His book intertwines his memoirs with interviews and research of the regime.
“I made the book’s title Mom & Angkar’s Kid because in that period, they trained us to hate our parents,” the former Reuters reporter said.
He describes an enduring guilt for “being so crazy to scorn [my parents] lives during the Khmer Rouge regime and saying that ‘I will smash them if they do something wrong for the revolutionary Angkar’”.
“I want to show the next generation about the children’s rights violations and abuse during Democratic Kampuchea,” Sophal, who is not participating in the Khmer Rouge tribunal, said.
“If there had been no January 7 [overthrow of the Khmer Rouge], I would have had an idea to smash my mom, because I was absorbed into Angkar’s ideology,” he said.
The book is fully financed by Minister for Information Khieu Kanharith.
Adhoc’s KRT Justice Program co-ordinator Latt Ky said that the Khmer Rouge’s treatment of children was akin to complete indoctrination.
“Kids were pulled out of school and all their education was political education,” Ky said. “They don’t really understand their actions and even when Angkar asks the child to kill his father and mother, the child sees no choice.”
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