THE DIVISION OF INTERNATIONAL ..FF..IRS THE BRITISH COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
THE CONFERENCE OF BRITISH MISSIONARY SOCIETIES
KAMPUCHEA (CAMBODIA)
Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge on April 17th, 1975.
Within
a few hours its population of about two million was forced to take to the road.
Cambodia's second city, Battambang, had a population of more than 100,000 on ..pril 17th, 1975. On ..pril 23rd, the people of this city, too were ordered to leave and go in different directions to the countryside.
Aruthless determination to remove all traces, of the old regime is understood to be the reason for this compulsory exodus from the cities. "Let us reorganise the country during the next 2-3 years and then you can
return".
'Most recently, on October 2nd, 1977 in Peking, the head of the Cambodian Communist Party confirmed this mass evacuation of cities as a policy decided in February 1975 to break up "enemy spy organisations".
Several hundred thousand people are believed to have died through hunger, disease,old age or exhaustion, as a result of these enforced journeys and the conditions of life which have followed. Additionally officers and men of the defeated army, and officials of the former govern- ment, have been executed or imprisoned.
It is impossible to know the exact number of those who have died since ..pril 1975. Father Ponchaud, a Roman Catholic priest who lived in Cambodia for ten years until May 8th, 1975, who had studied the Khmer language and the culture of the country, and who had reported on many interviews with refugees, quotes from an unofficial source "Besides the 600,000 war dead, one must add at least 800,000 dead since ..pril 17th, 1975". He also quotes one Khmer Rouge:-
"If no more than 20,000 young people are left in Cambodia, then we will reconstruct the new Cambodia with those 20,000 alone".
The total population of Cambodia before the recent war has been estimated as 7 million.
Jean Lacouture, a French newsman who was a harsh critic of U.S. involvement in Indochina writes that "the bloodiest revolution in history is now taking place in Kampuchea".
Refugees
..s soon as Ihnom Penh fell, some officials or soldiers closely associated with the old regime crossed the frontier into Thailand.
Many others, of all social classes and political opinion, and including some Khmers Rouges, crossed the border after several months' experience of the new regime. Some feared execution, but the majority have given hunger and the extreme hardship of life as their reason. Latterly refugees have often arrived injured; indeed Thai Officials have suspected those who arrive without injury to be Khmer Rouge infiltrators.
Numbers of refugees cannot be exactly known. Latest figures indicate that approx. 15,000 have left Thailand for other host countries, and that over 15,000 Cambodians are currently in refugee camps in Thailand.
FR/34/77
PTO
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