SaBinh Thach

SaBinh's Blog



Posted: Tuesday, December 09, 2008

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www.thach.us

From 1969 to 1973, the U.S. secretly conducted air-bombing raids on North Vietnamese troops over the Cambodian border, despite Cambodia's neutrality. The bombings caused numerous Cambodian civilian casualties and damage to land and property that increased anti-American sentiment and a rise in the support for the communist Khmer Rouge. When U.S. forces withdrew from the region in 1975, the Khmer Rouge soon defeated the U.S.-dependant Cambodian government. After taking power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge began to implement a wholesale restructuring of Cambodian society with the intent of creating an agrarian socialist state. The mechanism for this change was forced labor camps and the systematic murder of all political opposition, ethnic minority groups, individuals from religious, professional and educated segments of society, and all others who questioned the new order. The Khmer Rouge dissolved institutions such as banks, hospitals, schools, stores, religion, and attempted to unravel the fabric of the family. Children were separated from their parents to work in mobile groups or as soldiers.

In proportion, the genocide in Cambodia rivals that of the Jewish holocaust. During the Khmer Rouge's reign from 1975 to 1979, about one-third of the Cambodian population died by starvation, torture or execution -- 2 million in total. In 1979, the Vietnamese government wrested control of the country, putting an end to Khmer Rouge rule.

With the fall of the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese occupation, 600,000 refugees fled to refugee camps along the Thai border. Although refugees began arriving in the United States after the fall of Cambodia in 1975, the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 marked the true beginning of the Cambodian mass exodus and arrival in America.
SaBinh is KhmerKrom he was born in 1975 in Cambodia raised by his grandma in Vietnam country. In 1984 his family decided to escaped the country. They walked across the border from Vietname to Cambodia to Thailand
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Sandra E. Graham
 3 years 42 days ago.
248 fans.
A very interesting article, SaBinh. Some things I didn't know. Very well-written. Keep up the good work and Welcome to SearchWarp.
 
Sandra
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