Columnist’s note: Two types of people shouldn’t read this column. First, people who don’t like graphic stories of suffering. Second, those who don’t want their illusion of a perfect world to be questioned.

You are a starving man. A starving man with a starving wife waiting for you to come home with food. Any food. Snakes, field mice, even ants. Yes, you are so desperate for food you go out to search, even though it is forbidden by your government. And you are caught.

You are taken to a prison camp and tied with your back to a mango tree. Immediately red ants attack you. You can do nothing. As you sit a woman near you is interrogated. Her captors believe that her husband was a soldier in the old government’s army, but she denies it. You watch them tear off her fingernail with a pair of pliers. It is not going to be a good day.

The interrogator asks you why you went out to find food. You explain that you were hungry, but that isn’t the right answer. He cuts off half of your little finger and slashes your ankle to the bone. Now you will be happy with the food the government gives you.

Later that same day, while you lay bleeding, a pregnant woman is tied to a tree near you. She is also accused of having a husband in the former government’s army. When she denies the accusations the interrogator slits her open. He then reaches into her body cavity and removes the fetus. The woman is left to bleed to death while the fetus is strung to the eaves of a hut, next to several other fetuses presumably removed in the same way. That night, as you lay in pain, you watch wolf-like animals devour the womans body. It has definitely not been a good day.

This describes only one day of torture. There were many more.

Picture yourself suspended from a goal post like structure, only higher up. You are hanging from this structure on a cross. Sort of like a double cruxifiction, if you can picture that. About three feet below you there is a large pile of burning rice hulls. As long as they burn you hang there, blistering from the heat, parched, wishing you were dead. They burn for four days. Then you can come down and have some water. To help you celebrate surviving, you get another opportunity to watch the “field abortion” described earlier. Except this time the captors also remove the womans liver and her breasts. Dinner.

The man I am describing is an obstetrician. He is worried because his wife is pregnant. If complications develop he may not be able to help her because his new government kills everyone with an education. So what happens? His wife goes into labor after seven months and because of the malnutrition there are complications. And there are also people watching. The man must decide. If he saves his wife they will both be killed. This man, an obstetrician, holds his wife in his arms while she dies giving birth.

Who is this man? He is a Cambodian who was forced to suffer unbelievable horrors while the Khmer Rouge held power. This is a true story. I’m telling this story because there is increasing intelligence information indicating that the Khmer Rouge is stockpiling arms. It appears to be preparing to regain total power in Cambodia. Will it get another chance to perform such atrocities?

The U.S. government is not doing a whole lot to discourage this from happening. It votes every year for the United Nation’s seat of Cambodia to go to a coalition, which includes a Khmer Rouge member. It won’t speak out to support a World Court trial for Khmer Rouge leaders. It has yet to say more about the Khmer Rouges’ stockpiling of weapons than it would like to see some sort of decline.

On the positive side, Reagan has shown support for Cambodia’s former leader, Prince Sinhanouk. Congress has appropriated $5 million for aid to Cambodia this year and possibly may raise this to $15 million. The gestures taken so far are few. Are they enough to justify our lack of support if the Khmer Rouge regains power?