San Francisco Chronicle (Calif., USA)
Readers' Q&A
Now that Cambodia's long-awaited war crimes trials are approaching, the impact 30 years later of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal destruction of the country was on the minds of the Chronicle's Two Cents pool, including a series of questions from Porthira Chhim, 35, of Baltimore.
Q: How important is it to Cambodians to remember the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and this part of their recent history?
A: A major topic of debate among those involved with or actively interested in the trials. And little unity of view from people I talked to.
Some said the prevailing view among Cambodians is that "it's time to forget and move on." For those who survived, witnessed the horrors and lost entire families, I was told, forgetting is more important than remembering. "It's very hard for them," said Ly Phearak, 24, an activist with the Phnom Penh-based Womyn's Agenda for Change.
Then there are those - the majority of Cambodians in 2007 were born after the Khmer Rouge - who, I was told, neither seek to know nor even believe what they are told.
"My 12-year-old child doesn't believe it," said Ta Mom Sok Chenda, 37, a tour guide at Angkor Wat, whose brother died of malaria in a Thailand refugee camp during the Khmer Rouge period. "My son saw 'The Killing Fields' and said, 'See, it's just a movie.' "
A former U.S ambassador to Cambodia, Roland Eng, told me: "Many younger Cambodians say, 'Why do you impose your pain on us?' They want to move on."
Ly, whose parents lived to tell her their tale, also wants to move on. But she demands an accounting for the past. "To me, it's very important. Why did this happen? How could it happen? Who was behind it?"
And, as the trials approach, more survivors appear to be emerging from their years of silence. "It boggles my mind the myriad witnesses who have come forward" offering to testify, said war crimes tribunal co-prosecutor Robert Petit. "Even those who are living next door to known accomplices of the Khmer Rouge."
Q: Is the history about the Khmer Rouge genocide part of the curriculum in Cambodian schools?
A: No. Perhaps that is why, in part, "there is a whole generation of people who don't know why it happened, or what happened," said Petit. Coincidentally, a Bay Area resident e-mailed me to say his 23-year-old Cambodian wife "knew almost nothing about the Pol Pot regime until she came to the United States. She was taught ancient Cambodian history and modern Cambodian history starting with the end of the Pol Pot regime, but not about Pol Pot and the killing fields."
Why not? Either because the post-Pol Pot governments fear the airing of dirty laundry of some of its own members, as some Cambodians and Western observers I talked to believe, or that, as Prime Minister Hun Sen is said to believe, it's "too late," "too painful to open old wounds." Perhaps a combination of both?
There are other ways of learning: memorials and museums scattered along the country's "genocide trail," which Cambodian critics say fail to do the period justice. There are increasing numbers of books, movies and documentaries. And, of course, the upcoming trials themselves, which advocates believe will trigger an enormous spotlight on those years, thanks in part to the huge nationwide awareness projects and public forums being organized by non-governmental organizations.
Q: Do Cambodians care that some of their current leaders are connected to the Khmer Rouge even if they may not have been directly responsible for deaths?
A: As a mark of that question's sensitivity, when I put it to prosecutor Petit, he smiled thinly and replied: "Nice knowing you."
Safe to say, it's common knowledge in Cambodia that a great many members of the government had, at one time, ties to the Khmer Rouge. The current minister of finance, Keat Chhon, for example, was a senior adviser to Pol Pot, a connection he publicly admitted last year. Current Prime Minister Hun Sen was a Khmer Rouge commander before he defected. For a time, the now-retired chief of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was allied with the Khmer Rouge.
Justifications and explanations, I was told, run along the lines of, "everyone was Khmer Rouge," (which was one way to stay alive) or "we were lower-level members," or "we went and got the liberators" (i.e. the Vietnamese, who invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979).
Do Cambodians care? Not, it seems, as much as they support the Hun Sen government, at least according to opinion polls and Cambodians and Western observers I talked to, and the direction it seeks to take the country.
As for the United States, which Chhim also pointed out at one time refused to have any truck with any government associated with the Khmer Rouge, it had a 10-year ban on aid to Cambodia, which it lifted only in February. The United States is now one of the largest providers of foreign aid to Cambodia, and, according to Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, considers its relationship with the current Cambodian government "abnormally normal."
