BEYOND THE KILLING FIELDS
By Albert Repicci
Plying the waters of the Ton Le Sop, Southeast Asia’s largest lake, nestled in the heart of Cambodia, the lean silhouette of a solitary fisherman is seen perched on the bow of his tuk nesad ( handcrafted canoe) casting his net into the shallow calm waters in search of his family’s next meal. The art of fishing is clear to him. He understands the ebb and flow of the lake according to the seasons. He knows the best time of day to fish and where the catch might be most bountiful. He will go home to a hut where his wife will have tilled the small plot of land near what they call home and his children will have gathered water for the pots and kindling for the fire. There is order in his world. But tucked away in his subconscious lies thirty years of unfathomable pain suffered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Aware that 80 miles down river in Phnom Penh, one of the world’s most sadistic mass murderers is facing trial for crimes against humanity that invariable resulted in the death and torture of members of this fisherman’s family, he struggles for a balance to both endure life and cope with his darkest nightmares.
April of 1975 is a date recorded in Khmer Rouge parlance as “Year Zero” the beginning of the new order, erasing all time before it. During the four years of their reign, which collapsed in 1979, the communist rulers of what the leadership ironically referred to as Democratic Kampuchea, oversaw the torture, starvation, and the brutal execution of nearly 2 million people. Unlike other incidences of genocide, which pitted tribes or ethnic groups against each other, this conflagration had the characteristics of a crazed beast devouring its young. French author Jean Lacouture, would refer to this decimation of one-fifth of the Cambodian population as an act of auto genocide.
Key players in this national implosion which resulted in the 1000 year regression of Cambodian civilization were a secretive hierarchy headed by Saloth Sar (alias Pol Pot), Nuon Cheu, Son Sen, Ta Mok, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan referred to as the Upper Brothers. This new regime ordered that the cities be emptied, money and private property be abolished along with schools and courts of law. Having likewise, ordered the execution of doctors, lawyers, teachers, most people with an education, former military officers, and those who spoke a foreign language, Cambodia was left with an uneducated peasant society that was pressed into agrarian slavery. The brutal cadres that had worked their way through the revolutionary ranks held sway over life and death, brutally pressing their charges, under forced labor, to perform back breaking tasks on one meal a day of watered down rice.
When the Vietnamese liberated the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in 1979, they entered an empty city, with every semblance of modernity ravaged including telephones, automobiles, refrigerators, books and what ever else hinted at being a product of western civilization…or civilization in general.
Retreating from the Vietnamese assault, the Khmer Rouge made a last stand in the northwest provinces. Melting like wax in the tropical sun, they disappeared into the jungles and refugee camps of the Thai border which became their staging area. After the Vietnamese failed attempt to successfully convert Cambodia to a Soviet style communist state they withdrew from their occupation in 1989 and left Cambodia in a state of virtual civil war. In the late 1990s the Khmer Rouge was rendered impotent and was driven from the political landscape while the existing leadership sought assistance from the international community to help this fledgling democracy bring order to a half century of chaos.
For over twenty-five years various human rights advocates had sought a salve for the national conscience by bringing the most heinous of the Khmer regime’s leadership to justice only to see their attempts frustrated, at first by civil war and most recently by the inability to forge a consensus on the process by the international overseers and the new Cambodian government. In the meantime, Pol Pot and Ta Mok died of natural causes, Son Sen was murdered under orders given by Pol Pot, and many of the upper echelon eventually defected the defunct cause and accepted a royal amnesty. It would seem that there would be no day in court for the regime that had committed, arguably, the worst mass murder up to that point in history. There would be no solace, no iota of comfort or satisfaction for those remaining families whose loved ones were ruthlessly butchered by the savage “Angkar.”
One of the unique difficulties in ascribing guilt lies in the fact that many who now serve in the present political system were previously members of the Khmer Rouge who, at some point, had defected from the communist cause to join the government. The present Prime Minister, Hun Sen, recognizing the developing malignancy in the Khmer Rouge defected as early as 1977. Others defected twenty years later only after their political options had run out.
Those of the “Upper Brothers” who are still alive or survived, until recently, claimed in self defense that, during their reign Cambodia was under siege by the contemptible Vietnamese as well as by the CIA and KGB. Ideologues and thugs though they were, they perceived themselves as having fought the good and righteous cause, yet acknowledging that, in fighting evil, even the good must sometimes themselves do evil. The weight of the documentation characterizing the ruthless brutality of the regime, however, refutes this simplistic view. This, amongst other contrived arguments, had, nonetheless, kept these high ranking officials from prosecution to date.
