The Angry Skies

The Angry Skies is an unprecedented account of an American physician who infiltrated a renegade gang of Khmer Rouge soldiers in Cambodia to uncover the dark truths behind Pol Pot's communist revolution when two million people perished from 1975 to 1979. After documenting the dark underbelly of China's military occupation of Tibet for thirteen years, Dr. Kerr went to Cambodia in 2000 to see how people were faring after China sponsored Cambodia's killing fields. Dr. Kerr did not expect to meet the Khmer Rouge gang who killed three Western backpackers in 1994. Starting a clinic with their surgeon, whose uncle killed Pol Pot in 1998, offered an opportunity to meet the architects of Pol Pot's regime including Nuon Chea, "Brother Number Two," and Khieu Samphan, commander of the Khmer Liberation Armed Forces. Despite being threatened at gunpoint, interrogated by Hun Sen's police, and staying one hamlet ahead of the CIA, Dr. Kerr came to respect the Khmer Rouge for sleeping near Lon Nol soldiers at night to avoid American bombs, how tough they were, and how little supplies they needed to fight in the jungle. Traveling to remote, heavily mined Khmer Rouge strongholds, Dr. Kerr meets Khmer Rouge child soldiers, physicians, warlords, generals, as well as Pol Pot's family and inner circle who explain how hatred for American bombing helped them raise enough troops to defeat the US-backed government and fuel the largest genocide by any country on its own people.