In his home fronting the Mekong River on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Long Botta keeps a framed photo taken in early 1974 of Cambodia’s then cabinet.
The U.S.-sponsored government pictured was at the time fighting an increasingly desperate war against the communist Khmer Rouge, who were drawing closer to the Cambodian capital.
Botta, the high commissioner for youth and sports, stands at the end of a row of suited men, arms behind his back, staring defiantly into the camera. Lon Nol, the mystic “Marshal” that led the ill-fated and highly corrupt republic, stands in the middle, leaning on his cane but still towering over the rest.
“Most of them were killed by the Khmer Rouge,” Botta, now 72 and an opposition MP, says.
It has been exactly forty years since the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975.
The arrival of the communist troops, mostly young and dour peasant boys hardened by years of guerrilla war, marked the end of a traumatic civil war and the beginning of a nearly four-year long nightmare of ultra-Maoist rule.
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