Khmer Rouge horror story

Press, 2 September 1977, Page 6

Khmer Rouge horror story

NZPA-Reuter New York; Horror stories have become the rule, rather than the, exception, as pieces of the puzzle surrounding Cam-1 bodia since the Khmer Rouge; victory continue to come ■ together, the Associated Press reports. [ John Barron, co author of the book, “Murder of a Gentle Land,” said yesterday that barbaric executions, famine, and sickness, documented in this, the first American book on the fate of the small South-East Asian country, still continued, two years after the end of the war.

Barron estimated the number of Cambodians who had been killed as high as 100.000. about one million more having died from sickness, hardship, and starvation.

“I have never worked on; [any other story where the* testimony was so uniform and consistent as far as way 1

of life and conditions are concerned." said Barron Barron said his co-author, Anthony Paul, had reported last week from Thailand that a further purge had begun, this time of communist troops reported to have staged an attempted coup last month. Paul, who continues to interview refugees and defectors who have fled into Thailand, satd intelligence sources indicated that deliberate executions by the new government had expanded to include ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia.

All the conditions that were described in the book still remained present in Cambodia, Barron said.

Barron and Paul, both editors for “Reader’s Digest" magazine, spent a year interviewing refugees in Thailand. France, and the United States, who attest as eyewitnesses to events in Cambodia since April, 1975.