One Nation, Underprivileged

May 18, 2008
Opinion by Justin C. Sok

“We were left with the remnants of war: unexploded bombs, exploded bomb shells, and mines; the craters dotted the landscape, which filled with rusty and earthen colored water during the rainy season. The blood of our innocent Cambodian people stains the ditches, canals, and the tree trunks of Cheung Ek. The blood stains on the floors and walls and the mountain of bones and skulls of our innocent Cambodian people at Toul Sleng Centers. Thousands of our Cambodian people have been physically crippled, and equally important, thousands more have experienced clinically significant psychological and somatic symptoms. These are our national nightmares. Indeed, it is a symbol of the sacrifices and suffering of all our people in our Khmer history. They have taught us an important lesson in our times, which is that we must no longer tolerate such ‘vindictiveness for personal gain’. At the end, hatred cannot destroy such beauty.”

It has always been a peaceful place with beautiful scenery. Into the faint mists of morning, wisps of fog still hang in the air, the wet, dewy grass, the sound of the rosters, the birds chirping, and the dogs barking, which signify as a morning alarm clock for the villagers. The rising sun sparks amid the trees. The villagers are getting ready to challenge their long and hard work in the fields under the steamy and hot sun. Cultivating the ground, plowing the fields, fishing, chopping and collecting firewoods, fetching the water, planting seeds, harvesting and picking crops, herding the cattle, and driving the ox cart to transport their fruits and vegetables to the market, is the typical day for the villagers.

In April, the weather has always been humid, sultry, and hot. The scent of earth on the warm breeze, the simplicity of the landscape, which stretches for as far as the eye can see. The fruit trees in the orchard, the line of palm trees in the rice fields’ dikes and the fluttering of the coconut leaves in the trees. I catch occasional glimpses of cattle grazing in the fields, while the water buffalos are enjoying taking their bath in the mud in the irrigation canals. I see the rolling forested hills and the hazy mass of the green ridge mountains. The water lilies, in variety of colors, are floating lazily atop the glasslike surface of the lakes. The female villagers are wearing sarongs along with long sleeves shirts, and wrap their heads and faces with kroma, with hats made of thatch or palm leaves to protect their beautiful skins from getting too dark, sitting in the boats (Touk Dor) in the calm water picking up watercress and pulling lotus roots so that they can take them home to prepare evening meal for the family. The village men were grabbing their fishing poles, and reeling in their catch, then casting the line back into the calm waters of the big lake. Some were in the water using the nets to catch the fish. The pelicans were studying the shallow water intently for signs of a meal. The farmers are driving the ox carts with their wheels squeaking that give an irritation sound, which leaving behind clouds of smoldering brown dust in the hot and dry ruts in the dirt road. Some are ridding on the back of the cows watching over and rounding up a herd of cattle. Would you please pull over, I need to use the bush!

A sunset casts the village in gold. A spume of clouds spread across the sky, orange in the evening night. I watch the dawn glow faint over the shimmering trees and distant mountains. I watch until the sunset and the sky bleeds out a rich, wine red behind them. During the night, the ground releases the scent of damp earth and growing grass. The characteristic scent of the air blending with the slight of sweet smell of variety of flowers: Pka Trobaek Prey, Nakry, Rum Chek, Rum Chong, Champi and Champa, Rumdoul, Malis Rout and Malis Lea, Kdang Ngea, Krovann, and Kolab, and honey suckle on the breeze. I can see the vastness of the starry skies, peaceful waters, weeping trees, pelicans, owls, and the chorus of crickets, frogs, and toads, chicks chirping, and ducklings quacking, serenade my feeling of tranquility of the dark. Looking at the stars in their vastness, I can imagine, the possibilities looming in the vast unforeseeable future. The sense that darkness was a gift, a curtain behind, which indicates that anything could be out there, behind the darkness, in the future; anything could happen. But the stars were luminous and distinct, and I felt a sudden eerie slippage, as though the true map of the universe were emotional, time and space folded upon themselves to bring distant points together through the power of a common feeling. Ouch! Op! I had just committed sin. I squashed mosquito!

In 1960’s, the US government had described Cambodia as a country populated by a superstitious, ‘docile and passive people’, whose world was restricted to village, temple and forest and who, ‘could not be counted on to act in any positive way for the benefit of US aims and policies. President Richard Nixon and his top foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissinger, had disdained on Cambodians, “They simply didn’t exist.” What’s a travesty to the human kind! I was born into this world by my parents during, which the Nixon Administration decided to unleash the bombing of Cambodia. My life began in a world of war. Oh! Preah Euy!

