Preah Vihear - A Mountain of Undeniable Fact

Thursday, July 17, 2008
Originally posted at M|O|N|G|K|O|L

My friend Ann Sovatha, a fellow Fulbright scholar and recent graduate in anthropology from Northern Illinois University, recently submitted the following commentary to the Phnom Penh Post.

I thought the piece was very interesting and contained a lot of heartbreaking but true facts about an event happening to the first batch of Cambodian refugees to Thailand less than thirty years ago. Personally, reading this reminded me of my uncle and his family, who were victims of this cruelty and remained scarred till this very moment. Shame on these evils!

នេះ​ហើយ​ឬ​ ភាព​មនុស្ស​ធម៌​របស់​ថៃ ដែល​យើង​ខ្មែរ​គួរ​តែ​ដឹង​គុណ?​ សូម​មិត្ត​អ្នក​អាន​មេត្តា​ប្រើ​វិចារណញ្ញាណ​ក្នុង​ការ​អាន​វិចារណកថា​នេះ​!

The dispute over the sovereignty of Preah Vihear temple has been in the headlines in recent days. The usual themes expressed regarding the dispute center on the loss of territory, burying the past, or correcting fake information. I share these sentiments. However, this dispute involves a much deeper issue that extends beyond these themes.

Many Cambodians have already buried more than enough of the past. Buddhism has taught Cambodians to forgive and forget to the point that they can even forget tragic events that involve the loss of thousands of lives. The point I want to make here, which has not surfaced in the news media, involves an event that happened on this disputed site less than three decades ago. If the Thais still remembered this event, they should be hesitant to discuss Preah Vihear temple site at all. This site should be the site of shame for them, rather than one of pride. The event I am talking about is the ‘forced repatriation’ of thousands of Cambodian refugees who sought refuge inside Thailand’s border after the Khmer Rouge period ended in 1979.

As a post-war generation Khmer, I did not experience these events, but in order to understand these extremely sad and heart-breaking events, one only needs to flip through a few pages of two books: “The Quality of Mercy: Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience” by William Shawcross (1984) and “To Destroy You Is No Loss” by Joan Criddle and Teeda Butt Mam (1987.)

When the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979, thousands of refugees fled the country to the West. These refugees settled in temporary camp sites along Cambodia-Thai border. Lacking support from the international community to handle this huge number of refugees, the Thais resolved to push them back into Cambodia. Shawcross provides a moving account of this event below:

“On the morning of Friday, June 8, 110 buses pulled up at the border site of Nong Chan, a few miles north of Aranyaprathet, where several thousand refugees were now camped in fields. Thai soldiers in the buses told the refugees they were being moved to another, better camp.

Some refugees seemed to believe what they were told and were happy enough to leave the squalid, overcrowded conditions of Nong Chan. Others were not; one woman, who had walked out of Cambodia to Nong Chan with her three children only a week before, said later that she was terrified when the Thai soldiers began to herd them into buses.” (pg. 88 )

In her first-hand account, Teeda Mam provided a perspective on what it was like to be one refugee inside one of those buses. After finding out that the bus was not going to Bangkok but back to Cambodian border, “each person, murmuring angrily or fighting back tears, tried to come to grips with catastrophe in his own way. Shocked disbelief showed on every face. … We had just come from hell and were being sentenced to return. We couldn’t believe our awful fate. Defeated, many wished only for a quick death.” (pg. 251)

She further wrote how cruel she felt being pushed back:

“Cruel as it was, we could understand the lie, but it was doubly cruel to push us back across in the north when arrangements had been made for returning us to the south. It seemed little short of cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The remote jungle had been chosen deliberately. The Thais wanted an international incident and we were to be it.” (pg. 251)

The Thais wanted to make a statement, which was that they could not handle the refugee crisis unless international aid was provided immediately. However, to make such a statement at a cost of thousands of lives was a rather inhumane one. How inhumane this statement was can be measured by what happened when these refugees arrived at the Preah Vihear site. Shawcross continued:

“Loaded with Cambodian refugees from temporary camp sites all over eastern Thailand, hundreds of buses converged on a mountainous region of the northeastern border near the temple of Preah Vihear, whose ownership had long been a source of bitter dispute between Thailand and Cambodia. They arrived, with military precision, after dark.

