Cham Muslims

Ten Cham villages were taken over by the CPK in 1972�"1973, where new Cham leaders were instated and led the villagers to work in the fields away from their hometowns. A witness interviewed by Kiernan asserts that they were well-treated by the CPK then, and allowed to return to their homes in 1974. Moreover, the Cham were classified as "depositee base people", making them further vulnerable to persecution. Despite that, the Cham in many areas do live side by side with the locals, speaking the Khmer language, and even inter-marrying with the majority Khmers as well as the minority Chinese and Vietnamese. The diverse ethnic and cultural practices of Cambodians began to deteriorate with the rise of the CPK in 1972, when the Cham were prohibited from practising their faith and culture: Cham women were required to keep their hair short like the Khmers; Cham men were not allowed to put on the sarong; farmers were made to put on rudimentary dark or black clothing; religious activities like the mandatory daily prayers were curbed. Vickery notes that the Cambodian Cham were discriminated against by the Khmer before the beginning of the war "in some localities", partly because the Cham were stereotyped as being practitioners of black magic. In other localities, the Cham were well-assimilated within the host communities, speaking the Khmer language and marrying Khmers, Vietnamese, and the Chinese.

Between 1972 and 1974, the enforcement of such restrictions was further amplified as the Khmer Rouge found the Cham to be a threat to its communist agenda due to their unique language, culture, belief, and independent communal system. Not only that, the Cham were renamed "Islamic Khmers" to disassociate them with their ancestral heritage and ethnicity and assimilate them into the larger Khmer-dominated Democratic Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge believed that the Cham would jeopardize the communist efforts of establishing close-knit communities where everyone could be easily monitored. As such, the regime had decided to disperse the Cham by deporting them from their respective localities to work as peasants across Cambodia, hence contributing directly to the new DK economy. This move was undertaken to ensure that the Cham will not congregate to form its own community again, which undermines the regime's plan of establishing central economic cooperatives. Slowly, those who defied these restrictions were arrested by the regime. Hence in October 1973, Cham Muslims in the Eastern Zone of DK demonstrated their displeasure towards the CPK restrictions by beating the drums�"traditionally used to inform locals of the time for daily prayers�"at local mosques. This act of communal defiance prompted the blanket arrest of many Cham Muslim leaders and religious teachers.

"Bonnie Blue Flag": Extremely popular Confederate song named after the first flag of the Confederacy, which had one white star on a blue background. The lyrics listed each state in the order in which they seceded from the Union.

Cartridge: Roll of thin paper which held a small amount of gun powder in the bottom and a ball or bullet in the top. A soldier needed to tear off the top of the cartridge in order to fire his weapon - part of the nine steps to fire a muzzle loading gun (or five to fire a breech loading gun).

Long Roll: A long, continuous drum call which commanded a regiment to assemble.

Abatis: (pronounced ab-uh-tee, ab-uh-tis, uh-bat-ee, or uh-bat-is) A line of trees, chopped down and placed with their branches facing the enemy, used to strengthen fortifications.

Smoothbore: A gun is smoothbore if the inside of the barrel is completely smooth. Smoothbore guns were used before rifled guns were developed. Although smoothbores were not as accurate and had a shorter range than rifled arms, there were still plenty of them in use during the Civil War.