Experiences...

Yem Yon:
Yem Yon is a 57 year old widow who is living in Daun Sor, a village outside of Phnom Penh. When the Khmer Rouge took over, Yem and her family was forced to do labor work in the country side. Yem says, “I was seven months pregnant and treated like a slave.” She added, “my boys were sick and forced to work. It killed them. My husband went to beg for some rice and they used the plate to beat him over the head.”

Her husband later disappeared, and all of her kids died off one by one from over work and sickness. Their bodies were put in holes with other corpses and some were even thrown away like they were nothing. All this suffering was inflicted upon them because of her husband working for a customs official in the time before the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia.

Source: Faulder, Dominic. " Special Report: Indochina: In the years of Dying: Human Bones bear mute-testimony to Pol Pot's Cambodia; Here Survivors give their accounts. Asian Week. (April 7, 2002): p ASWK10449687. (Expanded Academic Index).

Sophea Mouth
Sophea Mouth was 12 years old when the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia. Many of her family members were killed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Sophea recalled that her uncle and his family, including his pregnant wife were slaughtered in cold blood. The Khmer Rouge fighter shot her mom along with killing another one of her uncles.

Sophea lived in Battambang, Cambodia’s second largest city. After the Khmer entered, they forced everyone in the city to evacuate. When they left, Sophea and her family only managed to take a little bit of food for the journey.

In the country side, Sophea was exposed to many horrible sights. She witnessed truck loads of people getting butchered by the Khmer Rouge soldiers with machine guns. These bodies were dumped into bomb craters and left to rot in the tropical country side of Cambodia.

The stench of these corpses reached Sophea and her family every time the wind blew by, carrying the foul odor of rotting bodies. The unbearable smell of the corpses was so bad that it made them vomit when ever they were eating.

Source: Mouth, Sophea." Memoirs of a Survivor" The Progressive. v61 n9 (September 1997): pg 12..

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