The Vietnamese. . . wanted to assassinate me because they knew without me they could easily swallow up Cambodia.
In America there's a saying that children should be seen and not heard,. . In Cambodia, children should not be seen nor heard because you would not survive.
I'm somebody who works within Cambodia, with Cambodians. I work alongside the artists and society to work from within, so that is the focus, and from that I hope everybody who believes in democracy, in certain freedoms, will get louder, will grow their voices.
If my relation to each and every peasant in Cambodia is indeed exactly what the principles of morality would demand it to be, it's a miraculous coincidence, because it takes a lot of effort to behave correctly in regard to my friends, and from one end of the year to another I never give those peasants a single thought.
Other human rights atrocities from African slavery to the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides are all of course to be remembered, but diluting their particularity or comparing degrees of evil does no good.
When I arrived in America, though I had left the war physically far behind, in my mind, the soldiers were still chasing to kill me, my stomach was always hungry, and my fear and distrust kept me from opening up to new friendships. I thought the war was over when I left Cambodia, but I realize now that for survivors and all those involved, the war is never over just because the guns have fallen silent.
I always felt more emotionally attached to Cambodia than I did to Vietnam.
Cambodia wanted no part of SEATO. We would look after ourselves as neutrals and Buddhists.
I look and there's our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia, and our girl was born in Namibia, and our son is from Cambodia, and they're brothers and sisters, man. They're brothers and sisters and it's a sight for elation.
I don't consider myself a politician or a hero. I'm a messenger. If Cambodia is to survive, she needs many voices.
There's what we did wrong and what we did right. The mistake is that we did some things against the people — by us and also by the enemy — but the other side, as I told you, is that without our struggle there would be no Cambodia right now.
Cambodia possesses now the rights to look far into the future and everything for making a future construction is waiting for the Cambodian own efforts.
[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.
We took a family trip to Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia over Christmas and New Year's. Three weeks was a long time, but it was cool, man. We were on the ocean, so that was kind of intense. After a couple of days you realize how far out you are.
Four years earlier I had been selected, with Kay Boyle, the writer, and a number of others, to go to Cambodia and come back and prove that there were no sanctuaries in that country.
I have lived seventy-eight years without hearing of bloody places like Cambodia.
If you can imagine the area and the land in Cambodia, I mean there are hardly any roads in big parts of the country. The roads they have, in the rainy season, become just mud. So, if you're somebody that has just one leg, or blind with no arms and you have children and you're trying to work, and earn some money, and take care of your home, it's hard enough to be a parent and do all of that normally.
For anybody that works in any kind of demining or any kind of humanitarian aid work, there is danger and it's always a high-risk area [in Cambodia].
I'm quite satisfied on one thing: If we had not carried out our struggle, Cambodia would have become another Kampuchea Krom in 1975.
John Foster Dulles had called on me in his capacity as Secretary of State, and he had exhausted every argument to persuade me to place Cambodia under the protection of the South East Asia Treaty Organization.
