Enemies of the People: a film that serves justice on genocide perpetrators

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiO-kcYlgLs&feature=player_embedded

Friday, July 01, 2011
By Martin Barillas
Spero News

Cambodian journalist and genocide survivor, Thet Sambath, has won the 2011 Knight International Journalism Award for uncovering the secrets the Marxist genocide during the brutal Pol Pot regime of the 1970s. His film Enemies of the People will be used as evidence at the trial of the Khmer Rouge leaders which began in Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, on June 27.

Thet Sambath spent a decade tracking down former Khmer Rouge officials and and eliciting unprecedented confessions and is a senior reporter with the English-language daily Phnom Penh Post. He interviewed Khmer Rouge cadres who participated in the orchestrated murder of hundreds of thousands of fellow Cambodians during the Marxist regime. Among the high officials he interviewed is Pol Pot’s deputy Nuon Chea (aka Brother Number 2).

His film Enemies of the People also won a Special Jury Prize for World Cinema at the Sundance Film Festival of 2010 and is to air on PBS television in July. The Knight Award is given annually by the Washington DC-based International Center for Journalists in recognition of media professionals who have taken bold steps to keep citizens informed despite great obstacles. A statement by ICFJ read, “[Sambath’s film] is arguably the most important documentary about the Khmer Rouge. Within Cambodia its impact was close to home and personal. It will be used as evidence in the trial of Nuon Chea this year, and it brought Cambodians some understanding of that tragic time in their history.”

Thet Sambath said of his most recent prize, “I am truly honored to receive this award for my work over the last decade. I believe its recognition will assist greatly in the process of finding out the truth of my country’s sad history and enabling us all, victims and perpetrators alike, to move forward together towards a more peaceful and just future.”

Sambath lost both his parents and an older brother to the Khmer Rouge. They were among an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians (around 1 in 5 of the population) who died during the regime of the radical communist movement. The deaths were caused by overwork, starvation, execution and massacre.

Enemies of the People shows the personal nature of that investigation. “I knew my parents and all the other victims died in a terrible way. But I didn’t know why they died and no-one could tell me. I wanted to try and find out why all this happened. So I tried to speak to the people who did it. Only the killers know the truth.”

Working mostly at weekends, in his spare time, Sambath started his research in 1999 a year after the Khmer Rouge movement collapsed. In 2001 he was introduced to Nuon Chea, formerly the Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologue. Over the following years he built an extraordinary level of trust with the retired revolutionary which led to a series of detailed admissions of the most secret and lethal decisions taken by the Khmer Rouge leadership.

Remarkably, Sambath also built up a network of Khmer Rouge perpetrators around the Cambodian countryside who were also prepared to confess to wide scale killings. Before this there had been little or no admission of killing made by any former Khmer Rouge at any level of the organisation.

Fellow journalists have praised Sambath's work. Elizabeth Becker (author of When the War was Over) wrote, “Sambath has accomplished the equivalent of a miracle. Nothing else like Enemies of the People exists in broadcast journalism.” Seth Mydans of The New York Times wrote, “He’s an extraordinarily imaginative and resourceful journalist, traits that are most evident in his brilliant documentary, Enemies of the People.”

Rob Lemkin, Sambath’s UK-based film-making partner, said “The perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge Killing Fields have spoken and are speaking to him because they trust him and because he has persuaded them at the most profound level that it is in their interests and those of their society to speak – no matter how difficult or dangerous it may be for them. This is an astounding achievement.”

The trial of Nuon Chea and three other central committee members of the Khmer Rouge started June 27, in Phnom Penh in a hybrid court set up jointly by the United Nations and the government of Cambodia. The defendants face charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to Agence France Presse, the only time the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue admitted the regime's murderous tactics was in the 2009 documentary "Enemies of the People" when he said perceived traitors were killed if they could not be "re-educated" or "corrected". The Knight Award will be presented to Sambath on November 1, 2011 at the ICFJ Awards Dinner, the biggest international media event held in Washington DC. A shortened version of Enemies of the People will air on the PBS TV series POV on July 12.

Info: http://www.enemiesofthepeoplemovie.com

Speroforum editor Martin Barillas is a former US diplomat, who also worked as a democracy advocate and election observer in Latin America. He is also a freelance translator.