"Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge communists exchanged our traditional Cambodian way of life for a vast, brutal experiment in communism..by destroying our culture and by enslaving us, the Khmer Rouge changed happy human beings into something more like animals"
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
"Just before they put the plastic bag over my head, I glimpsed the pregnant lady next to me. She already had a bag over her head and she was kicking convulsively with both feet. They tied the bag around my neck, I couldn’t see anything..I went wild, struggling to get the bag off"
"I told them that even if the communists took over, they wouldn’t harm doctors. Not a chance. The Khmer Rouge were communists, but they were also Cambodians. Cambodians wouldn’t hurt each other without reason. That’s what I believed, and that’s what my friends were saying too."
"he began telling us how lucky we were to be living under such a regime, where everyone was equal...under the communists...We had no electricity. No religious worship. Very little food. And we lived in constant fear of the soldiers"
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
"The Khmer Rouge’s greatest strength was propaganda. They knew a small lie can be caught and a big lie is easier to get away with. Their system was so different from anything we had known before, so complete, that we gave in without knowing how to resist"
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
"‘Equal Comrade’, was a title given only to high officials. I always wondered why the bosses were called Equal Comrades; it was another one of the Khmer Rouge’s crazy inconsistencies"
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
goodreads.com/book/show/3865…
"‘Get rid of all Western goods...Discard the makeup, the fancy clothing, books, gold. If you cannot discard these things, you are the enemy. You will still be serving capitalism, and not serving the community. You do not need any property now.' They abolished private property."
"They abolished religion – disrobed the monks, destroyed the Buddha statues. They abolished family too. They wanted us to renounce personal attachments of any kind...this was ‘liberation’, because it freed us from the time of caring for others and gave us more time to work."
"[These people] cling to the old capitalist fashions! We have some people among us who still wear eyeglasses. And why do they use eyeglasses? People wear them to be handsome in the capitalistic style. They wear them because they are vain. We don’t need people like that anymore!"
