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“As a Nobel Peace laureate, I, like most people, agonize over the use of force. But when it comes to rescuing an innocent people from tyranny or genocide, I've never questioned the justification for resorting to force. That's why I supported Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia, which ended Pol Pot's regime, and Tanzania's invasion of Uganda in 1979, to oust Idi Amin. In both cases, those countries acted without U.N. or international approval—and in both cases they were right to do so.”
― Jose Ramos-Horta, A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq

“This is what the war has done to me. Now I want to destroy because of it. There is such hate and rage inside me now. The Angkar has taught me to hate so deeply that I now know I have the power to destroy and kill.”
― Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, why did God invent captions?”
― David Mellonie, Land Mines and Ladyboys: Flirting with Danger in Thailand and Cambodia

“In September 1973, a former government official in Laos, Jerome Doolittle, wrote in the New York Times:

The Pentagon's most recent lies about bombing Cambodia bring back a question that often occurred to me when I was press attache at the American Embassy in Vietnam, Laos.
Why did we bother to lie?
When I first arrived in Laos, I was instructed to answer all press questions about our massive and merciless bombing campaign in that tiny country with: "At the request of the Royal Laotian Government, The United States is conducting unarmed reconnaissance flights accompanied by armed escorts who have the right to return if fired upon."
This was a lie. Every reporter to whom I told knew it was a lie. Hanoi knew it was a lie. The International Control Commission knew it was a lie. . . .
After all , the lies did serve to keep something from somebody, and the somebody was us.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“When Angkorian society began, Paris and London were not much more than elaborate villages. Europe was crawling with barbarians, and here were the Khmer engineering sophisticated irrigation systems and constructing the biggest temple in the world.”
― Kim Fay, The Map of Lost Memories

“As Pa speaks, I know he thinks someone in our family has stolen the rice. The story of the rat is not true and everyone knows it. Convinced that he realises it was me, I hide my eyes from him. Shame burns my hand like a hot iron branding me for all to see; Pa's favourite child stole from the family. As if to rescue me,Geak wakes up and her screams of hunger interrupt the incident.”
― Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

“In 1969 the Khmer Rouge numbered only about 4,000. By 1975 their numbers were enough to defeat the government forces. Their victory was greatly helped by the American attack on Cambodia, which was carried out as an extension of the Vietnam War. In 1970 a military coup led by Lon Nol, possibly with American support, overthrew the government of Prince Sihanouk, and American and South Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia.

One estimate is that 600,000 people, nearly 10 per cent of the Cambodian population, were killed in this extension of the war. Another estimate puts the deaths from the American bombing at 1000,000 peasants. From 1972 to 1973, the quantity of bombs dropped on Cambodia was well over three times that dropped on Japan in the Second World War.

The decision to bomb was taken by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and was originally justified on the grounds that North Vietnamese bases had been set up in Cambodia. The intention (according to a later defence by Kissinger’s aide, Peter W. Rodman) was to target only places with few Cambodians: ‘From the Joint Chiefs� memorandum of April 9, 1969, the White House selected as targets only six base areas minimally populated by civilians. The target areas were given the codenames BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, SUPPER, SNACK, and DESSERT; the overall programme was given the name MENU.� Rodman makes the point that SUPPER, for instance, had troop concentrations, anti-aircraft, artillery, rocket and mortar positions, together with other military targets.

Even if relatively few Cambodians were killed by the unpleasantly names items on the MENU, each of them was a person leading a life in a country not at war with the United States. And, as the bombing continued, these relative restraints were loosened.

To these political decisions, physical and psychological distance made their familiar contribution. Roger Morris, a member of Kissinger’s staff, later described the deadened human responses:

Though they spoke of terrible human suffering reality was sealed off by their trite, lifeless vernacular: 'capabilities', 'objectives', 'our chips', 'giveaway'. It was a matter, too, of culture and style. They spoke with the cool, deliberate detachment of men who believe the banishment of feeling renders them wise and, more important, credible to other men� They neither understood the foreign policy they were dealing with, nor were deeply moved by the bloodshed and suffering they administered to their stereo-types.

On the ground the stereotypes were replaced by people. In the villages hit by bombs and napalm, peasants were wounded or killed, often being burnt to death. Those who left alive took refuge in the forests. One Western ob-server commented, ‘it is difficult to imagine the intensity of their hatred to-wards those who are destroying their villages and property�. A raid killed twenty people in the village of Chalong. Afterwards seventy people from Chalong joined the Khmer Rouge.

