Shame keeps Cambodian village mum on Pol Pot

Prek Sbov was one of the 12 killing fields in Kampong Thom province during Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge era. Today, residents old enough to remember that period still feel much shame about their native son. They have gone to great lengths to keep those memories a secret from children and new villagers. (Terry McCoy For the Tribune-Review)

Prek Sbov, a small community of about 300 families, is situated along the River Sen in Cambodia. It is the birthplace of Pol Pot, the dictator who ruled the country in the 1970s and orchestrated the mass killing of an estimated 2 million Cambodians. (Terry McCoy For the Tribune-Review)

Sunday, March 14, 2010
By Terry McCoy
FOR THE PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW

KAMPONG THOM PROVINCE, Cambodia -- The most striking thing about the village is that there's nothing striking about it.

There's nothing that belies the heavy history straddling this community of roughly 300 families set along the serpentine River Sen.

This farming village named Prek Sbov is the birthplace of Pol Pot, the dictator who ruled Cambodia in the 1970s and contributed to the deaths of perhaps 2 million Cambodians, or about one in five people at the time.

He lived here the first six years of his life, before moving to Phnom Penh and then to Paris, Vietnam and China. He returned to orchestrate a mass, egalitarian killing of his people between 1976 and 1979.

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