DEATH OF POL POT AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE KHMER ROUGE

LAST BATTLES OF THE KHMER ROUGE

As the Khmer Rouge lost its foreign backers, it grew weaker. In the mid-1990s, the Khmer Rouge had around 10,000 troops and controlled about 20 percent of the country: an area in northwestern Cambodian, near the Thai border, with a civilian population of about 60,000 people. The occasional roamed around western, northern Cambodia, occasionally roam near Angkor Wat and around southern Cambodia.

In early 1994, the Cambodian army launched a major offensive wit 20,000 soldiers against the Khmer Rouge and captured the major Khmer Rouge stronghold of Pailin in western Cambodia and Anlong Veng in northern Cambodia. The offensive was financed partly with funds illegally diverted from timber sales.

After capturing Pailin, the center of Cambodia's sapphire mining region, Cambodian soldiers "stole like rats" from civilians and businesses in Pailin. Many acts of violence in the countryside are blamed on drunken solders. There also unconfirmed reports of military involvement in rackets involved with illegal detention, murder, torture, rape and blackmail.

The Khmer Rouge then counterattacked and dealt the Cambodian army a major embarrassment by relating all the territory they lost, plus moving within six miles of Battamburg, the country's second largest city. The residents of Battamburg panicked and many reportedly fled the city. An estimated 2,500 Cambodian soldiers died.

After the defeat, The U.S. and Australia raised the possibility of supplying arms to Cambodia. The move was suggested to counter the sale of sophisticated arms of by Thai military the Khmer Rouge.

Pol Pot in the Mid-1990s

In the mid-1990s, Pol Pot reportedly lives comfortably in northwestern Cambodia not far from the Thai town of Aranyaprathet with his second wife, who he married in 1987, and their young daughter. Pol Pot's wife described him as a loving father to their daughter. His hut had three rooms and one cot. His wife and daughter lived in separate houses.

Scholars believed that he remained committed his Marxist dream of a peasant revolution in Cambodia. He moved around quite a bit, shuttling between several well-protected rebel camps. His whereabouts is known only to only a few trusted disciples.

"For reasons that involve both realpolitik and a neighbor's greed," wrote Shenon, " Pol Pot today is a free, prosperous and apparently unrepentant man, who 15 years after his ouster from Phnom Penh continues to plot a return to power."

Pol Pot suffered from a number of ailments. He had problems with his lungs, eyes and circulatory system and may have suffered a stroke in 1995.. Towards the end of life he could barely walk and reportedly Pot traveled to Bangkok for medical help and meetings with Thai officers. In a 1997 interview with Radio Free Asia, he said that "one side of my body is numb," "blood does not reach my brain" and it hurts everyday." When he had to go some place he was carried in a stretcher, sometimes with IV drip on his arm.

Khmer Rouge Violence in the 1990s

In the 1990s the Khmer Rouge was still responsible for countless acts of terror that left hundreds dead and thousands homeless every year. In January 1995, for example, the Khmer Rouge staged an ambush just 40 miles north of Phnom Penh, killing eight people.

In 1995, the Khmer Rouge attacked several small farming villages in western Cambodia, killing at least 100 people, torching homes, destroying crops and slaughter farm animals. Tens of thousands of refugees descended on Battambang, the country's second largest city.

The Khmer Rouge seems to be biding its time, waiting for the best time to make a move. "One analysts told the Economist, "They are sitting it out as corruption increases and the political paralysis deepens. they'll wait until political internecine warfare erupts again and the donors withdraw, and then they'll move in."

On June 13, 1997, Son Sen, the Khmer Rouge Defense Minister, his wife, grown children and grandchildren, the youngest aged five, were murdered by 20 to 30 Khmer Rouge soldiers following orders by Pol Pot. The soldiers broke into Son Sen house after midnight and shot him in the right temple and cheek. His wife had been shot in the left ear and lower right back. They others were shot and there heads were run over with a truck.

Increasingly paranoid and delusional, Pol Pot was angered that Son Sen had been negotiating with Prince Ranariddh to defect from the Khmer Rouge to the Royalist army. The execution in turn angered Khmer Rouge leaders like General ta Mok who decided that it was tome for Pol Pot to go.

