A group of Cambodians attending a ceremony to remember the victims who died during the Khmer Rouge regime at Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre, near Phnom Penh
Monday 19/4/2010
By Robert Carmichael /Phnom Penh
DPA
Thirty-five years ago, Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, fell to the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist movement, which over the preceding years had taken control of most of the country. Many in the capital were relieved, believing now, after years of war, they could rebuild their lives. But as history has shown, they were terribly wrong.
The Khmer Rouge immediately began emptying the cities of their inhabitants and putting them to work in rural agricultural collectives, a policy that had deadly consequences.
Up to 2mn people died from execution, starvation, disease and overwork under the four-year Khmer Rouge state known as Democratic Kampuchea.
Youk Chhang, who heads the Documentation Centre of Cambodia genocide archive, remembers well April 17, 1975, the day the capital fell.
“I was 14 and at home alone when the Khmer Rouge came,” he said. “My mother was so worried about one of my sisters who was pregnant at the time (and was visiting her).”
Youk Chhang said his mother had hoped to get home in time to fetch him, but the Khmer Rouge blocked the road. The movement had ordered the evacuation of the city.
“I had no idea of where to go, so I just followed the crowd,” he said. “But I remembered the name of my mother’s home village in Takeo province. I had been there once before when I was a child.”
Thinking he would meet his mother there despite the fact she had left the village in the 1930s, Youk Chhang headed south along roads in pouring rain together with hundreds of thousands of people.
By the time he had travelled 30km, or about a third of his journey, he was alone. “I was the only person on the road because the others had got off and gone to their homes,” he said.
Youk Chhang eventually found the village, but it was another four months before he was reunited with his mother.
Emptying the cities was the first step in the Khmer Rouge’s bid to refashion Cambodian society. The movement outlawed family and religion, and its paranoid nature meant that class enemies - intellectuals, politicians, those in the military - were swept away. Most were killed.
When the regime had eliminated its perceived external enemies, it turned inward and began to consume itself in a rage of paranoia and blood.
Important enemies were tortured at a former school in Phnom Penh known as S-21. For most of its four-year existence, it was under the command of a man named Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch.
Last year, Duch stood trial at the joint UN-Cambodian war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh for the deaths of 12,380 people who passed through S-21. Judgement was expected in June.
Duch’s is the first international trial of anyone from the Khmer Rouge regime. Much of the documentation used as evidence against Duch came from the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.
The movement’s senior surviving leaders have yet to stand trial:
Khieu Samphan, the former head of state; Ieng Sary, the foreign minister; Ieng Thirith, the social affairs minister; and Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two, reckoned to be the movement’s chief ideologue.
All four are in pre-trial detention and are likely to appear in court early next year. Whether the elderly detainees would survive until the end their trials is another matter.
But the fall of Phnom Penh is not the only anniversary this month:
Twelve years ago, Pol Pot died in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng in the far north-west.
Brother Number One was cremated on Dangrek Mountain, which straddles the Thai-Cambodian border about 300km from Phnom Penh. It is about as far from the capital as you can get in Cambodia.
Today, his cremation site - a waist-high, rusting tin roof held up by aging wooden posts on a scrubby piece of land - is remarkable only for its sheer ordinariness.
The legacy that he and the other members of his regime left is a deeply damaged nation, still struggling to recover from serious physical and psychological wounds. It is a legacy some are trying to redress.
Last week, the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, a local non-governmental organisation, held a reconciliation meeting of 150 former Khmer Rouge in Anlong Veng.
Daravuth Seng, a Cambodian-American lawyer who fled to the US as a boy and heads the NGO, said bringing the movement’s former followers back into society is vital.
Understanding what drove them to follow that path is essential, too, as it is the surest way to avoid future tainted anniversaries, he said.
“If we are to say never again, we really need to understand both sides, to understand the way these folks perceive the world,” he said. “In one sense, we are all victims.”
The Khmer Rouge immediately began emptying the cities of their inhabitants and putting them to work in rural agricultural collectives, a policy that had deadly consequences.
Up to 2mn people died from execution, starvation, disease and overwork under the four-year Khmer Rouge state known as Democratic Kampuchea.
Youk Chhang, who heads the Documentation Centre of Cambodia genocide archive, remembers well April 17, 1975, the day the capital fell.
“I was 14 and at home alone when the Khmer Rouge came,” he said. “My mother was so worried about one of my sisters who was pregnant at the time (and was visiting her).”
Youk Chhang said his mother had hoped to get home in time to fetch him, but the Khmer Rouge blocked the road. The movement had ordered the evacuation of the city.
“I had no idea of where to go, so I just followed the crowd,” he said. “But I remembered the name of my mother’s home village in Takeo province. I had been there once before when I was a child.”
Thinking he would meet his mother there despite the fact she had left the village in the 1930s, Youk Chhang headed south along roads in pouring rain together with hundreds of thousands of people.
By the time he had travelled 30km, or about a third of his journey, he was alone. “I was the only person on the road because the others had got off and gone to their homes,” he said.
Youk Chhang eventually found the village, but it was another four months before he was reunited with his mother.
Emptying the cities was the first step in the Khmer Rouge’s bid to refashion Cambodian society. The movement outlawed family and religion, and its paranoid nature meant that class enemies - intellectuals, politicians, those in the military - were swept away. Most were killed.
When the regime had eliminated its perceived external enemies, it turned inward and began to consume itself in a rage of paranoia and blood.
Important enemies were tortured at a former school in Phnom Penh known as S-21. For most of its four-year existence, it was under the command of a man named Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch.
Last year, Duch stood trial at the joint UN-Cambodian war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh for the deaths of 12,380 people who passed through S-21. Judgement was expected in June.
