political atrocities

Pin Yathay recounts his experiences hiding from the Khmer Rouge guerrillas who murdered more than two million Cambodians in his native country during the late 1970s, reflecting on the terror he felt and the loss of seventeen members of his family who were killed in the genocide.

Denise Affon?o chronicles the experiences of her family in the years following the Khmer Rouge's take over of Cambodia in April 1975, describing how she, her husband, and her children, were deported to a labor camp where they endured hard labor, famine, sickness, and death.

"State-sponsored assassinations have been used by the United States since the early twentieth century and became a major tactic used by presidential administrations in the 1980s to fight drug wars in South America. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States has escalated its use of targeted killing. The CIA and Pentagon have employed the controversial practice more than ever before, and President Barack Obamas administration increased drone-targeted killing and special forces dramatically. This text looks at both the history and current use of government-sponsored assassinations, providing . . . analysis from multiple perspectives about the issues, politics, and ethics behind state-sponsored killing to help students think critically about the issue today"--Amazon.com.

Relates the personal experiences of Loung Ung, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official in Phnom Penh, after her family was forced to flee from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army, and describes her training as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans and how her surviving siblings were eventually reunited.

A groundbreaking anthology containing the work of poets who have witnessed war, imprisonment, torture, and slavery. A companion volume to Against Forgetting, Poetry of Witness is the first anthology to reveal a tradition that runs through English-language poetry. The 300 poems collected here were composed at an extreme of human endurance--while their authors awaited execution, endured imprisonment, fought on the battlefield, or labored on the brink of breakdown or death. All bear witness to historical events and the irresistibility of their impact. Alongside Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, this volume includes such writers as Anne Askew, tortured and executed for her religious beliefs during the reign of Henry VIII; Phillis Wheatley, abducted by slave traders; Samuel Bamford, present at the Peterloo Massacre in 1819; William Blake, who witnessed the Gordon Riots of 1780; and Samuel Menashe, survivor of the Battle of the Bulge. Poetry of Witness argues that such poets are a perennial feature of human history, and it presents the best of that tradition, proving that their work ranks alongside the greatest in the language.

The series presents basic historical background on these significant events in modern world history, the issues and controversies surrounding the events, and first-person narratives from people whose lives were altered by the events.

Francois Bizot recounts the experiences he had during his arrest and captivity in Cambodia in 1971.

Contains eyewitness accounts of life in Cambodia during Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, written by survivors who were children at the time, and telling of the years between 1975 and 1979 when families were torn apart, forced from their homes, and subjected to brainwashing and execution.