First They Killed My Father

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung, HarperCollins (2000) 

Timeline

April 1975

Khmer Rouge ent4r cities and tells residents the the United States will bomb the city., They must evacuate to th countryside for a few days. The Khmer Rouge stole their watches. The Khmer Rouge tells her family about the Angkar, the Organization, to which they must be loyal. They are sent to the countryside to be with the "base people", the peasants. They are preferred over city people, because they have not bee corrupted by the west. The KR opposes private ownership of land, houses or animals. Non-KR schools are forbidden. New people are at the botton of the social hierarchy. KR bans religion.

The Khmer Rouge kills people it perceives as threats:

• people who wear glasses

• teachers

• docgtors

• nurses

• civil servants

The crops that the peasants and new people grew were given to th soldiers.

The KR hates foreigners, especially Vietnames. s

KR is radical egalitarian.

Author's father: Seeng Im Ung

In December 1976, The KR soldiers ask author's father to heelp them move an ox wagon that is stuck in the mud. He never comes back.

Mother: Ay Choung Ung

=KR sells rice to China to buy guns.,

The KR provoked the Vietnamese to invade Cambodia by raiding their villages.

Around 1979, Vietname invaded Cambodia.

Vietnamese soldiers put daughter into DP camp. The family moves to Saigon. The family avoids Thai pirates.

Lam Sing Refugee Camp.

June 1980: U.S.A.

[Kieen Khleang Rehabilitation centr]

Author was born in 1970.

Her family was sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,

and the Holy Family Church parish of Burlington Vermont.,