Amnesty, Defections, Ieng Sary and Khmer Rouge in the Mid-1990s

In 1994, Khmer Rouge was officially outlawed and Khmer Rouge soldiers were offered amnesty and chance to live normal lives. Later the Cambodian government beefed up the amnesty deal by offering land and positions in the Cambodian army. Thousands of Khmer Rouge troops took up the offer and defected.

According to Lonely Planet: The guerrillas eventually boycotted the 1993 elections and later rejected peace talks aimed at creating a ceasefire. The defection of some 2000 troops from the Khmer Rouge army in the months after the elections offered some hope that the long-running insurrection would fizzle out. However, government-sponsored amnesty programmes initially turned out to be ill-conceived: the policy of reconscripting Khmer Rouge troops and forcing them to fight their former comrades provided little incentive to desert. [Source: Lonely Planet]

In 1996, Ieng Sary, the former Brother No. 2 in the Khmer Rouge, surrendered and an estimated 10,000 troops under his control, half of the Khmer Rouge's army, pledged their loyalty to the government. Ieng Sary was given a pardon for his roll in the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge (in 1979, he and Pol Pot had been sentenced to death in absentia). In formal ceremonies, defectors from Ieng Sary's force turned in the Khmer Rouge uniforms for government ones. Around the same town Radio Khmer Rouge called Sary a "piece of excrement" and traitor who had "unmasked himself as an enemy of the nation" and had to be "destroyed."

Ieng Sary took control of the Pailin gem-producing and logging area, cutting off the Khmer Rouge from it major source of income. He created an autonomous zone with its own schools, government, police force and 5,000-man army. The zone wasn’t required to pay the Cambodian government taxes until 2002. In November 1997, Sary said, "We want the West to come and invest here, I know the Western countries are now looking at the situation in Pailin." He also said, "Actually, the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge were fine. It was the lower ranks that engaged in excesses. That's why we all got such a bad reputation."

Show Trial of Pol Pot

In July 1997, Pol Pot was sentenced to life under house arrest in an 80-minute show trail in the jungle that was somewhat reminiscent in style to the trials held for the Gang of Four after the Cultural Revolution. One by one Khmer Rouge leaders, who considered themselves adherents of "liberal democracy," harangued and berated while Pol Pot before 500 villagers looked, occasionally raising their fists in unison and chanting, "Crush, crush, crush Pol Pot and his clique!" The villagers were segregated by sex and many missing had eyes and limbs. [Source: Nate Thayer, Far Eastern Economic Review]

Pol Pot was dressed un plastic sandals and peasant clothes. He did not say anything during the trial and did not respond to questions as he was being taken away. He appeared to blink back tears when his sentence was read. "The events of the purge and trial were so traumatic that I thought he might die during the process," Thayer wrote. "You could see the anguish in his face as he was denounced by his former loyalists. He was close to tears...[he] looked thoroughly destroyed, a broken man.

Pol Pot was sentenced for "rebellious acts" he committed within the Khmer Rouge organization not genocide of mass murder. Thayer wrote, "There was a sharp debate on the leadership on whether to, in fact, kill him, cut him off from medical acre that hey could and allow him to live his final days under house detention."

The trial was orchestrated by Ta Mok, who led Khmer Rouge faction that captured Pol Pot on June 20, 1997 after the murder of Son Sen. The point seemed be show to the world that Khmer Rouge had reformed and it was distancing itself from Pol Pot.

The trial was observed by Thayer and a cameramen. Thayer said that he convinced his contacts with the Khmer Rouge to let him watch attended "because no one believed their radio broadcasts, they needed an independent witness in order to have the world believe what they said. But he wasn't expecting a trial. He "had no idea what was going to happened. What I saw was a total surprise. He later sold the tape to ABC's “Nightline” for $650,000.

Death of Pol Pot

Pol Pot died on April 15, 1998 at the age of 73 on a cot in his hut in the Dangrek Mountains listening to Voice of America. His wife said he felt dizzy and needed to lie down after they finished a dinner of rice. "When I went to see him again around 11:00pm to put mosquito netting around him in bed, I found him dead," she told the New York Times.