Prince Sihanouk said that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger created the Khmer Rouge by expanding the war into Cambodia.”
― Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century

“Ali and his cousin Ahmad were seeking jobs abroad to enable them to escape the economic hardship in Pakistan that had been caused by massive flooding. Ali borrowed $4,000 from family and friends to pay an agent for a tourist visa that would enable him to reach Cambodia, where he and Ahmad were met by a broker. They paid the broker a further $1,475 each for a work visa processing fee, before being taken to a large compound in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
After their passports were taken and they were warned not to try to leave, they were forced to work alongside approximately 1,000 other people, each forced to scam five people daily with cryptocurrency investment schemes. They were watched over, fined and beaten if they failed to comply:”
― Jessica Barker, Hacked: The Secrets Behind Cyber Attacks

“Cambodian dust whipped up in the wind and stuck to my clothes like clay. I put a hand between my face and the sun and blinked Phnom Penn dust from my tired eyes. One idea, drink, beamed light in all directions across my dark consciousness.
A slim lady walked toward me with a big smile and a bigger head. Her left hand rested on her waggling hips and her right hand rose above her head, limp-wristed, like she’d just thrown a winning ball toward a basket and was leaving her hand in the shot position. The lady walking toward me was a man. At least that much was clear, but the nature or our relationship was still a fog to me. She wore blue jeans and a white top accentuating her breasts, but her Adam’s apple and cow sized hands revealed more in daylight than she could hide at night.”
― Craig Stone, Life Knocks

“His youth was a wingless Dodo.”
― Lawrence Osborne

“Mother’s tenderness toward my younger sisters caused more tears to pool in my eyes. I felt too old to be hugged and caressed by her, yet my body yearned for her touch; at least this once. I couldn't recall the last time she had shared the same warmth with me. The countless months of hardship had created an ocean of distance between us. It would be too awkward to hug her now. I sat across from her with tear-stained cheeks, wondering if she could feel my sadness and if she knew I loved her unconditionally.”
― Jennifer H. Lau, Beautiful Hero: How We Survived the Khmer Rouge

“Kaci żyjÄ… miÄ™dzy ocalaÅ‚ymi. Albo w ocalaÅ‚ych. W jednym ciele i kat, i ofiara. WidujÄ… siÄ™ codziennie. Na ulicy, na bazarze, w pracy, w lustrze.”
― Wojciech Tochman, Pianie kogutów, pÅ‚acz psów

“A story, I had learned, through my own constant knitting and reknitting of remembered words, can lead us back to ourselves, to our lost innocence, and in the shadow it casts over our present world, we begin to understand what we only intuited in our naivété - that while all else may vanish, love is our one eternity. It reflects itself in joy and grief, in my fathers sudden knowledge that he would not live to protect me, and in his determination to leave behind a part of himself - his spirit, his humanity - to illuminate my path, give light to my darkened world. He carved his silhouette in the memory of the sky for me to return to again and again.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“It’s a gift to imagine heaven, and a rebirth to actually glimpse it.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“It’s a gift to imagine heaven, and a rebirth to actually glimpse it.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“When he talks about life under the Khmer Rouge, he uses phrases very unlike him—“true hell,â€� “more than insane,â€� “below zero.”
― Sydney Schanberg

“The archaeologists who made the study noted that ‘Southern Indian
ancestry was estimated at 42�49%� for the Cambodian individual whose
remains they were studying. They identified ‘Irula, Mala, and Vellalar� caste
types as the most likely South Asian contributors to the ancient individual’s
genome. These are all specifically low-caste non-Brahmin groups. It
appears that we are dealing with the emigration of a large and socially
varied group of Indian individuals, leading to intermarriage with
Cambodians and the emergence of mixed-marriage families.
This implies a varied mercantile diaspora rather than just the boatloads of
literate Brahmins who record their own presence on inscriptions. It also
helps explain the presence of non-Vedic, non-Brahmanical Tamil folk and
village guardian deities like Aiyanar turning up from the beginning in
shrines across the region, where he seems to have been worshipped as the
Protector of Travellers and the Night Guardian of Reservoirs”
― William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

“Whatever their DNA contribution to the region, the Brahmins did bring
with them from India three crucial gifts that proved irresistible right across
the region: Sanskrit, the art of writing and the stories of the great Indian
epics.
No Indian import had a deeper or more long-lasting impact than the
deeds of the heroes of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. From the fifth
century, right on through to the dance and shadow puppetry of the present
day, these would remain a major feature in the art and culture of South-east
Asia.26 In time, even the landscape of South-east Asia began to be renamed
under the influence of the great epics and the stories of their respective
heroes, the Pandava brothers and Lord Rama.
The earliest inscription in Khmer territories dating from the fifth century
records that a ruler in what is now Laos took the Indic name Devanika and
the grandiose Sanskrit title Maharajadhiraja, ‘King of Kings�. This
happened during a ceremony when the King installed an image of Shiva
under the lingam-shaped mountain that towered over his capital of
Champasak. There he consecrated a tank which he named Kurukshetra,
after the plain to the north of Delhi where the great battle of the
Mahabharata was fought”
― William Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World