[The following is an excerpt from Loung Ung’s amazing memoir about her experiences as a young girl who survived the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia during the late 70s.]
Strange things are going on in the village as entire families disappear overnight. Kim says the Khmer Rouge terror has taken a new toll. The soldiers are executing the entire families of those whom they’ve taken away, including young children. The Angkar fears the survivors and children of the men they have killed will rise up one day and take their revenge. To eliminate this threat, they kill the entire family. We believe this to be the fate of another one of our neighbors, the Sarrin family.
The Sarrin family lived a few huts down from ours. Like our family, the soldiers also took the father, leaving behind the mother and their three young kids. The kids are our age, ranging from five to ten years old. A few nights back we heard loud cries coming from their direction. Their cries continued for many minutes, then all was quiet again. In the morning I walked to their hut and saw that they were no longer there. Everything they owned was still in the hut: the small pile of black clothes in the corner of the room, the red checked scarves, and their wooden food bowls. It has been maybe three days now and still the hut stands empty. It is as if the family magically disappeared and no one dares to question their whereabouts. We all pretend not to notice their disappearance.
Source:
Ung, Loung. “Leaving Home, May 1977.” First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Harper Perennial, 2017. 121. Print.
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