26 July 1975

Penn Nouth (file photo), powerless prime minister of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, who lives in Beijing, is said to have gone to the Chinese countryside to “improve himself”- as millions of Chinese do- through a period of physical labor. https://t.co/5dqE2SONVL

William Goodfellow, founder of @CIPolicy, writes in @nytimes: “The evacuation of Cambodia’s cities was sensationalized as a ‘death march’. It was rather a journey away from certain death by starvation- common in PhnomPenh- as the countryside had a sizable food surplus.”