The border had been sealed off by Thai soldiers; the area was flooded with troops. The refugees were ordered, busload by busload, to walk back into Cambodia. They were told that there was a path down the mountains but that on the other side the Vietnamese army was waiting to welcome them. Thai soldiers also said, ‘Thai money will not be valid in Kampuchea; we ask you to make a voluntary contribution to our army.’” (pg. 89)

Teeda Mam also described the scene when her bus arrived at Preah Vihear site. She wrote:
“The buses lurched to a standstill. We were ordered out. People refused to budge until forced from their seats at gunpoint. If only we could hold out a little longer without going back across the border, perhaps the order would be rescinded. Everyone knew that shock waves from Thailand’s decision to return us were reverberating throughout the world. Thailand’s point had been made, and we did not want to be the victims of its strong message that help was needed immediately.

Camping on the Thai side of the border had been made impossible. Refugees, herded like cattle one busload at a time, were funneled between lines of soldiers to the summit of a steep ridge that marked the border, then pushed over. Wielding guns, Thai soldiers shouted, “Go down, Go down.” They began shooting at those who refused to start down the face of the cliff.” (pg. 251-252)

Shawcross added to the description, “The path down the mountains became steeper, the jungle thicker. Dozens, scores of people fell onto mines. Those with possessions had to abandon them to carry their children down.” (pg. 89) Once the refugees began to descend down the cliff, the scene became more horrific. Even after almost three decades, I believe those who descended down the cliff and survived still have a hard time coming to terms with that event. Teeda Mam described this unimaginable descent into hell:

“Below the ridge, we could hear people screaming and moaning. Those who had been forced over the border during the past two days stubbornly refused to move off the mountainside trails, yet the press of refugees from above kept pushing them farther down. The entire face of the hill had been heavily mined by the Khmer Rouge four years ago, and everyone was terrified to break a new trail in the five-mile-wide no-man’s-land. Occasionally, a mine exploded as the crowd pushed someone off the trail. Since everyone wanted to step only where they had seen others step, they slid cautiously downward only when forced from above by the pressure of others moving downhill. Descent proceeded at a snail’s pace.” (pg. 252)

Some of the refugees tried to buy their way out of this deadly descent. Shawcross wrote:

“One group of refugees desperately pooled whatever valuable they had left, filled two buckets with them and walked back up toward the Thai soldiers, carrying a white flag. The soldiers took the buckets and then opened fire on the refugees.” (pg. 89-90)

Teeda Mam confirms this cruel account:

“The Chinese gentleman and his party had pooled their Thai money in a red plastic bucket. Quietly, he offered it to the soldier, then asked to be pointed in a direction leading to freedom. The soldier accepted the bucket and motioned with his gun down a side path as he looked the other way. No sooner had the group started down this path, however, than the guard turned and raised the muzzle of his submachine gun. They fell like dominoes.” (pg. 253)

I believe that any sane person would be brought to tears by this account, but the story is worse when we realized that it continued for days. Shawcross further wrote:

“For days this operation went on. Altogether, between 43,000 and 45,000 people were pushed down the cliffs at Preah Vihear. It took three days to cross the mine field. Water was very hard to find. Some people had salt. Very few had food. The Thais had distributed at most a cup of rice per person before the buses were emptied.

One refugee who finally managed to escape back to Thailand told UNHCR officials: “The crowd was very dense. It was impossible to number the victims of the land mines. The wounded people were moaning. The most difficult part of the walk was near the dead bodies. Tears I thought had dried up long ago came back to my eyes-less because of the sight than from the thought that those innocent people had paid with their lives for their attempts to reach freedom in a world that was too selfish.”” (pg. 90)

For Teeda Mam, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge years, what happened at Preah Vihear even surpassed these terrible years. She wrote:

“I thought the nightmare I had lived through for years and the trauma of our escape had exposed me to all the suffering and horrors this world had to offer. I was wrong. Nothing had prepared us for this first night on the trail. Descent from the cliff was like being lowered into the jaws of hell.” (pg. 255)

