Sinatoons: Life under Pol Pot 1976

Cartoon by V. Sina

Learning from Cambodia's bloody experience

November 9, 2010
By Geoff Gallop
(Geoff Gallop is the former premier of Western Australia)
WAtoday.com.au (Australia)

Through their own expansion, and their own self-destruction, we can learn a lot from our Asian neighbours.

Finding out about human nature by exploring its manifestations in different places and at different times was one of the features of the great Enlightenment project that saw science and reason take the scalpel to religion and tradition in the eighteenth century. Learning from history mattered as it should today. Indeed no matter how small a country is there will always be aspects of its history and experience that provide lessons for us all.

Take Cambodia for example. A small nation of just over 15 million people, it occupies 181,000 square kilometres of land and water (WA, by comparison has an area of 2,252,500 square kilometres). Since retiring from politics in 2006, my work as an academic has taken me there on four occasions. Last week I was there lecturing to public servants at the Royal School of Administration in Phnom Penh. Like many Australians I have also taken the opportunity to visit Angkor Wat and other temples located around Siam Reap.

What then can we learn from the experience of the Khmer people?

Lesson One – great cities can decay and collapse.

From the ninth to the 14th centuries the Angkor Empire stretched across much of South-East Asia. At its centre was a great city covering an area similar to the size of greater London today. It possessed a sophisticated network of roads, canals and irrigation ponds. Intensive agriculture supported a city of one million people, arguably the largest in the pre-industrial world.

Visit Angkor today and all that is left of this city is a handful of the estimated 1000 temples constructed in the era of Empire.

What happened? We know that the Empire was already in decline in the 13th and 14th centuries and that the city was sacked by Thai invaders in 1431, causing its population to move south.

Certainly the strains associated with war and conflict played their role but recent research, including that by scholars from the University of Sydney, has been focused on the impacts of climate change, population pressure and the over-use of natural resources. Damien Evans from the Greater Angkor Project put it this way: "You can see the city pushing into forested areas, stripping vegetation and re-engineering the landscape into something that was completely artificial." In a sense the city built itself out of existence.

Add to this evidence of decades of drought interspersed with intense monsoon rains which destroyed much of the infrastructure. Overstretched, over-engineered and vulnerable to external shocks like climate change – does it sound familiar?

Lesson Two – fanaticism and the evil associated with it is never far below the surface of human society.

In more recent times, we know about Cambodia because of the Pol Pot era (1975-79) and his government's campaign of systematic genocide, known as the Killing Fields. Caught up in the Cold War in South-East Asia and preceded by five years of foreign meddling, bombardment and civil war, Cambodia was ripe for revolution in 1975 a situation the disciplined and well-organised Khmer Rouge exploited.

Little did many know, however, about what was to follow. Writing in A HISTORY OF DEMOCRATIC KAMPUCHEA (2007) Khamboly Dy summarised the four years of Khmer Rouge government in this way:

"They wanted to transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society in which there were no rich people, no poor people and no exploitation. To accomplish this, they abolished money, free markets, normal schooling, private property, foreign clothing styles, religious practices, and traditional Khmer culture. Public schools, pagodas, mosques, churches, universities, shops and government buildings were shut or turned into prisons, stables, re-education camps and granaries. There was no public or private transportation, no private property, and no non-revolutionary entertainment. Leisure activities were severely restricted. People throughout the country, including the leaders of the CPK (Communist Party of Kampuchea), had to wear black costumes, which were their traditional revolutionary clothes."

Just as the great city of Angkor was deserted in 1431, so too was Phnom Penh in 1975. In this case it was forced removal of the residents to the countryside in order to fulfil the dream of starting history again in the year zero, free of foreign influence and capitalist temptation.

It is estimated that nearly two million Cambodians died either from disease, starvation, exhaustion from overwork or execution. Torture was commonplace as the country was transformed into what Dy described as "a huge detention centre". It is very difficult to fully comprehend or describe the level and intensity of the suffering that was involved.