With, however, the recent passing of Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist who introduced much of the world into the prism of horror he labeled the “Killing Fields” and the twenty-fourth anniversary (April 17, 1975) of ‘Year Zero”, the world is again focused, for the moment, on the status of Cambodian justice as of yet unrealized. Ironically, standing trial presently in Phnom Penh, in addition to four of the regimes most heinous leaders, is the director of the savage prison, Kang Keck Ieu, alias Comrade Duch (pronounced Doik). With the hope to assuage the national conscience by bringing a major figure to justice having all but evaporated, photo journalist Nik Dunlop, uncovered a chameleon in the bush in 1999 with the discovery of Duch , the aging head of the infamous torture prison Tuol Sleng known as S-21. Living a new life in a village near the Thai border, Duch had gone unnoticed for nearly twenty years before Dunlop had made it his personal mission to track him down after extracting a copy of his photograph from the S-21 prison achieves. Twenty-thousand prisoners were condemned to S-21, and under the directorship of Duch, all but seven met a brutal death in the now infamous killing fields at Choeung Ek just west of the capital. It was here at S-21 where the paranoia ran deepest. Those accused were presumed to be traitors to the cause and to be accused was to be sentenced to death. Today’s prison guards became tomorrow’s prisoners. Today’s power brokers became tomorrow’s fodder in the killing fields. These political prisoners were considered guilty of subverting the “Organization” or “The Great Angkar.” Here at S-21 all prisoners were pressed, under savage torture, to contrive confessions before their execution.
After Dunlop’s discovery, Comrade Duch was apprehended and has now been languishing in a Phnom Penh prison for nine years. That singular photograph of the waxen, sunken cheeked Duch flashing an inscrutable toothy grin gives credence to the couplet from the cautionary medieval tale of Little Red Riding Hood, “Now as then, tis simple truth, Broadest smile, hath sharpest tooth.” In the autumn of 2007 the Cambodian government and international observers agreed on a formula to bring Duch and a variety of Upper Brothers to trial. Within the Cambodian psyche, however, the unpatrolled intersection of hope and despair has given way to a cynicism that doubts that justice will ever come to pass.
Why have the trials taken so long to come about? What accounts for the great number of delays and pretrial hearings? Is the government stalling the trial to avoid being implicated during testimony? This past week in Phnom Penh, having interviewed the genocide pretrial hearings lead reporter from the Cambodian Daily News, Erika Kinetz, as well as attorney Peoudara Vanthan, Khmer Rouge Tribunal Response Team Leader, many answers to these question became clear. In large part, the delays have been a result of the constant state of war that has plagued Cambodia. With some semblance of stability, however, in 1997 the Co- Prime Ministers, recognizing that the Cambodian judiciary lacked sufficient resources and expertise to undertake such a complex task on their own, requested UN assistance in prosecuting the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. According to Ms. Kinetz, the delays prompted by requests from the defense are critical to accede to in order to assure that history records the even handedness of the trial. The courts credibility is at stake. To the last question, Peoudara Vanthan, points out that the trial is strictly limited to the most responsible “Upper Leadership” and there is no risk of indictment to others. It was they who so dehumanized the population that they paved the way for their loyal and admiring subordinates to commit crimes of obedience, a psychological trap into which we can all be seduced.
Interestingly, occasional westerners traveled to Cambodian to be closer to the trials. As some admitted, it would have been disingenuous to suggest that the inclination to trace Dunlop’s journey to the captured Comrade Duch did not at some level smack of macabre curiosity. On a more visceral level, however, the effort to come half way around the world for many is prompted by nothing more complicated than the desire to lend a presence to the long over due quest for justice and reconciliation for Cambodians. Ironically, diplomacy sometimes works from the bottom up. If just being here brings some measure of comfort, it may be all we can do.
Up until now, the adage, “Time heals all wounds” has had little meaning among weary Cambodians. In dealing with atrocities of this magnitude, one could conclude that a single lifetime may not be enough time for healing to be realized. And for this reason, 80 miles up river, a solitary fisherman continues to cast his net for things he understands, resigned to his daily struggle with a mere dollop of hope that the glacial pace of justice may put some of his ghosts to rest.