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The day the nightmare started
Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2019 5:55 pm
by phuketrichard
am sure this day goes forgotten by most but it should not,
Year zero
Today started an experiment that went Horrible wrong for the people and this country
Forty-four years ago – on April 17, 1975 – a nightmare started for Cambodia and its entire population. On that day, after a brief battle on the outskirts of the city, Khmer Rouge fighters marched into the capital Phnom Penh and took control of the country.
The radical communist movement led by Pol Pol controlled the Southeast Asian nation until 1979, but in that brief period, a quarter of the population perished, with estimates of the dead ranging between 1.7 million and 3 million.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/04/artic ... e-started/
Great read
Thinking the worst was over, little did they realize the worst was still far away.
Re: The day the nightmare started
Posted: Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:24 pm
by SternAAlbifrons
On April 12, 1975, United States's Ambassador to Cambodia John Gunther Dean, offered high officials of the Khmer Republic political asylum in the United States, but Sirik Matak, Long Boret and Lon Non, along with other members of Lon Nol's cabinet, declined - despite the names of Boret and Sirik Matak being published by the Khmer Rouge in a list of "Seven Traitors" marked down for execution.[19]
**** Sirik Matak's written response to the ambassador stated:
Dear Excellency and friend,
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion.
As for you and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection and we can do nothing about it. You leave us and it is my wish that you and your country will find happiness under the sky.
But mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.
Please accept, Excellency, my dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments. Prince Sirik Matak.[1].[20]
The exact details of his death are unclear, but Sihanouk received confirmation that Sirik Matak, along with Long Boret, had been summarily executed by firing squad at the Phnom Penh Cercle Sportif on April 21; other reports state he was beheaded.[24] Henry Kissinger and others, however, note a report that Sirik Matak was shot in the stomach and left without medical aid to die over three days.[25]