Cambodia wasn't the first and probably won't be the last to experience a politically driven attempt to remake human nature at the point of a gun. It reminds us of the dangers of fanaticism and nationalism, just as Angkor reminds us of the dangers of human arrogance in the face of a fragile and interconnected environment.

I knew Pol Pot: Al Jazeera video

Part 1

Part 2

Al Jazeera speaks to those who knew the leader of the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

Brother No. 1 was afraid to lose his life after all?

Pol Pot Did Not Chair Stoung’s General Assembly, But His Recorded Speech Was Played For His Men

Wednesday, January 02, 2008
By Oka
Rasmei Kampuchea, Vol. 16, #4478
Unofficial Translation by krtrial.info

During the Khmer Rouge regime it could be observed that everything was done with secrecy. No one dared to spread out and damage the news of a plan or an event, and generally whatever works were in mystery.

“During the struggling period between the Khmer Rouge cadres and Lon Nol’s government before 1975, senior cadres were seen visiting Popok commune, Stoung district to have a meeting with the struggling troops,” said Nou Kim Hy. He recalled that at that time the Khmer Rouge troops were called on to attend a big meeting known as “Party’s General Assembly”. Tiv Ol, whose revolutionary name was Comrade Tés, chaired the general assembly. On the stage decorated with green and yellow closed curtains, Comrade Tés presented, “Please, all comrades and friends listen to the speech made by the comrade Secretary General of the party’s Central Committee.” Then, a voice was blared through the closed curtains without a speaker, but he (Tiv Ol) could recognize it was the voice of Pol Pot speaking to the Assembly in an attempt to motivate the soldiers to make sacrifice in order to fight with imperialist Americans and the puppet Lon Nol’s government.

“The voice heard was played from recordings, but the general assembly’s participants were listening carefully and quietly,” said Kim Vasy. Vasy continued to say that never before had he seen such a strange event the Khmer Rouge cadres were practicing. He still remembered that at that time Stoung’s district chief was Tan Ty, known as Comrade Chim.

As it was the struggling period to overthrow Lon Nol’s regime, whatever Khmer Rouge cadres did was appropriate. The voice from behind the curtain raised doubts among the participants, but they could not question or discuss with each other.

It is believed that it was the clever trick of Comrade Secretary General Pol Pot, because although enemies wanted to attack him, they could not harm him as it was only his voice there.

Horrors of Pol Pot's regime was also made possible by the former KR soldiers and commanders currently in the CPP

Cambodia observes anniversary of fall of Khmer Rouge

Mon, 07 Jan 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodia remembered the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime Monday with a celebration at the headquarters of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP). "Despite passing a period of 29 years, we all still remember the horrors caused during the period of three years, eight months and 20 days by Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea regime after it took power on April 17, 1975," CPP and Senate President Chea Sim said in a speech to about 5,000 CPP loyalists.

"They reduced the country's social infrastucture to complete ruin while depriving individuals of rights and freedoms and reducing them to slaves living inhumane lives," he added in a speech to mark the 1979 anniversary when Vietnamese-backed troops retook Phnom Penh.

For the second year in a row, Chea Sim reaffirmed the CPP's commitment to a UN-Cambodia tribunal established to try former Khmer Rouge leaders despite allegations by some groups that the CPP had tried to stall the hearings.

Five former Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody awaiting trial on charges of human rights abuses and war crimes. Hearings are hoped to get under way early this year, but those close to the court have already expressed concerns that the tribunal's 56-million-dollar budget would not be enough.

Many prominent CPP members are former Khmer Rouge who became disillusioned with the movement's ultra-Maoist policies, under which up to 2 million Cambodians perished.

Key CPP cadre, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, defected to Vietnam and returned with Vietnamese backing to oust the Khmer Rouge from power.

Other parties have accused the CPP of hijacking the anniversary, but CPP officials maintained many opposition leaders fled the civil war and were not in Cambodia at the time and so do not understand history accurately.