‘I lost them all’: a family’s sole survivor recalls their slow death under Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge

Seang M Seng’s five sisters. ‘I made a pair of shoes for the smallest, Sam Ang,’ he says. ‘All died.’ Photograph: Seang Seng

Seang M Seng still remembers the empty, silent roads he passed through more than 40 years ago as he was driven away by the Khmer Rouge to western Cambodia. It was 1975, Pol Pot’s regime had recently taken power and was forcing 2 million people to leave their homes in the capital, Phnom Penh.

They were being taken to communal farms and rural camps as the new regime began its disastrous and brutal mission to turn Cambodia back to “Year Zero” and create a peasant utopia.