Nobody I talked to in Cambodia brought up the idea of financial reparations.
"Many Cambodians would agree with me that no amount of financial reparation is adequate to repay for our losses, our loss of father, mother, sister, brother, child, husband, wife, etcetera," said Theary Seng, executive director of the Center for Social Development, a Cambodian nongovernmental organization based in Phnom Penh.
"The little bit of talk of financial reparation has come only when the public knows of the lavish villa of Ieng Sary (Pol Pot's "Brother No. 3," and the Khmer Rouge's former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, now facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity), and then we find his talk of being penurious to afford a lawyer and requesting a legal aid lawyer disingenuous and disgusting."
The war crimes tribunal's charter states expressly that whatever "reparations" are to be considered are moral and not financial.
"What we victims who suffered loss of family members, and victims who survived but continue to suffer poverty and hardship - including emotional and mentally - want is acknowledgement of responsibility from the KR leaders, a time for collective, national mourning and remembrance," said Seng. "These measures are significantly of more value than any money that can be given."
Q: I would like to know how the Cambodian people coped with and viewed the United States after the B-52 bombing raids ("Operation Menu"). This seems a particularly relevant question given the parallel of Vietnam and Cambodia then to Iraq and Iran now. - Ben Vasquez
Q: What is the general attitude toward Americans? We see the media stories about how we are hated in many Muslim countries. I am wondering how those who have had to pick up the pieces feel about us now. - Denise McGrath Wilder, Daly City
Operation Menu was the code-name for the 1969-70 U.S. bombing of Cambodia, first aimed at eradicating North Vietnamese sanctuaries inside Cambodia. U.S. forces dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on the country.
As a student who had opposed the U.S. incursion into and bombing of Cambodia, U.S. Ambassador Mussomeli, said, "I expected a reservoir of resentment" about it among Cambodians today. Instead, he found, "You can't meet a Cambodian who doesn't love Americans." That may be an exaggeration, although polls suggest Cambodians are among the few friends (along with the Vietnamese) that the U.S. still has. And, if there's any resentment at all, from what I could gather, it's that the Americans didn't do much for them in the Khmer Rouge years, and for some time after.
Sok Chenda Sophea, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen, said in an interview that he is surprised at his countrymen's "capacity to forgive and forget" America's contribution to Cambodia's pain. Is that true for him? "Oh, yes," replied Sok, who also heads the government's Council for the Development of Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge, which killed both his parents, are a different matter. "I didn't forgive. I didn't forget," said Sok Chenda. "But I turned the page."
Perhaps, in part a government-inspired statement, but that was a sentiment that echoed among most of the Cambodians I spoke to in my all-too-short trip.
Q: How important is it to Cambodians to remember the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and this part of their recent history?
A: A major topic of debate among those involved with or actively interested in the trials. And little unity of view from people I talked to.
Some said the prevailing view among Cambodians is that "it's time to forget and move on." For those who survived, witnessed the horrors and lost entire families, I was told, forgetting is more important than remembering. "It's very hard for them," said Ly Phearak, 24, an activist with the Phnom Penh-based Womyn's Agenda for Change.
Then there are those - the majority of Cambodians in 2007 were born after the Khmer Rouge - who, I was told, neither seek to know nor even believe what they are told.
"My 12-year-old child doesn't believe it," said Ta Mom Sok Chenda, 37, a tour guide at Angkor Wat, whose brother died of malaria in a Thailand refugee camp during the Khmer Rouge period. "My son saw 'The Killing Fields' and said, 'See, it's just a movie.' "
A former U.S ambassador to Cambodia, Roland Eng, told me: "Many younger Cambodians say, 'Why do you impose your pain on us?' They want to move on."
Ly, whose parents lived to tell her their tale, also wants to move on. But she demands an accounting for the past. "To me, it's very important. Why did this happen? How could it happen? Who was behind it?"
