Sacrava's Political Cartoon: Khmer Rouge Leaders

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Former Khmer Rouge stronghold struggles with history

Eleventh-graders at O'Tapouk High School in Pailin, Cambodia. (Brendan Brady / For The Times)

Cambodia's new national curriculum requires students to learn about the brutal regime. Former cadres who are now parents would rather not talk about it.

December 9, 2010

By Brendan Brady

Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Pailin, Cambodia — Twelfth-grade teacher Sam Borath recently asked her students in Svay, a town in northwestern Cambodia, to write down the names of five leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million people during its reign in the late 1970s.

Simply identifying top figures, however, can be an awkward exercise. Many communities would rather not stir up memories of the war-torn past, particularly in this region. Svay is part of a thin belt along the northwestern border that remained under the control of ultra-communist Khmer Rouge leaders and their militias for two decades after 1979, when the regime was ousted from power in Phnom Penh. Many residents still defend the regime's legacy, contending that it had rural interests at heart.

But a new national curriculum requires schools to tackle the controversial topic as a way to confront and reconcile the past.

"Some did it," Sam Borath said of the writing exercise. "But some just wrote down one name. Others didn't even hand it in because their parents told them not to."

Naming specific cadres and their past deeds is sensitive, now that a United Nations-backed war crimes court is prosecuting a few former high-ranking officials and is considering taking on five others.

Students in Svay were introduced to the new lessons in November.

"A lot of the students are curious to know what happened," Sam Borath said. "But many parents are former Khmer Rouge, so they discourage their kids from learning about it. They think we are teaching their children to be angry at them."

Researchers estimate that nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population died under the extremist regime, and most survivors had been pushed to the edge of death by hard labor, starvation and medical neglect.

After the Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1979, Pailin became the base of its insurgency before morphing in the late 1990s into an autonomous zone for former regime leaders who agreed to leave the movement. A decade later, the province has been reincorporated into the country.

In July, a U.N.-backed court handed former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kang Kek Ieu, known as Comrade Duch, what amounted to a 30-year sentence. Two months later, it indicted four former senior leaders on charges that include genocide and crimes against humanity.

The desire in some areas to frustrate such prosecutions, though, was apparent during a recent trip by court officials to Pailin, the provincial capital, to meet with dozens of former Khmer Rouge figures now serving as police officers, soldiers and politicians.

"We want them to realize that we are doing this work for everyone," said Reach Sambath, a court spokesman.

Convincing former Khmer Rouge cadres that they'll benefit under a society that prosecutes the regime's top officials remains a hard sell here, however, even as angry residents in other parts of Cambodia wonder why so few of those leaders have been held accountable.

Mey Meakk, a deputy governor in Pailin province and former secretary to top Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, contended that his old boss deserves all the blame and everyone else should be left alone.

The four senior leaders awaiting trial are victims of Pol Pot, he said, "like me, like everyone else."

Back in the classroom, Pailin's high school teachers were trying to raise awareness one lesson at a time. Most of them grew up elsewhere and don't share local sentiments.

"We talk about the torture, how people were evicted from the cities, the endless hard labor," said Long Vannak, a 12th-grade history teacher who had moved here. "Many of the students are interested in this history."

Sat Sorya, 20, one of Long Vannak's students, struggled to make sense of the many disturbing snippets she'd heard over the years from relatives, classmates and the media.

"I want to know why they killed so many of their own people," she said. "I want to know why they left their own country in such terrible condition."

Brady is a special correspondent.

Long road to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge trial

17 Feb 2009
AFP

PHNOM PENH: When the Khmer Rouge swept to power in 1975 it declared it "Year Zero" for Cambodia - yet as the first key figure from the regime went on trial Tuesday, the country still can't escape the past.

"History, culture, geography, politics and millions of individuals have all played their part in the Cambodian nightmare, albeit in differing measures," wrote Philip Short in his biography of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

The hell of the late 1970s regime will be confronted at the first public trial of a Khmer Rouge leader when prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, faces Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court.

But while the trial focuses on the notorious "Killing Fields" years of 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge was actually a major force in the country for decades, dragging China, the United States, Vietnam and Thailand into the maelstrom.

Begun in the 1960s as a movement of Cambodian peasants and intellectuals, the Khmer Rouge was backed by Vietnamese communists who were waging war next door against US-backed South Vietnam.

As US planes dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs aimed at Viet Cong resistance bases along the border, the wreckage encouraged tens of thousands to join Pol Pot's nascent communist movement.

The Khmer Rouge got a further boost after the corrupt anti-communist government of General Lon Nol seized power in 1970 from the country's hereditary ruler, Norodom Sihanouk, and won US backing.

Residents cheered the local guerrilla fighters when they took over the sleepy capital Phnom Penh in April 1975 but hospital patients were soon being torn from their beds as the entire population was marched from the city.

The Khmer Rouge made no compromises installing its vision of communism, and with the backing of China, enslaved its people over the next four years.

Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork or were executed under the Khmer Rouge, which abolished religion, schools and currency, and exiled millions to vast collective farms.

Duch has admitted to court investigators "an extremely painful history of crime," but other former Khmer Rouge leaders have denied knowledge of the regime's horrors and said they were merely defending their country.

"At each turn in this history, I felt it was my duty to side with the national forces in the hope of contributing, no matter how modestly, to ensure the country emerged from its morass," former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan once wrote in his own defence.

The Khmer Rouge was driven from power in 1979 by Vietnamese troops and former regime members who defected, including Hun Sen, now Cambodia's prime minister.

Remnants of the regime, supplied with weapons and food from China as well as the United States, continued to fight the Vietnam-installed government.

The Khmer Rouge banded together with forces opposed to the Vietnam-installed government through the 1980s, often using sanctuaries in neighbouring Thailand, and occupied Cambodia's seat at the United Nations.

But its power eroded as it chose not to participate in 1992 elections run by a UN peacekeeping force.

"Brother Number One" Pol Pot died in 1998, the same year the last of the Khmer Rouge force imploded as senior leaders defected to Cambodia's government.

After the country suffered so much under the Cold War some say the current UN-backed court, which only prosecutes atrocities committed in Cambodia between April 17, 1975 and January 6, 1979, does not have enough scope.

"The scandal is that countries were supporting the Khmer Rouge until 1989," Francois Ponchaud, a French Catholic priest and author of the book "Cambodia: Year Zero", said.

"If we want a fair trial, we have to put them all at the table," Ponchaud said.

But while outside powers played supporting roles in Cambodia's disaster, those, the tribunal has deemed "most responsible" have to give their versions of history.

After Duch's trial, Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan, ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary, and his wife, former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, also face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Khmer Rouge leaders do not accept responsibility

Monday, February 11, 2008
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

SRP MP Son Chhay scolded the former Khemr rouge leaders, calling them a group of people who do not accept their responsibility for the actions they took in the past. Son Chhay told RFA last Saturday that these leaders are dictators and cowards. Even up to now, this group of people does not have the courage to confess their mistakes, even though they destroyed the lives of millions of people, and they imposed hardship, separations, lost of loved ones, and made victims from the savage actions they took. Son Chhay added that the dictators never confess their mistakes, and when they lose power, they all tell people to forget about the past. Son Chhay’s reaction came after Nuon Chea, known as Brother No. 2 of the Democratic Kampuchea regime, said to the KR Tribunal last week that he asked to obtain his bail (to maintain the) national reconciliation under the leadership of Prime minister Hun Sen. This is the first time that such statement was heard.