolt those unable to work those who are ill or disabled and those who are educated are weeded from the rest.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |