THEY had suffered enough and should have been left alone. But not even orphans were safe last week in Cambodia as its rival factions resumed the bloodshed that has tortured the country with little respite for more than two decades.
In the wake of the violent coup against Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the democratically elected first prime minister and son of Norodom Sihanouk, the monarch, soldiers forced their way at gunpoint into an orphanage for 40 children who had lost their parents in previous rounds of bloodletting.
After looting a year's supply of medicine and equipment they turned their attention on the frightened children and stole everything they possessed even dolls.
The soldiers then announced that they planned to turn the orphanage into a military barracks. They accused its administrators, including Geraldine Cox, an Australian, of harbouring defecting Khmer Rouge insurgents who, they said, Ranariddh had brought secretly into Phnom Penh to strengthen his position.
The fate of the orphans is a striking example of how the lives of many ordinary Cambodians have once again been shattered by the ambitions of their power-hungry leaders.
Just as many warned it would, the shaky coalition government that emerged from United Nations sponsored elections in 1993 has collapsed. The bitter rivalry between Ranariddh and Hun Sen, his co-prime minister for the past four years, has finally erupted into war.
The UN worked hard to ensure the 1993 national elections, coupled with a $2 billion peacekeeping operation, would bring national reconciliation, political stability, a measure of democracy and human rights to war-ravaged Cambodia.
But Hun's coup has jeopardised that achievement and Cambodia is in danger of plunging into another bout of inconclusive civil war from which the remnants of the Khmer Rouge forces hiding out in the jungle will profit most.
The people have seen it all before. Not far from the orphanage, two soldiers on Ranariddh's losing side, who had been executed after being taken prisoner, lay on a pavement near Phnom Penh University last week bloating in the sun. Nobody paid attention, not even when dogs fought over the remains.
Last week, wild rumours of atrocities committed by Hun's forces circulated in Phnom Penh. According to one, a group of Ranariddh's bodyguards had been strangled and thrown into the Mekong River upstream from the capital. According to another, the entire family of a leading figure on the defeated side was said to have been murdered. There was no independent confirmation of such reports. But the stories are indicative of the panic in Cambodia as Hun's regime mounts what Amnesty International has called a "targeted campaign" to eliminate political opponents.
What is certain is that Ho Sok, secretary of state at the interior ministry, and Chao Sambath, a senior security adviser to Ranariddh, were murdered last week. Hun's government tried to pass off their deaths as suicide. Chao, it claimed, had died after bleeding to death by biting off his tongue. In fact, Hun's victorious troops shot the two dead within hours of taking them prisoner.
A systematic campaign of arrests, intimidation and harassment has netted hundreds of soldiers, officials and supporters loyal to Ranariddh. Many were spending their sixth day as prisoners yesterday in a military base southwest of Phnom Penh with access from the Red Cross denied. Others were in hiding.
Ahmed Yahya, an outspoken MP, and his pregnant wife spent last week sleeping in different safe houses each night. Dozens of Ranariddh supporters sheltered for safety under false names amid terrified guests and members of the foreign community at the Cambodiana hotel.
The scenes at the hotel last week were reminiscent of the days in 1975 when it was filled with starving refugees after Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge.
The sight of thousands of people scrambling for safety, America pulling out most of its diplomats and thousands of other foreigners heading for the airport to board military transport planes out of the country echoed even more ominously of the city's violent past.
In the wake of the coup, America has frozen aid to Cambodia for a month. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) has also postponed Cambodia's membership and is continuing to recognise Ranariddh as the country's co-prime minister. But Hun, a self-educated man from a peasant family, is by nature a gambler. He is confident he can ride out the storm. "I have been the captain alone many times already," Hun said last week. "I am still holding the steering."
Hun attempted to justify the coup by accusing Ranariddh of destabilising Cambodia, of building up his own armed forces and stocks of weapons and of conducting secret negotiations with the outlawed Khmer Rouge.
Hun's confidence is not misplaced. Many members of Ranariddh's royalist party were cutting deals with him last week.
Ranariddh is, however, not the innocent victim he would have the world believe. "He supped with the devil," said a western diplomat. "It was really unconscionable to deal with the Khmer Rouge leaders, responsible for the deaths of more than a million people."
While Hun has not suspended the constitution or changed the monarchy to a republic, his coup throws the Cambodian monarchy's future into doubt. "The king is the tree and if necessary I will cut down its branches," Hun said.
As another dozen members of the royal family fled last week to join other royals abroad, Hun appears to be achieving his aim. He has outmanoeuvred Sihanouk, who is receiving medical treatment for cancer in China and is now more politically marginalised than ever before.
Hun's rejection of Sihanouk's offer to mediate in the current crisis is the surest sign of who is now in charge of Cambodia's destiny. "It is not necessary," Hun declared. "Everything is over."