A journey to Cambodia’s heart of darkness

Friday, 3 December 2010
By Andrew Buncombe
The Foreign Desk
The Independent (UK)

For those in London, there’s a movie being screened tonight that I’d recommend for anyone interested in Cambodia, the struggle to bring justice to a nation wracked by brutal violence or simply has a passion for excellent and innovative documentary film-making.

The film is called Enemies of the People and it tells the story of some of the senior Khmer Rouge personnel who carried out the notorious atrocities that have so devastated and scarred that country. But the film is much more than that, which is probably why it’s been nominated for an Oscar and won a prize at this year’s Sundance festival.

The film is the work of British producer Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, a Cambodian whose father was killed by the Khmer Rouge in 1974 and whose mother was forced to marry a rebel soldier. She died in childbirth in 1976. When the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979, Sambath escaped as a young boy, first to the refugee camps on the Thai border where he studied English in missionary schools before returning to Phnom Penh where he worked as a journalist.

What is so terrific about the film, is that it only seeks to answer the question that anyone who has ever visited Cambodia and quietly made thier way around the horrors of Tuol Sleng prison or else the killing fields on the edge of the city, always asks; namely how can ordinary people commit such unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty. It also puts that very question to the people involved, in this case the most senior surviving member of the regime, Nuon Chea, who is currently in custody awaiting trial at the UN-sponsored genocide court.

Because he was from the same area as Nuon Chea, Sambath was able to get to know the ageing former rebel. “He never used to say anything different to what he told Western journalists: I knew nothing, I am not a killer,” says Sambath. “Then one day he told me ‘Sambath I trust you, you are the person I would like to tell my story to. Ask me what you want to know’ For the next five years he told me the truth as he saw it, including all the details of the killing.”

Rob Lemkin, who is based in London, says he sees his collaborator as a man “trying to make sense of the nightmare of his childhood”. Of himself, he adds: “My personal connection with Cambodia is non-existent. But my connection with genocide is not: many of my father’s family died at the hands of the Nazis and a rather remote relative – Raphael Lemkin – even coined the term ‘genocide’.”

I saw a screening of their documentary – being shown tonight at the Frontline club in Paddington – earlier this summer in Phnom Penh. If I remember correctly, it was being shown the night before the UN court delivered its verdict and sentence of Comrade Duch, the head of the Tuol Sleng interrogation centre, who was eventually sentenced to spend 19 years in jail. It was a surreal experience, understandably, to be watching this film and listening to the testimony of so many witnesses and victims of the horrors, as one of those responsible was finally about to be brought to justice. I cannot recommend the film more. For more information and see other reviews of the film, check out www.enemiesofthepeoplemovie.com