Massacres in Cambodia alleged

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34127, 13 April 1976, Page 21

Massacres in Cambodia alleged

(N .Z .P .A .-Reuter——Copy right) NEW YORK, April 12. The American magazine, “Time,” reports that about half a million Cambodians, or one-tenth of the entire population, have been massacred, or have died from disease and starvation, since the Khmer Rouge came to power a year ago.

Information gathered from some of the 20,000 < ambodians who have fled from their homeland indicate that the country’s Communist rulers have been conducting a campaign of extermination against civil servants and soldiers who served under the former Government led by Marshal Lon Nol, the magazine says.

“In recent months, the •laughter has been extended to anyone with education, and particularly teachers and students,” it says. “Whole families, and sometimes entire villages, have been massacred. “Former Lon Nol officers

have been machine-gunned by the hundreds, while other victims have been clubbed to death to save ammunition. “Others have been bound together and buried alive by bulldozers, or suffocated by having plastic bags tied over their heads.” “Times” gives as an example an incident in the north-western province of Battambamg last year, where, it says, hundreds of former Lon Nol officers were assembled in a school building and told that they were there to greet Prince Sihanouk.

Instead, they were bound hand and foot and driven in truck-loads to the edge of the city, where they were machine-gunned to death. “City dwellers, including the sick and the aged, have been forced at rifle point to leave their homes and work in: the fields,” the magazine reports.

“The capital has shrunk from its former population of 2.5 million to a deserted shell of 45,000.” The magazine quotes one refugee as saying: “In Cambodia today death is preferable to life."