And, as the trials approach, more survivors appear to be emerging from their years of silence. "It boggles my mind the myriad witnesses who have come forward" offering to testify, said war crimes tribunal co-prosecutor Robert Petit. "Even those who are living next door to known accomplices of the Khmer Rouge."
Q: Is the history about the Khmer Rouge genocide part of the curriculum in Cambodian schools?
A: No. Perhaps that is why, in part, "there is a whole generation of people who don't know why it happened, or what happened," said Petit. Coincidentally, a Bay Area resident e-mailed me to say his 23-year-old Cambodian wife "knew almost nothing about the Pol Pot regime until she came to the United States. She was taught ancient Cambodian history and modern Cambodian history starting with the end of the Pol Pot regime, but not about Pol Pot and the killing fields."
Why not? Either because the post-Pol Pot governments fear the airing of dirty laundry of some of its own members, as some Cambodians and Western observers I talked to believe, or that, as Prime Minister Hun Sen is said to believe, it's "too late," "too painful to open old wounds." Perhaps a combination of both?
There are other ways of learning: memorials and museums scattered along the country's "genocide trail," which Cambodian critics say fail to do the period justice. There are increasing numbers of books, movies and documentaries. And, of course, the upcoming trials themselves, which advocates believe will trigger an enormous spotlight on those years, thanks in part to the huge nationwide awareness projects and public forums being organized by non-governmental organizations.
Q: Do Cambodians care that some of their current leaders are connected to the Khmer Rouge even if they may not have been directly responsible for deaths?
A: As a mark of that question's sensitivity, when I put it to prosecutor Petit, he smiled thinly and replied: "Nice knowing you."
Safe to say, it's common knowledge in Cambodia that a great many members of the government had, at one time, ties to the Khmer Rouge. The current minister of finance, Keat Chhon, for example, was a senior adviser to Pol Pot, a connection he publicly admitted last year. Current Prime Minister Hun Sen was a Khmer Rouge commander before he defected. For a time, the now-retired chief of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was allied with the Khmer Rouge.
Justifications and explanations, I was told, run along the lines of, "everyone was Khmer Rouge," (which was one way to stay alive) or "we were lower-level members," or "we went and got the liberators" (i.e. the Vietnamese, who invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979).
Do Cambodians care? Not, it seems, as much as they support the Hun Sen government, at least according to opinion polls and Cambodians and Western observers I talked to, and the direction it seeks to take the country.
As for the United States, which Chhim also pointed out at one time refused to have any truck with any government associated with the Khmer Rouge, it had a 10-year ban on aid to Cambodia, which it lifted only in February. The United States is now one of the largest providers of foreign aid to Cambodia, and, according to Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, considers its relationship with the current Cambodian government "abnormally normal."
Nobody I talked to in Cambodia brought up the idea of financial reparations.
"Many Cambodians would agree with me that no amount of financial reparation is adequate to repay for our losses, our loss of father, mother, sister, brother, child, husband, wife, etcetera," said Theary Seng, executive director of the Center for Social Development, a Cambodian nongovernmental organization based in Phnom Penh.
"The little bit of talk of financial reparation has come only when the public knows of the lavish villa of Ieng Sary (Pol Pot's "Brother No. 3," and the Khmer Rouge's former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, now facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity), and then we find his talk of being penurious to afford a lawyer and requesting a legal aid lawyer disingenuous and disgusting."
The war crimes tribunal's charter states expressly that whatever "reparations" are to be considered are moral and not financial.
"What we victims who suffered loss of family members, and victims who survived but continue to suffer poverty and hardship - including emotional and mentally - want is acknowledgement of responsibility from the KR leaders, a time for collective, national mourning and remembrance," said Seng. "These measures are significantly of more value than any money that can be given."
Q: I would like to know how the Cambodian people coped with and viewed the United States after the B-52 bombing raids ("Operation Menu"). This seems a particularly relevant question given the parallel of Vietnam and Cambodia then to Iraq and Iran now. - Ben Vasquez
Q: What is the general attitude toward Americans? We see the media stories about how we are hated in many Muslim countries. I am wondering how those who have had to pick up the pieces feel about us now. - Denise McGrath Wilder, Daly City
Operation Menu was the code-name for the 1969-70 U.S. bombing of Cambodia, first aimed at eradicating North Vietnamese sanctuaries inside Cambodia. U.S. forces dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on the country.
