Day 2: Continued

As a follow up to day 2, the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge regime was as sinister as Erin described it. The Khmer Rouge was responsible for about 2 million deaths during its reign of terror. Basically, they sought to eliminate all Cambodian people of education and professional training so that there would be no leadership available to go against his extreme brand of communism. They went through all of the records of the schools and universities and tracked the educated down and executed them. They also separated families and relocated them to work camps far from their homes to break down the family structure including eliminating the family and individual names. Everyone was called either comrade man or woman.
During the Pol Pot reign, the Cambodian economy was trashed, many of the forests denuded and the ancient temples looted. It is understandable that any and all Cambodians that we talked to were deeply impacted by the Khmer Rouge period.