By Miriama Kamo in Cambodia
TVNZ (New Zealand)
At midday the spirits began to cry.
Their tears fell unabashedly, and as the day's significance pressed down, their tears grew more earnest, more urgent; within an hour the dusty forecourt of the chambers was awash in their feelings, and those still living were forced to wade through their heartache and happiness.
This is how Sambath Reach would have us interpret an extraordinary moment in Cambodia's day of reckoning. He felt his parents, killed under Pol Pot's regime stir. His eyes tightened as he offered his thoughts: "it wasn't just a few ghosts today, it poured, so there were millions here."
Sambath Reach is a spokesperson for the court of the ECCC ( Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia ), but he says his friends call him The Spokesperson for the Ghosts.
Nearly two million people died under the Khmer Rouge. When the communist party, high on Maoist ideology, attempted to return their people to Year Zero - a utopia without classes, without money, where farming became the principle trade, and equality for man, woman and child ruled - they created a hellish state of perverted ideals.
Millions died in the rice fields, in camps, prisons and even in their homes. They died from torture, from overwork, from disease and starvation. They were scythed through by a rabid adherence to a philosophy which had at its heart ideals of prosperity and independence, but ideals that were practiced with deadly effect.
Khmer Rouge officials are charged not just with the horrors of those they killed, but with creating a generational heartache that pervades the existence of those who've persisted through, at least, extreme loss and grief.
There are many alive today with horrific stories of incarceration, overwork and torture. There are people who were children under the regime, who recall working feverishly in fields, eating two sparse meals of rice gruel a day and evading the attention of the Khmer Rouge soldiers for fear of being beaten.
For many Cambodians this isn't history; it's the reality of their lives.
It's easy to relegate this event in our world's story as events long past, as something that has nothing to do with any of us, except some old timers with long memories.
But what the Khmer Rouge did, the terror they wrought, happened not so long ago.
I was a toddler when their reign began and a child gifted her first two wheel bike when it ended. I walked to school while Cambodian children my age were being smashed against trees; I opened Christmas presents while others in this country watched their parents being executed.
I feel no guilt about our different existence - what can you do about the random hand of God? But I have been given the opportunity to understand what happened in my world, to see firsthand that these events are not, and should not be, safely shrouded in history. This record affects people of my generation, and will hopefully impact on those long beyond mine.
What happened on the day Cambodia tried its first Khmer Rouge official was incredible.
The court opened the curtains at 8.30am and at 9am the historic proceedings began. Outside, the clear blue day was being encroached on by some wispy clouds. By morning tea, as Duch the alleged executioner was led from the courtroom for a break, the clouds were gathering heavily. But the elements waited until the full complement of witnesses stood outside for lunch before releasing a rain-load of mini-monsoon proportions.
Hundreds of local and international media, court officials and ordinary Cambodians, among them survivors of the regime, huddled beneath tarpaulins intended to shield from the sun. The rain was so heavy and so persistent it gathered in pools above our heads, weighing heavily on the thin fabric, and threatening to burst through.
Within 20 minutes there was little dry ground, the water flooded around our feet. It wasn't the rainy season and there'd be no rain for four months, but it came and it went within an hour.
If the Spokesperson for the Ghosts is to be believed, we were deluged with a complex mix of grief and anger, and long awaited happiness and relief. "It's a day very few of us ever thought we'd see,' he said, 'but today, this courtyard is filled with ghosts, and they are happy."
Their tears fell unabashedly, and as the day's significance pressed down, their tears grew more earnest, more urgent; within an hour the dusty forecourt of the chambers was awash in their feelings, and those still living were forced to wade through their heartache and happiness.
This is how Sambath Reach would have us interpret an extraordinary moment in Cambodia's day of reckoning. He felt his parents, killed under Pol Pot's regime stir. His eyes tightened as he offered his thoughts: "it wasn't just a few ghosts today, it poured, so there were millions here."
Sambath Reach is a spokesperson for the court of the ECCC ( Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia ), but he says his friends call him The Spokesperson for the Ghosts.
Nearly two million people died under the Khmer Rouge. When the communist party, high on Maoist ideology, attempted to return their people to Year Zero - a utopia without classes, without money, where farming became the principle trade, and equality for man, woman and child ruled - they created a hellish state of perverted ideals.
Millions died in the rice fields, in camps, prisons and even in their homes. They died from torture, from overwork, from disease and starvation. They were scythed through by a rabid adherence to a philosophy which had at its heart ideals of prosperity and independence, but ideals that were practiced with deadly effect.
Khmer Rouge officials are charged not just with the horrors of those they killed, but with creating a generational heartache that pervades the existence of those who've persisted through, at least, extreme loss and grief.
There are many alive today with horrific stories of incarceration, overwork and torture. There are people who were children under the regime, who recall working feverishly in fields, eating two sparse meals of rice gruel a day and evading the attention of the Khmer Rouge soldiers for fear of being beaten.
For many Cambodians this isn't history; it's the reality of their lives.
It's easy to relegate this event in our world's story as events long past, as something that has nothing to do with any of us, except some old timers with long memories.
But what the Khmer Rouge did, the terror they wrought, happened not so long ago.
I was a toddler when their reign began and a child gifted her first two wheel bike when it ended. I walked to school while Cambodian children my age were being smashed against trees; I opened Christmas presents while others in this country watched their parents being executed.
I feel no guilt about our different existence - what can you do about the random hand of God? But I have been given the opportunity to understand what happened in my world, to see firsthand that these events are not, and should not be, safely shrouded in history. This record affects people of my generation, and will hopefully impact on those long beyond mine.
What happened on the day Cambodia tried its first Khmer Rouge official was incredible.
The court opened the curtains at 8.30am and at 9am the historic proceedings began. Outside, the clear blue day was being encroached on by some wispy clouds. By morning tea, as Duch the alleged executioner was led from the courtroom for a break, the clouds were gathering heavily. But the elements waited until the full complement of witnesses stood outside for lunch before releasing a rain-load of mini-monsoon proportions.
Hundreds of local and international media, court officials and ordinary Cambodians, among them survivors of the regime, huddled beneath tarpaulins intended to shield from the sun. The rain was so heavy and so persistent it gathered in pools above our heads, weighing heavily on the thin fabric, and threatening to burst through.
Within 20 minutes there was little dry ground, the water flooded around our feet. It wasn't the rainy season and there'd be no rain for four months, but it came and it went within an hour.
If the Spokesperson for the Ghosts is to be believed, we were deluged with a complex mix of grief and anger, and long awaited happiness and relief. "It's a day very few of us ever thought we'd see,' he said, 'but today, this courtyard is filled with ghosts, and they are happy."
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