As a student who had opposed the U.S. incursion into and bombing of Cambodia, U.S. Ambassador Mussomeli, said, "I expected a reservoir of resentment" about it among Cambodians today. Instead, he found, "You can't meet a Cambodian who doesn't love Americans." That may be an exaggeration, although polls suggest Cambodians are among the few friends (along with the Vietnamese) that the U.S. still has. And, if there's any resentment at all, from what I could gather, it's that the Americans didn't do much for them in the Khmer Rouge years, and for some time after.
Sok Chenda Sophea, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen, said in an interview that he is surprised at his countrymen's "capacity to forgive and forget" America's contribution to Cambodia's pain. Is that true for him? "Oh, yes," replied Sok, who also heads the government's Council for the Development of Cambodia.
The Khmer Rouge, which killed both his parents, are a different matter. "I didn't forgive. I didn't forget," said Sok Chenda. "But I turned the page."
Perhaps, in part a government-inspired statement, but that was a sentiment that echoed among most of the Cambodians I spoke to in my all-too-short trip.
7 comments:
America had bomed the country, but her true intention was to get the Vietcong. Not The Cambodian people. Why should The Cambodian people get upset or hate The American? Of course it was a violation in some part, but who ran the country at the time? and why the Vietcong were in Cambodia? We were supposed to be a Neutral country...Something wasn't right here.
Most importantly, we call on the international attention to focus on China. China should pay respect to The Cambodian people for standing very close to this brutal regime of Khmer Rouge. She ( China ) during the period of 1975- 1979 just stood there, do nothing, but supporting the Khmer Rouge and allowed the horror killing to go on and on until nearly two millions people of this gentle and peaceful country were gone. China should get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness from the Cambodian people who lost everything and those who survive were cripled for life plus a hundred million dollars a year for 2 centuries paying to the Cambodian people inside and outside of the country. They scattered around the world, because of China was The Khmer Rouge's Boss. Those 5 suckers that are incustody today are nothing, but a puppets and a rag. They can go to hell. China was the Pol Pot system's back bone. This brutal Regime couldn't be at all possible without China. She was the real Murderer.
Bullshit, the US had no business in Indochina, Period.
I think the U.S owes Cambodia and Cambodians tremendously from they had caused to Cambodia. But the U.S had chose to do nothing...maybe Cambodia have no friends in Washington and Cambodia do not complain. The U.S is not all true either.
I hope the tribunal will answer this question of mine I have had for life: Why did they kill? Or how did the tragedy happen? China was the most communist country in the world by why didn't the massacre take place there?
Regarding the US responsibility in this matter, I've learnt the following chain of events:
1- the US bombing of Cambodia angered rural Cambodians (My collection of online articles HERE);
2- Sihanouk, who was overthrown by the US-backed Lon Nol government, joined the Khmer Rouge after the 1970 coup;
3- Lon Nol government was corrupt and the gap between the rich and the poor became bigger;
3- as a result, more and more rural Cambodians supported the Khmer Rouge and therefore it became so strong that it eventually was able to topple Lon Nol administration in 1975.
My assumption therefore is that the US didn't mean for the Khmer Rouge to seize power but that its bombardment of the country and the US withdrawal of support for Lon Nol administration led to the Khmer Rouge taking control of Cambodia.
I agree that China was the "backbone" of the Khmer Rouge; I hate to hear that the US had nothing to do with the rise to power by the Khmer Rouge.
All these said, I don't mean to blame anyone for anything. I just wish to get the attention of the outside world to the matter. Finally, I hope that Cambodian children of tomorrow have learnt of the past and the lessons out of it. "When you lose, don't lose the lesson."
My collection of online articles regarding the US bombing of Cambodia at http://ysamphy.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/online-resources-about-us-bombings-over-cambodia-in-late-60s-70s/
Sorry the Wordpress link didn't work for some reason I don't know. That was why i had to delete my comments two times already.
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