Pol Pot had been living comfortably in northwestern Cambodia not far from the Thai town of Aranyaprathet with his second wife, who he married in 1987, and their young daughter. Pol Pot's wife described him as a loving father to their daughter. His hut had three rooms and one cot. His wife and daughter lived in separate houses.

At first no one believed the reports of Pol Pot's death, so Western journalist were invited to examine the body. They found lying on a mattress, face up with cotton stuffed in his nostrils. His body had been crudely embalmed with formaldehyde but stunk anyway in the jungle heat.

In the weeks before his death, Pol Pot was forced to move around because of an offensive by the Cambodian military. He reportedly had little food and severe diarrhea and was carried around in a stretcher because, he could walk only a few steps before "he was literally gasping for breath." Five days before his death he dyed his hair reportedly so he wouldn't be recognized

After Pol Pot’s death, the place he was cremated became a kind of shrine and people prayed to his spirit for help. Some people said the spirit gave them winning lottery numbers in their dreams. Others said the spirt helped them recover from serious diseases. The people that prayed to him were generally not Khmer Rouge loyalists but ordinary villagers who lived in the nearby Dangrek mountains.

In an October 1997 interview with Nate Thayer of the far eastern Economic review, Pol Pot said, "I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country...I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people. Even now, and you can look at me: an I savage person? My conscience is clear." He also said "our movement made mistakes" and said he regretted killing Son Sen's grandchildren. He also talked fondly of his granddaughter and said he spent most of his time in bed. In ye late 1980s he had told his followers “mistakes” had been inevitable because “we were like babies learning to walk.”

Mysterious Circumstances of Pol Pot's Death

There were many suspicion about Pol Pot's death even though it was plausible he died of natural causes (he was old and suffered from several illnesses). Shortly after his death, Reuters reported that Thai intelligence officers said Pol Pot was killed by poison that "got into his body with his consent." A year after rteh death, a lawyer for Ta Mok told a Cambodian newspaper that Pol Pot had been murdered “under orders.”

In 1999, Thayer reported in the Far Eastern Economic Review that Pol Pot committed suicide by taking an overdose of Valium tranquilizers and chloroquine anti-malaria pills to avoid being placed on trial for genocide. According to Thayer, Ta Mok offered to hand Pol Pot over the United States three weeks before his death but the United States turned him down because it hadn't prepared a legal basis for arresting or trying him. Pol Pt died hours and 15 minutes later of what described at the time as a heart attack.

Thayer was the first journalist to cross the Thai border into Cambodia to examine Pol Pot's body. He decided that he need physical evidence t prove that the corpse was indeed Pol Pot. "The teeth is what I was going after," he told the Washington Post. "We knew his two front teeth were false, and there aren't any dentists in Cambodia so there had to be dental records somewhere. If I cm out with the two front teeth off the corpse and they matched, they're would be no question that as Pol Pot."

"They agreed to give men the teeth. the wife was a little freaked out. She didn't like the idea...The wife looked at me like I was nuts." The Khmer Rouge later changed its mind about the teeth. Two days after his death a Thai military teams arrived and took finger prints, hair and fingernail samples and photographs of his teeth, enough to identify him but not determine the cause of death. No pots mortem or autopsy was done.

Cremation of Pol Pot

Three days after he died, Pol Pot was cremated on pyre of burning tires, rubbish and brush about 500 yards from the Thai border. His widow, 14-year-old daughter and the remaining leader of the Khmer Rouge did not attend. According to the New York Times, his body (which had been kept in a large black plastic bag with ice) was placed in a crude wooden coffin harmed together by Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

The coffin was placed by cigarette-smoking and AK-47-carrying guerrillas on top of a mattresses set on top of eight truck tires, which was set on fire. His fan, scrag and small knapsack had been placed in the coffin. White and pink fuchsia was thrown on the fire.

His ashes were scatted in there places: Tonle Sap near Angkor Wat; a place in the jungle in eastern Cambodia where his revolution began; and the Dangrek mountains, where his revolution ended.