What I intend to do with this article is not to provoke anger or revenge, as Buddhism, the religion Cambodians share with their Thai neighbors, has taught us that revenge is won by taking no revenge ‘pea rum-ngoab doy ka min chong pea.’ My intent is to point out the undeniable fact that terrible things happened at Preah Vihear site three decades ago that involved the loss of thousands of Cambodian lives. The fact that no one has raised these events in discussions of Preah Vihear in the media is shocking. In fact, many Cambodians, especially those of my generation who was born in the 1980s, are not even aware that this horrible event took place. What they were taught was about the Khmer Rouge period, but not about what happened at Preah Vihear. The events at Preah Vihear, which was inflicted by the Thais, cost the lives of many Cambodians. But unlike the Khmer Rouge leaders who are being tried now, Cambodians do not even ask who was responsible for the people who died at Preah Vihear. So the question is, how can the Thais take the pride in arguing for the sovereignty of this site when this should be a site of shame for what they did?

Killing fields then and now

August 23, 2007
PowerLineBlog.com

This past March the Times (London) gave away a DVD of "The Killing Fields" to readers. It called on William Shawcross to comment on the film and published his column "Remember: For Cambodia, read Iraq." Shawcross referred to his own experience researching the events depicted in the film:

At the end of 1975 I went to the Thai-Cambodian border to talk to refugees. Their horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as “intellectuals” and of “bourgeois” babies being beaten to death against trees were being dismissed as CIA propaganda by the antiAmerican Western Left, but it seemed obvious to me that they were true. I wanted to discover how the Khmer Rouge had grown and come to power; I wrote a book called Sideshow, which was very critical of the way in which the United States had brought war to Cambodia while trying to extricate itself from Vietnam.

But horror had engulfed all of Indo-China as a result of the US defeat in 1975. In Vietnam and Laos there was no vast mass murder but the communists created cruel gulags and, from Vietnam in particular, millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US. Given the catastrophe of the communist victories, I have always thought that those like myself who were opposed to the American efforts in Indochina should be very humble.

In Sideshow, Shawcross excoriated the United States for the Cambodian genocide. In the pages of the American Spectator, Peter Rodman memorably dissented from Shawcross's indictment. Shawcross responded, and the Spectator gave Rodman the last word. Shawcross's magnanimity is reflected in his inclusion of the entire Rodman/Shawcross exchange in the Appendix to the most recent edition of Sideshow.

The original Shawcross thesis is presented in undiluted form in "The Killing Fields." It is presented didactically by New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston), one of the film's two heroes. The film shows Schanberg accepting the Pulitzer he received for his reporting on Cambodia. In his acceptance speech, Schanberg blames the United States for the Cambodian genocide.

The ironies are manifold. The Times itself celebrated the assumption of power by the Khmer Rouge and Sydney Schanberg was among those who dismissed doubts about the benign intentions of the Khmer Rouge. Gabriel Schoenfeld writes in his Commentary review/essay ("Was Kissinger Right?") on the third volume of Kissinger's memoirs:

In the beginning, middle, and end of this episode, Kissinger shows to telling effect, the barbaric nature of the Communist Khmer Rouge was painted over in soothing tones by much of the American press. The New York Times was the most flagrant offender. In one dispatch, its correspondent Sydney Schanberg described a ranking Khmer Rouge leader as a "French-educated intellectual" who wanted nothing more than "to fight against feudal privileges and social inequities." A bloodbath was unlikely, Schanberg reported: "since all are Cambodians, an accommodation will be found." As the last Americans were withdrawn, another upbeat article by Schanberg appeared under the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." In short order, the Khmer Rouge proceeded to march nearly two million of their fellow Cambodians to their deaths in the killing fields. Also in short order, Schanberg went on to greater glory and a Pulitzer prize.

Shawcross's second thoughts about American foreign policy in southeast Asia were briefly intimated in his Times column, which applied lessons learned to the challenge before us in Iraq. In his Boston Globe column "Why we fought," Jeff Jacoby quoted from a 1994 Times column by Shawcross:

Those of us who opposed the American war in Indochina should be extremely humble in the face of the appalling aftermath: a form of genocide in Cambodia and horrific tyranny in both Vietnam and Laos. Looking back on my own coverage for The Sunday Times...,I think I concentrated too easily on the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese and their American allies, was too ignorant of the inhuman Hanoi regime, and far too willing to believe that a victory by the Communists would provide a better future. But after the Communist victory came the refugees to Thailand and the floods of boat people desperately seeking to escape the Cambodian killing fields and the Vietnamese gulags. Their eloquent testimony should have put paid to all illusions.

