Starving season : one person's story

Author / Creator

Seng, Seang M., M. D., author

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Summary

A true story of hope, heartbreak, and survival. It is a snapshot of one life disrupted by one of the most horrific, rarely spoken of atrocities of the 'modern age' -- the genocide of native Cambodi...

A true story of hope, heartbreak, and survival. It is a snapshot of one life disrupted by one of the most horrific, rarely spoken of atrocities of the 'modern age' -- the genocide of native Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge through slow starvation and brutal labor.

"Seang Seng was born and raised in Cambodia, the Southeast Asian country Prince Sihanouk had coined an 'Island of Peace.' The Cambodian people knew only two natural seasons: the dry and the rainy. In the dry season, farmers celebrated the harvest. At the New Year, farmers and city dwellers alike brought rice and prepared foods to the temple to celebrate. During the rainy season, farmers prepared their fields and planted new crops with hopes for a bountiful future harvest. In the cities, students studied, moviegoers flocked to the popular cinemas, and sidewalk vendors hawked all manner of plentiful food and drink. But once the barbaric Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, they forcibly evacuated the cities, including Phnom Penh, and fourth-year medical student Seang Seng found himself and his family og 24 persons driven finto a countryside of forced labor camps that would come to be known as the "Killing Fields." There, in a once bountiful land, a man-made season would reign: the Starving Season. Four years later, Seang Seng walked out of the Killing Fields alone"--Jacket.

"Crowded together in the back of the truck, we talked quietly with each other. I saw no fear in people's eyes, but everyone tried to guess where the dour figures in black would take us. Of course, it was only rumors passing from person to person like butterflies flitting from blossom to blossom. No one knew for sure where we were being taken. Or what would happen to us. Some of the elderly people began to repeat an old Buddhist prediction that our country would go through a time when 'there will be houses where no one lives; there will be streets where no one walks.' This was predicted many years ago, the said. They also said we would face starvation so severe that 'we would eat a grain of rice that stuck to the dog's tail.' We might even know what they called 'the land of the pregnant men.' I had no idea what they were takling about"--Cover.

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