The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

274 genocide’s wake
surviving evacuees were dispersed to Svay and other sites that were rebuilt as communes
in the region.
During DK, Svay was controlled by Khmer Rouge cadres and so-called Old
People—that is, ordinary people who had either joined or been “liberated” by the
Khmer Rouge before their victory in 1975. Urbanites and rural peasants who had
not been part of the revolutionary movement prior to 1975—including Svay villagers
who had fled to Phnom Penh during the civil war—were pejoratively labeled
“New People,” “April 17 People,” “Lon Nol People,” and, more ominously, “the enemy.”
Although Svay villagers were actually from the politically correct stratum of
poor peasantry, the Khmer Rouge suspected everyone of concealing former lives
as prosperous urbanites, government soldiers, educated people, or even CIA agents.
One villager reported an exchange with a DK cadre when he was ill:
[The cadre] said, “The reason you’re sick is that you’re used to living well.” I replied,
“How can you say that? I’ve been a farmer all my life.” They said, “You’re used to
living in comfort and never worked hard. We fought all the battles and liberated you.
You just came here with your two empty hands and your empty stomach. So we have
the right to tell you what to do. What we say, goes.”
Defined as “the other” (compare Hinton’s introduction to this volume), New
People were subject to extremely harsh conditions. With the abolition of private
property, markets, and money, production and consumption became communal.
As part of DK’s determination to maximize agricultural output, people were organized
into work teams that were segregated on the basis of age and gender; they
were forced to endure unrelenting hard labor on the communes growing rice and
other crops, constructing dams and enormous irrigation systems, reshaping rice
paddies, tending animals, making fertilizer, and pursuing an endless array of other
tasks. Ironically, however, New People were given grossly inadequate food rations,
consisting largely of thin rice gruel and whatever wild foods might be foraged. They
also suffered endemic illnesses (such as fevers, dysentery, malaria, and infections)
with little or no medical aid, and stringent discipline that included severe physical
punishments, imprisonment, and execution for breaking rules or upon suspicion of
being “enemies” of the regime. 5 Villagers described DK in such terms as these:
People’s worth was measured in terms of how many cubic meters of dirt they moved.
We had to dig canals: measure and dig; measure and dig. I’d fall carrying heavy
loads...so you’d walk and fall, walk and fall. Even when you got sick you didn’t dare
stop working because they’d kill you, so you kept working until you collapsed. They
used people without a thought as to whether we lived or died.
We worked so hard planting and harvesting; there were piles of rice as big as this
house, but they took it away in trucks....You’d be killed if you tried to take anything
for yourself. You could see food, but you weren’t allowed to eat it. We had no freedom
to do anything: to eat, to sleep, to speak. We hid our crying, weeping into our pillows
at night.