Effort to Auction’s Pol Pot’s Sandals for $500,000

April 2009, AFP reported: A photographer for the Khmer Rouge said on Monday he is putting leader Pol Pot's sandals up for auction along with a pair of cameras used to picture life under his brutal regime. Nhem En, who photographed inmates at the notorious S-21 torture centre and also snapped pictures at official ceremonies for the Cambodian regime, told AFP bidding for the items would open at $500,000. 'Now I offer for auction a pair of Pol Pot's sandals and my two cameras that I used to shoot Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders, as well as those who died and were victimised at S-21,' Nhem En said. [Source: AFP, April 20, 2009]

The sandals belonging to Pol Pot were made of car tyre, while the two cameras were manufactured in Germany and Japan, he added. Nhem En, now a deputy governor of northwest Anlong Veng district, said he hoped to use the money to construct a museum to showcase photographs and items from the Khmer Rouge period, including Pol Pot's old toilet. 'I call for an auction of the items because I need the money to build a big museum in Anlong Veng,' he said.

Last Legs of the Khmer Rouge

In the months before Pol Pot's death, the Cambodian army had been closing in on the last of the Khmer Rouge’s strongholds in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia. Thousands of Khmer Rouge soldiers had deserted and taken an amnesty offer from the government. Thousands of soldiers and civilians loyal to the Khmer Rouge fled to Thailand.

According to Lonely Planet: “The government changed course during the mid-1990s, opting for more carrot and less stick in a bid to end the war. The breakthrough came in 1996 when Ieng Sary, Brother No 3 in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy and foreign minister during its rule, was denounced by Pol Pot for corruption. He subsequently led a mass defection of fighters and their dependants from the Pailin area, and this effectively sealed the fate of the remaining Khmer Rouge. Pailin, rich in gems and timber, had long been the economic crutch which kept the Khmer Rouge hobbling along. The severing of this income, coupled with the fact that government forces now had only one front on which to concentrate their resources, suggested the days of civil war were numbered. [Source: Lonely Planet +]

“By 1997 cracks were appearing in the coalition and the fledgling democracy once again found itself under siege. But it was the Khmer Rouge that again grabbed the headlines. Pol Pot ordered the execution of Son Sen, defence minister during the Khmer Rouge regime, and many of his family members. This provoked a putsch within the Khmer Rouge leadership, and the one-legged hardline general Ta Mok seized control, putting Pol Pot on ‘trial’. Rumours flew about Phnom Penh that Pol Pot would be brought there to face international justice, but events dramatically shifted back to the capital. +

“A lengthy courting period ensued in which both FUNCINPEC and the CPP attempted to win the trust of the remaining Khmer Rouge hard-liners in northern Cambodia. Ranariddh was close to forging a deal with the jungle fighters and was keen to get it sewn up before Cambodia’s accession to Asean, as nothing would provide a better entry fanfare than the ending of Cambodia’s long civil war. He was outflanked and subsequently outgunned by Second Prime Minister Hun Sen. On 5 July 1997 fighting again erupted on the streets of Phnom Penh as troops loyal to the CPP clashed with those loyal to FUNCINPEC. The heaviest exchanges were around the airport and key government buildings, but before long the dust had settled and the CPP once again controlled Cambodia. The strongman had finally flexed his muscles and there was no doubt as to which party was running the show. +

“Following the coup, the remnants of FUNCINPEC forces on the Thai border around O Smach formed an alliance with the last of the Khmer Rouge under Ta Mok’s control. The fighting may have ended, but the deaths did not stop there: several prominent FUNCINPEC politicians and military leaders were victims of extrajudicial executions, and even today no-one has been brought to justice for these crimes. Many of FUNCINPEC’s leading politicians fled abroad, while the senior generals led the resistance struggle on the ground. +

End of the Khmer Rouge After Pol Pot's Death

The last holdouts of the Khmer Rouge were several hundred guerrillas led by Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea. When these three men were finally rounded up, the Khmer Rouge was considered history.

