The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

cambodian villagers 275
From 1977 on, people were taken away to be killed (vay chaol). [One day in 1977, seven
men in Svay] were taken away. [The Khmer Rouge cadre] said, “Come on, load up
everything, you’re being taken to build houses.” They lied. They didn’t tell you they
were going to kill you; they said you’re going to work. But I knew. C [one of the men
being called up] also knew. He cried and embraced his father. I went up to C and he
said, “We’re about to be separated now. I’m going.” When people were taken away,
I knew in my heart that they were going to die. I knew when they were taken away
with their hands tied behind their backs, but also when they were called away to work.
I kept thinking, when will I be taken away? But you couldn’t ask, and you couldn’t
run away—or even kill yourself—because then they’d get your wife and children.
All of the preceding made for massive mortality, estimated at some 1.7 million
(possibly as many as 2 million) deaths out of a total population of about 7.9 million
Cambodians in 1975 (compare Kiernan 1996:458; Cambodian Genocide Program
1999:1). 6 Further, the death rate for males was higher than for females because
men were more likely to die from starvation or execution (as well as combat
deaths during the civil war). Looking more specifically at Svay, the following mortality
figures were calculated for a delimited population of 159 persons whom Ebihara
had known during her original fieldwork in 1959–60 in one particular section,
West Hamlet, of Svay. 7 Taking into account the inhabitants who died natural deaths
and four who were killed during the civil war preceding DK, 139 persons were still
alive in 1975 at the outset of the Pol Pot regime. During DK some of these people
remained in the Svay region, while others were dispersed to communes elsewhere,
including some northern provinces with especially harsh conditions. Of these 139,
70 died of starvation, overwork, illness, or execution during DK, a mortality rate
of 50 percent among West Svay villagers Ebihara had previously known (see also
Ebihara 1993b). 8 During DK every adult villager suffered the deaths of close family
members, whether parents, grandparents, siblings, or children, not to mention
deaths of other relatives and close friends—and they also lived with the constant
threat of their own possible death.
AFTERMATHS: FAMILY/HOUSEHOLD,
KIN, AND SOCIAL NETWORKS
Part of Democratic Kampuchea’s attempt to create a radical new society involved
undermining a crucial social group in prerevolutionary life: the family/household,
which had been the basic unit of economic production and consumption, as well
as the locus of the strongest emotional bonds. Beyond the family, individuals also
felt attachments and moral obligations toward members of a broadly defined bilateral
kindred of relatives by both blood and marriage (bang-b’aun). During DK, a
number of measures aimed to undercut sentiments and cohesion among family
and kinfolk. Huge numbers of people were moved around the country in the deployment
of the labor force, thus fracturing family and kin relationships. Forced
separation occurred also at the local level. Even when family or kin were based in