Kampuchea, Year Zero
By Ray Kania
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About this ebook
“Kampuchea, Year Zero” is my interview of a young Cambodian girl who survived nearly 4 years of Pol Pot, communist leader of the Khmer Rouge.
Ray Kania
Ray Kania is a writer whose work has appeared in a variety of publications, from scholarly journals to the sports pages of newspapers. Ray is also an artist and photographer (Magazine covers of of Florida Living,The Orlando Sentinel Insight, newspapers, articles and books.) Ray uses pen and ink, and color pencil.Kania, a former Vietnamese/Thai-Lao interpreter, was the senior coordinator (USAFSS) for National Security Agency intelligence gathering missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. During this period, as a personal project, he collected information that would lead to an ethnography of the So people of Northeast Thailand. Included in the study is a phonetic alphabet, the first for this spoken language. (Documentation)As a licensed private investigator in the early 1980s he worked undercover for a NASA contractor.Kania signed a SAG agreement to work in movies and commercials from 1984-85. He did work on the CBS series SPACE and in the movie D.A.R.Y.L., including precision driving for chase scenes so the stunt drivers could do their thing on the Orlando East-West Expressway.As a Marshallese police officer, he was directly involved with operations against Russian (Soviet) special forces units at Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands from 1986-1988. He was part of an operation against the Russian efforts to gather data from the impact zone on Illeginni Island on Feb.13,1987 on orders from President Reagan (Documentation)Kania also worked on a contract for the Air Force Space Command at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida and later as a federal officer at Kennedy Space Center, protecting the space shuttle, astronauts and KSC facilities. Click image.He has written about a number of diverse subjects as a result of his travels and eclectic interests. They include: Southeast Asia (politics, sociology, and language), sports, physical fitness, nature, Pacific Islanders, intelligence gathering, and human interest. His latest effort has been the publication of his 7 epub books.He has participated in several sports (primarily basketball and soccer) at several levels, from college to a prison league. Along the way he has collected BA degrees in philosophy and political science from the University of Central Florida. Among his language skills are a working knowledge or better (speaking, reading and writing) of Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese and Arabic. (little or no active use for over 15 years.)Partial list of credits/clients:Asian Survey, September 1980, Volume XX, Number 9, Explaining Recent Vietnamese Behavior, Lee E. Dutter and Raymond S. Kania.Florida LivingSt. Petersburg Times, high school sports, North Suncoast.The Asia MailThe Orlando Sentinel (Insight) Tropical Isles Play Lab For U.S. Defense Tests. Oct. 30, 1988.South Pacific’s Paradise Lost: Ebeye Has Become Slum In The Marshall Islands. April 23, 1989.Journal of the Siam Society, January 1979, Volume 67 part 1, Patron, His Majesty the King, The So people of Kusuman, northeastern Thailand, Raymond S. Kania and Siriphan Hatuwong.Vietnam MagazineRay Kania's ThelastGringo.com is archived in the University of Texas, San Antonio Immigration/Borderlands Web Collection. It contains well-documented articles on the uncontrolled immigration across the U.S. southern border.Ray has been a member of the Eastern Florida State College Foundation Heritage Society since 2002 and a sponsor of the annual Eastern Florida State College (Melbourne Campus) Student Art Exhibit at the King Center for the Performing Arts. He provides scholarships for best of show in two dimensional, three dimensional, and the Ray Kania Award of Excellence categories.2004 – Ray was the model for the winning image in the SEPPA, Southeastern Professional Photographers of America contest, international competition. It was the First Place winner in male image, illustrative category, and Best of Show. The image was also on the 2005 SEPPA calendar and at the Imaging Asia convention in South Korea.
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Kampuchea, Year Zero - Ray Kania
Kampuchea, Year Zero
© 2011 Ray Kania, All Rights Reserved
ISBN # 978-1-4658-7487-0
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More ebooks by Ray Kania:
Almost Paradise
Edgar's Studebaker -- And Other Memorable Stories
GERONIMO LIVE! And Other Florida Stories
Seniors' Corner: For a Better Life
* * * *
Kampuchea, Year Zero
is my interview of a young Cambodian girl who survived nearly 4 years of Pol Pot, communist leader of the Khmer Rouge.
* * * *
Index
Select any title in the list below and go directly to the story. Select the Index
link at the end of any story to return to this list.
The Year Zero
Finding a Home
Forced Labor Begins
Hard Times
Liberation
Home again?
Torture Central
About Ray Kania
* * * *
The Year Zero
On April 17, 1975, after years of brutal fighting, the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers) marched into Phnom Penh, Cambodia (renamed Democratic Kampuchea by the victors). A guerrilla army of about 55,000, lightly armed, with many of its troops in their early teens, captured a nation of eight million people.
The leadership of this draconian group of communists, headed by Pol Pot, then ordered the evacuation of all cities. The population was sent into the countryside, forced into hard labor and fed a starvation diet.
The new Kampuchea was starting over at year zero, free from modern technology. Religion was banned and everyone worked for the state. A system of genocide was put into place designed to rid the country of foreigners, anyone associated with the former government, educated citizens, and others who did not conform to the new society.
The following report is the result of several interviews which I conducted in 1982. The interviewee, a young woman named Hun, was about to graduate from high school when her pleasant life in the capital city of Phnom Penh ended.
In the interview, she describes the life of her family during nearly four years of slave labor, daily propaganda, threats and executions for even the smallest infraction.
I finally put the information together in August of 2000. Unfortunately, some of the material was lost; in particular names of relatives which I received after the sessions were completed.
However, her account gives an accurate picture of a labor camp near Kompong Cham during a period in which the Khmer Rouge displayed behavior toward their fellow human beings that took barbarity to another level, attacking the mind and the body as you suffered over time, never knowing when they would