According to Lonely Planet: “As 1998 began, the CPP announced an all-out offensive against its enemies in the north. By April it was closing in on the Khmer Rouge strongholds of Anlong Veng and Preah Vihear, and amid this heavy fighting Pol Pot evaded justice by dying a sorry death on 15 April in the Khmer Rouge’s captivity. The fall of Anlong Veng in April was followed by the fall of Preah Vihear in May, and the big three, Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, were forced to flee into the jungle near the Thai border with their remaining troops. [Source: Lonely Planet +]

“The 1998 election result reinforced the reality that the CPP was now the dominant force in the Cambodian political system and on 25 December Hun Sen received the Christmas present he had been waiting for: Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were defecting to the government side. The international community began to pile on the pressure for the establishment of some sort of war-crimes tribunal to try the remaining Khmer Rouge leadership. After lengthy negotiations, agreement was finally reached on the composition of a court to try the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. The CPP was suspicious of a UN-administered trial as the UN had sided with the Khmer Rouge–dominated coalition against the government in Phnom Penh and the ruling party wanted a major say in who was to be tried for what. The UN for its part doubted that the judiciary in Cambodia was sophisticated or impartial enough to fairly oversee such a major trial. A compromise solution – a mixed tribunal of three international and four Cambodian judges requiring a super majority of two plus three for a verdict – was eventually agreed upon. +

The last 3,600 Khmer Rouge holdouts were inducted into the Cambodian military in early 1999. One former Khmer Rouge soldier told the Los Angeles Times, “I just switched uniforms. Everything else is same. But I miss my old commanders. As bad as life was in the jungle, they were good commanders and they always got you free medicine when you got malaria.” Another told the Washington Post, “It didn’t matter who won. If they ordered me to fight, I fought. I wasn’t trying to make anybody win.” He then points to his various scars: forehead B-40 rocket, 1983; right temple, shrapnel, 1985; right leg, shrapnel. 1988; right foeram, B-40 rocket, mid 1980s.

After Pol Pot’s death, the Cambodian government took control of the last Khmer Rouge stronghold in the village of Anlong Veng. In June 1998 a small event sponsored by Hun Sen was held to mark the end of eth Khmer Rouge. Buddhist monks performed ceremonies on a small stage while a band played what sounded like country and western music. A few speeches were made about reunification of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge defectors lined up in black pajamas and cut tire sandals and step behind a curtain, disrobed and emerged in new Cambodia army uniforms. For some it was the first time they ever wore socks.

In the late 1990s, Khmer Rouge splinter groups raided some villages and took people hostage.

Life after the Khmer Rouge and Fond Memories of Pol Pot

Dustin Roasa wrote in the Washington Post: “With their benefactors no longer providing for them, most former Khmer Rouge fighters have descended into the grinding poverty common in rural Cambodia, and many remain nostalgic for the movement. Although a few elite Khmer Rouge officials kept their local government posts in exchange for laying down their arms, the rank and file remain poor, unskilled farmers. [Source: Dustin Roasa, Washington Post, December 1, 2010]

"These people have benefited very little following the surrender," said Sok Leang of the Center for Justice and Reconciliation, which holds public forums throughout Cambodia, including in Anlong Veng. "They are embedded with the utopian agrarian ideology of the regime. They were brought up with no concept of doing business."

Sor Lim, 55, who joined the Khmer Rouge as a teenager in 1974, fought in the jungle around Anlong Veng before settling down to life as a poor rice farmer in 1998. "Life under the Khmer Rouge was good," he said. "Ta Mok fed everyone. But now, life is difficult because we have to provide for ourselves."

Seth Mydans wrote in the New York Times: “Here, in one of the last strongholds of the Khmer Rouge before the movement finally collapsed as a guerrilla army in 1998, some of its most reviled leaders are remembered with loyalty and affection. “The way I see it, he wasn’t a bad guy,” said Ms. Loan Pheap, 46, who served under Pol Pot in a women’s military brigade and now sells gasoline and plants from her house beside the cremation site. “I still regard him as my father,” she said. “He arranged my marriage, because we didn’t have any parents. During the wedding he told us to love each other forever, just the way a parent would.” [Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, August 12, 2006]

Fate of Khmer Rouge Leaders

In 1999, Ta Mok was arrested as he crossed into northen Cambodia from Thailand. he was brought to Phnom Penh and locked up in a military prison not far from the interrogation cnetr where Khmer Rouge vcitms were tortured and executed. As of 2003, he was in jail awaiting trial. Also in 1999, Kaing Khek Iev, better known as Duch was arrested near Battambang, where he worked as a teacher, after Western journalist tracked him down there. He was imprisoned.

