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Article: Cycle of violence engulfs gentle Cambodia.(Column)
- Article from:
- National Catholic Reporter
- Article date:
- August 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 National Catholic Reporter. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Visitors to Cambodia invariably refer to the people as gentle. Few nations, however, have experienced as much unrelenting violence over the past 30 years.
Many are to blame for this modern horror story, but a good portion can be traced to decisions made in Washington at the end of the 1960s.
For Cambodians, or the Khmer people, as they are known, today's turmoil, including a coup and potential civil war, is sadly just the latest eruption in a history of close to a thousand years of periodic violence, much of it the result of scheming outsiders.
Cambodia reached its zenith of cultural and political influence in the 10th and 12th centuries, ...