Nuon Chea and his wife (Photo PBS)PAILIN, Cambodia – A decade after being reunited with the rest of Cambodia, Pailin is still very much a world apart.
While the rest of the country calls them killers, former rebels in this one-time Khmer Rouge stronghold hold tightly to their past as a badge of nationalistic honour.
The purges and mass graves are all part of a myth that has been constructed against them by those who did not love their country, they say.
“I was Khmer Rouge myself, but I never saw the killing,“ said Ven Dara, niece of Ta Mok, a brutal military commander who is one of only two Khmer Rouge leaders in jail awaiting a planned tribunal.
“I only saw that we went to fight on the border and we came back to die in the hospital. In every pagoda, thousands died after we fought the Vietnamese troops,“ she said.
As a tribunal looms for a handful of aging leaders of the now-dead regime, which is blamed for one of the worst genocides of the 20th century, others cautioned the government not to reopen old wounds.
“They should stop the process of a Khmer Rouge tribunal. People say two million people were killed – when were they killed?“ said Youk Run last week at the first forum to publicly question former rebels over how a Khmer Rouge trial could help heal this troubled country.
The forum, set up by the Cambodian NGO Centre for Social Development, brought together more than 100 people, most of them ex-regime members, in Pailin, a quiet city near the Thai border that remained a rebel bastion separate from the rest of the country until the mid-1990s.
“Those people who demand to try former Khmer Rouge leaders, do they ever think about how many people were killed by the American bombing (of Cambodia)?“ Youk Run asked.
As many as two million people died from starvation, overwork or execution during the 1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge, who erased all vestiges of modern life in their drive for an agrarian utopia.
Regime leader Pol Pot died in a remote jungle camp in 1998, while observers worry that other former regime leaders, including Pol Pot’s number two Nuon Chea, could die before the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal is convened.
In a rare interview, Nuon Chea, who is accused of engineering the regime’s most brutal extermination policies and is likely to come before the tribunal, dismissed accusations of genocide.
“The people never used the word genocide. Only the invaders use the word genocide,“ he said, falling back on the well-worn argument that the Khmer Rouge have been unjustly maligned by foreigners.
Many speakers at last week’s forum also advocated a re-think of the regime’s legacy, with some even suggesting its worst parts be erased from school texts.
“Some points of Khmer Rouge history should be taught to the next generation. They should learn about the neighbouring countries taking away our country,“ said district official Mon Hom, alluding to Vietnam’s decade-long occupation of Cambodia after ousting the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
“But about the killing, they should not learn.“
Others said confusion over the upcoming tribunal had increased fears that the net of justice would be too widely cast, entangling not only former leaders, but also its footsoldiers – young peasants forced to embrace the regime.
“The people’s understanding about the Khmer Rouge tribunal is still very limited,“ said Pailin deputy governor Mey Mak, himself a former rebel cadre.
“They don’t know who the tribunal will prosecute. They don’t know how it will affect their families,“ he said.
Posted by Business Day (Thailand)
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