The angry outburst from the sky, the shattered trees in the forest, the B-52 were hovering and hidden above the clouds; the T-28s with napalm were roaring and diving by; the twisting and funneling dark clouds of smoldering smoke and hundreds of thousands cluster bombs had been released from the planes. When a bomblet detonates, some 200,000 steel fragments would be propelled, at ballistic speed; some were designed to air burst, some were ground burst, some were delayed action. The bombs rained down on the landscape creating a deadly killing spree zone. Some bomblets contained metal barbed darts that would pin people to the ground. The napalm would scorch the ground, and the fire would suck the air out from people’s lungs. The B-52 could drop 25,000 of these bomblets on a single bombing run. The size of the bomb craters would dot the landscape. At the same time, the AC-47 gunship circled above that fired 6,000 rounds per minute. It would saturate the landscape and surrounding area. The villagers run for cover anywhere they could. They had little protection against such an enormous attack, whose payloads destroyed everything.

The operation was given a codenamed, “Operation Menu,” Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, and Super. But I learned that the innocent Cambodian people including my parents and relatives had given a different codenamed. They called it, “Hell on earth.” The world, I once had born into, that was so naturalistic and beautiful had suddenly turned completely into the dark abyss.

My mother had once told me that while she was pregnant with me, she had spent more time in the trenches than she had stayed outside in the daylight. We had to stay in metre-deep slit trenches piled with logs and earth. If we needed to come out to get water, firewood, or food, we had to take our chances. But most of the time, we had to stay in the trenches to avoid from getting killed by artillery and its deadly shrapnel. We were blessed with second chance. Despite the incessantly aerial bombardments, we had survived. Some of our relatives and most people in the villages including their families were not lucky. Some got burned to death. Some got buried alive in their trenches.

My mother hardly knew where my father was during the day. At night, he crawled his way back into the trench to bring us some food to eat and left us in minutes. A few minutes could save his life. According to my mother, my father could not stay with us because there were army recruiters of the Khmer Royal army, Khmer Rouge, and Viet Cong Armies. It was too dangerous to stay in our village. So early in 1973(?), my parents decided to move the family across the country to live in Pai Lin, Northwest of Battambang Province.

On March 23, 1970, King Norodom Sihanouk addressed to his little and/or ordinary people on Radio in Beijing, “Brothers and sisters, Koun Chao, go to the jungle and join the guerrillas.” The Black-clad-Order groups or the Khmer Rouge took the opportunity to politicize the message as their propaganda to delude and exploit on the innocent and vulnerable Cambodian people. The Khmer Rouge had, in fact, won over the heart of the people. They marched from the north, south, east, and the west regions toward the Capital. The Khmer Rouge was like a school of hungry piranha. They raided the villages, towns, and cities and torn down and destroyed social and infrastructures and killing almost every life in their paths. Within months of their control, the Khmer Rouge implemented and instituted their radical political campaign and turned Cambodia back into their once an agricultural state, “force a social, cultural, and economic revolution, without any Western technology or aid, that would create a racially pure Khmer society that was self-sufficient and socially and economically egalitarian”.

My uncles, aunts, cousins, and distant relatives from both sides of my parents, and including my maternal grandparents who were left behind in Chantrea/Kroal Ko, Svay Rieng province, were forced to relocate to Pursat province. I have come to learn that very few of them had survived. Most of them had died of starvation, illness, or were executed. My maternal grandparents were old, and I heard that no one took care of them. So they died of starvation and a lack of a medical care. The Khmer Rouge was deep-seated, indoctrinated with pure communist ideology; however, they had veered to genocidal in their policies. “Moha Aus-cha, Moha Lout Ploss. Tver Srè Mouy Hectare Aoy Ban Bey Tons.” After 3 years 8 months and 20 days, nearly 2 million of our innocent Khmer people had perished. This was the greatest mass murder in our Khmer history.

The scent of dead flesh laced the air and soon was detected by the so-called “brotherly loved, Vietnam.” The Hanoi of Vietnam had been waited for this important opportunity since the Vinh Te Canal/Kompup Te Ong massacre in 1814. So in December 1978, the Hanoi government appealed to other Asian countries and used the term “genocide” as their political excuse to gain their support to come and “save” the innocent and vulnerable Cambodian people from the Khmer Rouge’s grip. In January of 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. So they came with their well-trained armies including their civilians loaded in the army trucks. Once the coast was clear and their camps were secured, they unloaded their civilians to settle in the new place that they had just taken. The Hanoi government tried to work out their political negotiations with their newly installed puppet government, hoping that the puppet government would allow for their civilians to settle in Cambodia. In the 80’s, they worked the innocent Khmer people in the K5, looted the belongings of Cambodian and transported them to Vietnam, moved the border posts into Cambodia and mark the new border as their own, built their forts; performed courtships and give birth to babies; trained their offspring in their native Vietnamese customs; scoured the fields looking for natural resources; combed deep into the woods; dove in the deep waters; established their rights in the heart of Phnom Penn, welcomed their Vietnamese leaders, and congratulated one another for their great achievement in taking Cambodia as part of Indochina plans.