As of the early 2000s, Nuon Chea, Pot's No. 2 man near the time of Pol Pot’s death, Khieu Samphan, the head of state under th Khmer Rouge, and Ieng Sary, a top Khmer Rouge commander, were living as free men in the Pailin area near the Thai border, playing with their grandchildren, tending their gardens. A few weeks after Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea gave themselves up they were spotted at Angkor Wat, being given the same escorted tour usually reserved for visiting dignitaries.

In January 1999, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea apologized for atrocities committed by the Khmer Rogue. The exact words of Khieu Samphan were, "Sorry, very sorry." In September 2000, Nuon Chea said that he would be unable to attend a trial because his poor health made it impossible for him to think or talk properly. He had suffered a stroke a few years earlier.

See Khmer Rouge Leaders

Funeral for Ta Mok

Reporting from Anlong Veng, Seth Mydans wrote in the New York Times: “This drab, muddy town in the remote north of Cambodia is in mourning now for another Khmer Rouge leader, Ta Mok, who died at the age of 80 on July 21, leaving a shrinking handful of frail, aging men as potential defendants. Hundreds of people attended his funeral, weeping for a man who is accused of ordering tens of thousands of killings, but whom they remember as a benevolent patron, distributing rice and cattle even as he executed those who broke his austere Communist regulations. [Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, August 12, 2006 .]

“As the chieftain of Anlong Veng in the 1990’s, he banned theft, drunkenness, prostitution, marriage outside the commune, private enterprise, any contact with outsiders and listening to any radio station other than that of the Khmer Rouge, all punishable by death. Those regulations, posted in the schoolhouse and elsewhere, have been replaced by emblems of the new world that has taken root here. Sharing a wall at the entrance to town are advertising posters for Bayon beer, Luxury cigarettes and Number One condoms.

“Many people here are bitter about the changes here since the Khmer Rouge — “worse than bad,” one farmer said — remembering what they say was a time of purity, order and discipline. “I loved him,” said Yun Hat, 46, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who lost a leg to a land mine, just as Ta Mok had. “He gave us everything we needed. We lived in love and happiness. I never saw him commit any crime.” But he and his friend Em Man, also 46, said they wished Ta Mok had survived to face his accusers and to tell those who had put their faith in him whether in fact he had been a mass murderer.

“Now he has become zero,” said Mr. Em Man, a farmer who said he had been a driver for Ta Mok and who wore a red mourning string around his wrist. “He can’t answer any questions,” Mr. Em Man said. “I wanted him to explain in court the black and white of his life. I never saw him kill anyone. But black is black and white is white, and whatever the court says, we will accept.”

Now, like Pol Pot, this man accused of ravaging his country has found a bleak and barren resting place: an unmarked concrete tomb on a sand-covered platform that is pocked with the hoofprints of wandering cows and visited by defecating dogs.

Alex Hinton wrote in the Washington Post: “Ta Mok's passing was filled with ironies. Most immediate was the incongruous sight of his being given an elaborate Buddhist funeral, replete with 72 chanting monks, and being laid to rest in a concrete monument on the grounds of a temple. This was a strange end for a man who had helped implement the Khmer Rouge ban on Buddhism and a policy of dumping victims unceremoniously in mass graves. [Source: Alex Hinton, Washington Post, August 4, 2006 ~~]

“The timing was also ironic. Just a few weeks earlier, the legal personnel for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia were sworn in, initiating a U.N.-sponsored trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders that has been 27 years in the making. Ta Mok, arrested in 1999 and awaiting trial ever since, was expected to be one of the first and most important defendants to be tried. If a handful of Ta Mok's former supporters gave him a Buddhist burial, many more Cambodians were understandably outraged that he cheated justice. The Cambodians I spoke with want to know what happened and why. They want the former Khmer Rouge leaders to be tried. The international community must act to ensure this happens in a swift and meaningful manner — before it's too late. ~~

Image Sources:

Text Sources: Documentation Center of Cambodia, dccam.org, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Tourism of Cambodia, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Global Viewpoint (Christian Science Monitor), Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, NBC News, Fox News and various books and other publications.

Last Updated April 2014