Duch’s is the first international trial of anyone from the Khmer Rouge regime. Much of the documentation used as evidence against Duch came from the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.
The movement’s senior surviving leaders have yet to stand trial:
Khieu Samphan, the former head of state; Ieng Sary, the foreign minister; Ieng Thirith, the social affairs minister; and Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two, reckoned to be the movement’s chief ideologue.
All four are in pre-trial detention and are likely to appear in court early next year. Whether the elderly detainees would survive until the end their trials is another matter.
But the fall of Phnom Penh is not the only anniversary this month:
Twelve years ago, Pol Pot died in the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng in the far north-west.
Brother Number One was cremated on Dangrek Mountain, which straddles the Thai-Cambodian border about 300km from Phnom Penh. It is about as far from the capital as you can get in Cambodia.
Today, his cremation site - a waist-high, rusting tin roof held up by aging wooden posts on a scrubby piece of land - is remarkable only for its sheer ordinariness.
The legacy that he and the other members of his regime left is a deeply damaged nation, still struggling to recover from serious physical and psychological wounds. It is a legacy some are trying to redress.
Last week, the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, a local non-governmental organisation, held a reconciliation meeting of 150 former Khmer Rouge in Anlong Veng.
Daravuth Seng, a Cambodian-American lawyer who fled to the US as a boy and heads the NGO, said bringing the movement’s former followers back into society is vital.
Understanding what drove them to follow that path is essential, too, as it is the surest way to avoid future tainted anniversaries, he said.
“If we are to say never again, we really need to understand both sides, to understand the way these folks perceive the world,” he said. “In one sense, we are all victims.”
4 comments:
Don't we have more pressing ISSUES to deal with:
1) powerty
2) land grabbing
3) yuon/siem agressions
etc..
Oops typo error: poverty
Democratic Kampuchea Pol Pot Khmer Rouge Regime
Members:
Pol Pot
Nuon Chea
Ieng Sary
Ta Mok
Khieu Samphan
Son Sen
Ieng Thearith
Kaing Kek Iev
Hun Sen
Chea Sim
Heng Samrin
Hor Namhong
Keat Chhon
Ouk Bunchhoeun
Sim Ka...
Committed:
Tortures
Brutality
Executions
Massacres
Mass Murder
Genocide
Atrocities
Crimes Against Humanity
Starvations
Slavery
Force Labour
Overwork to Death
Human Abuses
Persecution
Unlawful Detention
Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge Regime
Members:
Hun Sen
Chea Sim
Heng Samrin
Hor Namhong
Keat Chhon
Ouk Bunchhoeun
Sim Ka...
Committed:
Attempted Murders
Attempted Murder on Chea Vichea
Attempted Assassinations
Attempted Assassination on Sam Rainsy
Assassinations
Assassinated Journalists
Assassinated Political Opponents
Assassinated Leaders of the Free Trade Union
Assassinated over 80 members of Sam Rainsy Party.
"But as of today, over eighty members of my party have been assassinated. Countless others have been injured, arrested, jailed, or forced to go into hiding or into exile."
Sam Rainsy LIC 31 October 2009 - Cairo, Egypt
Executions
Executed over 100 members of FUNCINPEC Party
Murders
Murdered 3 Leaders of the Free Trade Union
Murdered Chea Vichea
Murdered Ros Sovannareth
Murdered Hy Vuthy
Murdered Journalists
Murdered Khim Sambo
Murdered Khim Sambo's son
Murdered members of Sam Rainsy Party.
Murdered activists of Sam Rainsy Party
Murdered Innocent Men
Murdered Innocent Women
Murdered Innocent Children
Killed Innocent Khmer Peoples.
Extrajudicial Execution
Grenade Attack
Terrorism
Drive by Shooting
Brutalities
Police Brutality Against Monks
Police Brutality Against Evictees
Tortures
Intimidations
Death Threats
Threatening
Human Abductions
Human Abuses
Human Rights Abuses
Human Trafficking
Drugs Trafficking
Under Age Child Sex
Corruptions
Bribery
Embezzlement
Treason
Border Encroachment, allow Vietnam to encroaching into Cambodia.
Signed away our territories to Vietnam; Koh Tral, almost half of our ocean territory oil field and others.
Illegal Arrest
Illegal Mass Evictions
Illegal Land Grabbing
Illegal Firearms
Illegal Logging
Illegal Deforestation
Illegally use of remote detonation bomb on Sokha Helicopter, while Hok Lundy and other military officials were on board.
Lightning strike many airplanes, but did not fall from the sky. Lightning strike out side of airplane and discharge electricity to ground.
Source: Lightning, Discovery Channel
Illegally Sold State Properties
Illegally Removed Parliamentary Immunity of Parliament Members
Plunder National Resources
Acid Attacks
Turn Cambodia into a Lawless Country.
Oppression
Injustice
Steal Votes
Bring Foreigners from Veitnam to vote in Cambodia for Cambodian People's Party.
Use Dead people's names to vote for Cambodian People's Party.
Disqualified potential Sam Rainsy Party's voters.
Abuse the Court as a tools for CPP to send political opponents and journalists to jail.
Abuse of Power
Abuse the Laws
Abuse the National Election Committee
Abuse the National Assembly
Violate the Laws
Violate the Constitution
Violate the Paris Accords
Impunity
Persecution
Unlawful Detention
Death in custody.
Under the Cambodian People's Party Hun Sen Khmer Rouge Regime, no criminals that has been committed crimes against journalists, political opponents, leaders of the Free Trade Union, innocent men, women and children have ever been brought to justice.
Nuon Chea is an idiot, OK, 2M lifes sentence, but Khiev Samphan, educated and stupid, no remorse, 2M twice sentence, Ieng Sary, bad the real killer, his children too were killer, I heard from most of them.
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