[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. Here, Loung has been forced into a work camp for young girls that also serves to train them to be child soldiers for the Angkar, the name given to the Khmer Rouge government body. The ages of the children in the camp range from 10 to 15.]
In violent details we hear of the soldiers’ mighty strength and supernatural powers to kill the Youns [a derogatory term for the Vietnamese]. The Youns are superstitious and believe that if their body parts are not buried together when they die, then their souls are doomed to wander the earth for all eternity. These souls cannot rest or be reincarnated back to earth. Knowing this, our soldiers cut off the Youns’ heads and hide them in bushes or toss them in the jungle so they cannot be found. All this information we get in gory detail until we too become desensitized to the violence.
Source:
Ung, Loung. “Child Soldiers, August 1977.” First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Harper Perennial, 2017. 137. Print.
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