From pol pot to pen sovan to the villages

Abstract

This paper was prepared almost entirely from interviews with Kampucheans. All told, the interviewing stretched from July 1979 to April 1980 and involved more than 600 interviewees. The Kampucheans interviewed fall into many categories. Some were 'ordinary refugees' ('ordinary persons who had come out of Kampuchea as the result of a personal decision involving more or less apolitical reasons with the intention to stay outside their country for some shorter or longer period of time); some were Spolitical refugees' ('ordinary' persons who had left Kampuchea as a result of a personal decision, but primarily because they did not like the regime under which they had been living); some were evacuees ('ordinary' persons ordered by their political leaders to leave Kampuchea more or less temporarily); some were defectors (persons who had had officia status in one regime or another but had left the country due to some kind be falling out with that regime); some were transients (mostly peasants leaving the country for only as long a time as needed to plek up some relief/rehabilitation ald): some were smugglers (persons professionally trading in Thai consumer goods).