“Amoeba-like, communist Vietnam is slowly neo-colonizing Laos and Cambodia by the traditional Vietnamese expansionism termed Don Dien, first by occupying territory with troops, then having their families come in to settle the new territory, then putting the troops into civilian clothes to become "ready reservists" and replacing them with new troops for further expansion.” - Mike Benge

Everyday the news about our homeland has continued to depict the perpetual state of upheaval, oppression, exploitation, and the ultimate cycle of violence. It is highly questionable if any politician and/or international community can guarantee peace and safety. To the average Cambodian, there are still constantly concerned about their safety and their family well-being. They are continuing to burrow their way through the drudgery of life. The people feel like a worm in a yard, which may be eaten any time by any predator. The people who speak are at risk that is soaked in fear. It is difficult to experience freedom when people are threatened and getting intimidated daily by those in power.

Currently, Cambodia is the sole breadbasket to the privileged few; especially, those who are currently the high-ranking government officials. In the circle of the current government, there is covert of political, judicial, and legislative manipulation, where the unwritten rules of those in power are commonly applied, where loyalties shift overnight and a friend can become an enemy by noon. There are deals that constitute and support the on-going corruption. They know how to work together like a spider lacing up its prey with its intricate web. Everybody’s back is scratched. One does not need a hyperactive imagination to paint a considerable number of scenarios to grasp what has been going on in the current Cambodian government. It is a fact!

It is so ironic that after more than 30 years, no one is brave enough to come forward to substantiate the claims of being responsible for having created the atrocity of the “Killing Fields”. Some leaders are continuing to act like the boxers answering the bell for the ninth round; tired, bloody, beaten, with both eyes swollen shut but determined to continue to pummel each other. Some leaders are acting like cattle that lie in the shade and endlessly chew the same cud over and over. While others are so barbaric, they address the ordinary citizens as “animals” and “wild beast.” Still others are irresponsible, ignorant, and are moral cowards. They see themselves as the images of a dragon-like creature that dwell on mountaintops and sleep coiled in the clouds, their spines untroubled by any lack of lumbar support. They can float free like a bird, without ties or allegiances or responsibility, and are unable to take on any important role to cement positive relationships in our society. Instead of spending time trying to educate the younger Khmer generations about the historical facts and what needs to be done to prevent a grave injustice and atrocity from happening again to our nation, they are continuing to enjoy sending out their political rhetoric of hate messages to other Khmer individuals and groups.

“Koun Khmeng Chea . . . . The children are born without sin. They don’t know the difference between right and wrong. The parents, not the child, likewise, the leaders, not the ordinary citizens, are responsible. That kind of leadership is a danger to the human race. They’re destroyers of visions. Visions, especially a child’s vision, has the power to change the world, to pull up these blinders and throw open the door to the wonderful world of possibilities that life offers each of us. So as the parents and leaders, we should embrace and shower our children with love. We should teach them about our past and help them to navigate through the world we shared, because they are the greatest assets for our nation . . . . . Tum Paing Snorng Russey.”

Normally, we associate truth with knowledge, with seeing things fully and clearly, but it is more accurate to say that access to the truth always depends on a very precise mixture of knowledge, skills, and experiences. This is, perhaps, nicely captured by our Khmer national monument of Bayon, a four-faced statue, which each face represents certain characteristics and qualities of a true leader. True leaders depend as much on their ability to see and heed the commonsense voice of the people from all walks of life. True leaders should develop the next generation with talent. True leaders would leave optimistic blueprints for future generations to build upon. True leaders would attend the sick, to irrigate a pasture, to climb a mountain, to write a poem, to sing the songs of people, to lie by a stream and dream, to know the joy of love, and share the pain of loss. The true leader’s greatest responsibility and accountability is to protect the weakest members of our society. This true leader is, in fact, Mr. Sam Rainsy, whom I have admired for his intellect, ability, and dedication that he has been given to our people and our country. We’re all should ask ourselves, “How long will we continue to hide the flame of hope, but let it burn brightly to lead our people to a bright future?” How long will we continue to hold our hands over a candle flame to prevent from being put out by the relentless blows of windstorm? It is time for every Khmer to join the railroad into the service to fight a war that was long overdue unjust. Let’s the illumination of our candle flame shows the past in a new light, “Give the power back to our Khmer people!”

Cambodian votes for Mr. Sam Rainsy for the next Prime Minister!

Thank you and May Lord Buddha Bless Us, Bless Cambodia!

P.S.: I would like to take this opportunity to offer my full support for Mr. Rong Chhun and Mr. Chea Mony and their associates for their strong stance for democracy. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to the KI-Media, Khmerization, NeoKhmer, Angkor Borei News, AmeKhmer, and all the Khmer news media and networks around the globe for their dedication in sharing sensitive information about our people and our homeland. You are the best! Keep up your excellent work! Sharing Knowledge is Power!