The Cham Rebellion

This book is a study of what happened to Cambodia’s Cham Muslims livingin the Khmer Rouge-controlled Kroch Chhmar district (Kampong Champrovince) during the 1970s. Based on reconstructed events and survivors’memories, it is an account of ordinary Muslims caught up in a utopian maelstromof deceit, brutality, fear, unexpected compassion, torture, and deliberatemurder on an almost unbelievable scale while the Muslim world, and theworld at large, was “occupied” with other concerns.Chapters 1 and 2 explain how the Khmer Rouge entered the district andfound young Cham and Khmer men eager to join up. How could they resist,when Norodom Sihanouk, who enjoyed near-divine status among the peasantryand presented himself as the sole architect of Cambodia’s independence,called upon them to join with the Khmer Rouge (which he had alreadydone) to reverse General Lon Nol’s overthrow of his government? In the “liberated”zones, the Khmer Rouge renamed villages with numbers; selectednew Cham village heads based on their lack of education, total servility, andunquestioning obedience; and gradually communalized life because, theypromised, that would make the people’s lives better and easier ...