This article, written by Sydney Schanberg, explains how the genocide in Cambodia began and why. I found his writing very compelling, I was immediately captivated in his story. I only wish that he wrote more about his experiences in Cambodia, rather than the origins of the war. I would find it fascinating to hear what he saw and felt when he was in the city of Phnom Penh; I wanted to hear what it was like to be in the middle of all this chaos. What he did describe of his experiences in Cambodia were disturbing. For example, when he wrote about the two troops from Lon Nol’s army and how they burned two Viet Cong and left them hanging in the city. That image was powerful and horrifying. I tried to imagine such atrocities happening right in front of my eyes. Maybe that's why he didn’t want to elaborate more on what he saw there. Something that I found very interesting and that I didn’t know before reading this article was about the “new people”. The “new people” were the men and women the Khmer Rouge believed to be anti-communist or have western influence. The Khmer Rouge would label them with a neckerchief, and the “new people” would eventually be executed. Schanberg drew the reference to the Nazis labeling the Jews with the Star of David and how similar these two acts were. As Schanberg said in the beginning of his article, “It is to Asia what the Holocaust was to Europe.”
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