17th April: A Day of National Mourning

Op-Ed by Khmerization
17th April, 2010

“Some people call the Khmer Rouge crime a mass murder, a holocaust or a genocide and others called it an auto-genocide. However what people called it, 17th April should be day of national mourning.”

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover of power in Cambodia that had reset the wheel of time and revolutionary clock to back year zero.

35 years ago today, the black-clad Khmer Rouge soldiers marched into Phnom Penh and forcibly evacuated the 1.5 million population to leave the city within 3 days, a monumental task. What followed from this madness had caused one of the worst and unimaginable holocaust and human tragedy in the 20th century. In his craze to create an agrarian Utopia, Pol Pot, the Prime Minister of the Khmer Rouge regime, and his murderous clique have embarked on a policy of creating a puritanical revolution to cleanse Cambodia of its feudal and capitalist past that saw nearly 2 million deaths as a result of overworks, starvation and executions.

In his dream of creating an agrarian Utopia, Pol Pot and his clique believe that Cambodia must be rid of any trace of the past. Culture, traditions, religion, family bond, friendship, and even love, have been prohibited. Any individuals considered as tainted with the past or past regimes such as teachers, civil servants, educated class, or even people who wore glasses, have been mercilessly executed.

Pol Pot’s horrendous crimes shocked the whole world. Yet, 35 years on, many perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes are still roaming free and thrived under the present government and, despite the creation of a mixed Cambodian-UN Tribunal, no one has been convicted and condemned so far. This Khmer Rouge trial had taken a snail pace in its prosecution of the perpetrators. There are fears that victims of these crimes will never be able to see justice as the ailing Khmer Rouge leaders could all die before their judgment day.

Some people call the Khmer Rouge crime a mass murder, a holocaust or a genocide and others called it an auto-genocide. However what people called it, 17th April should be declared a day of national mourning.

When one talks about the Khmer Rouge genocide, one cannot avoid touching on the issue of who was a mastermind or masterminds behind this tragedy. Was this genocide the work of the Khmer Rouge alone or a third party had their hands on this tragedy? Some Cambodians had theorised, with some merits, that a third party had Khmer blood on their hands. The blames, in this case, seem to be squarely directed at the three super-powers, namely China, the former Soviet Union and the United States of America. But the overwhelming majority of Cambodians are adamant that Vietnam had the most Khmer blood on its hand.

The first school of thought believe that without American interference in Cambodia’s policy of neutrality and without the United States-induced coup d’etat that ousted the then Prince Sihanouk in 1970, Cambodia would not have plunged into a civil war that brought the Khmer Rouge to power in the first place. Paradoxically, they also strongly believe that without the Soviet Union’s and China’s support for the Khmer Rouge, the Khmer Rouge would never have a slight chance of taking power in 1975. By the same token, the second school of thought are adamant that Vietnam had the most Khmer blood on its hands simply because the Vietnamese army had physically defeated Gen. Lon Nol’s Khmer Republican army on the battlefields on the Khmer Rouge behalf and had aided and abetted its murderous policy of killings of its own citizens through the planting of agent provocateurs within the Khmer Rouge leadership circle to create rivalry, rifts, mistrusts and instability that eventually led to subsequent massacres and mass killings of people deemed to be reactionaries and anti-revolutionaries, including many innocent ordinary Cambodians.

We can blame the foreigners however we like, but the fact still remain that we Cambodians must take full responsibility for our own actions and for this tragedy. Were our Khmer leaders smart enough to put national interests before personal interests, then we Cambodians would be able to be our own masters and that foreigners would not be able to lead us by the nose. To a large degree, this tragedy happened as a result of our own doing, despite strong foreign interferences.

I personally and strongly believe that the whole of the Cambodian nation, including all Khmer people around the world, should commemorate this day as a Day of National Mourning. The present government had set a Day of Anger. All Cambodians are entitled to be angry at the Khmer Rouge who persecuted them, who oppressed them, who killed their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, but I personally believe that if we still harbour anger in our heart, we will never be able to reconcile our divided nation and heal the wound of the past. National reconciliation and justice should take precedent over our anger.