As Jeff commented in a message to us last year: "Whatever else he may believe or advocate, Shawcross seems clearly to be a man of intellectual integrity. That makes his thoughts on the current crisis all the more valuable."

Yesterday President Bush highlighted the column by Shawcross published this past June in the New York Times on the same subject -- this time co-authored with Peter Rodman: "Defeat's killing fields." Both the venue and (as President Bush noted) the joint byline were remarkable. Mr. Shawcross has been a friendly correspondent with us at Power Line over the years. At the time he wrote in response to my request for a few words on the column. His response addressed John Podhoretz's comment on the column at NRO's Corner. Podhoretz had commented:

Twenty-eight years ago, in the pages of the American Spectator, Rodman wrote one of the most authoritative takedowns I (or anybody else) has ever read or written. The subject? William Shawcross's Sideshow — a book that blamed the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia on the United States and on Henry Kissinger. Shawcross, then perhaps England's foremost leftist journalist, has undertaken a singular journey over the past two decades to the view that the United States is the key positive force for good in the world. Today's op-ed completes that journey, and it represents a degree of grace in transformation that is very, very rare.

In his message to us in June Mr. Shawcross wrote:

It's very gracious of him, though I am not sure I agree with everything he says! In particular, I would say that Sideshow did not blame Kissinger and the US for the Cambodian genocide but for creating the conditions in which the KR were able to come to power. But maybe that is splitting hairs after all these years!

I would add only that I have included the full text of my American Spectator exchange with Peter Rodman in every paperback edition of Sideshow that has been published since then.

I finally met Peter only recently, well after the overthrow of Saddam which, as you know, I still think was the proper course of action.

We were introduced by Devon Cross, whom you may know. She is a member of the Defence Policy Board and during the last four years she has been a magnificent unofficial representative of the US in Europe. She has done a terrific job in setting up meetings between US policymakers and European journalists and writers. (She has been far more effective than the State Department in making sure that US policies since 9/11 have been well explained.)

Amongst the many meetings she has arranged in London have been ones with Gen. Petraeus, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, Gen. Jim Jones, Eric Edelman, Gen. Jack Keane...and Peter Rodman. I liked him very much.

And there, I think, you have it.

Mr. Shawcross is the son of Sir Hartley Shawcross, the prominent Labour MP, Nuremberg prosecutor, Attorney-General (he prosecuted Lord Haw-Haw), and attorney for Winston Churchill (he represented Churchill in connection with a defamation claim arising from one volume of Churchill's World War II history). Today Mr. Shawcross writes us: "I think the President made a pretty good speech." He alerts us to his timely, excellent cover story in the current issue of the Spectator (UK): "Now, more than ever, Britain must stay in Iraq." As one can observe through the echoes in his current essay, in addition to his personal example and professional accomplishments, Mr. Shawcross gives us a living link to Sir Winston.

Killing fields then and now

March 03, 2007
Power Line News

The Times (London) is giving away a DVD of "The Killing Fields" to readers today. It has called on William Shawcross to comment on the film and has published his column "Remember: For Cambodia, read Iraq." Shawcross refers to his own experience researching the events depicted in the film:

At the end of 1975 I went to the Thai-Cambodian border to talk to refugees. Their horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as “intellectuals” and of “bourgeois” babies being beaten to death against trees were being dismissed as CIA propaganda by the antiAmerican Western Left, but it seemed obvious to me that they were true. I wanted to discover how the Khmer Rouge had grown and come to power; I wrote a book called Sideshow, which was very critical of the way in which the United States had brought war to Cambodia while trying to extricate itself from Vietnam.

But horror had engulfed all of Indo-China as a result of the US defeat in 1975. In Vietnam and Laos there was no vast mass murder but the communists created cruel gulags and, from Vietnam in particular, millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US. Given the catastrophe of the communist victories, I have always thought that those like myself who were opposed to the American efforts in Indochina should be very humble.

In Sideshow, Shawcross excoriated the United States for the Cambodian genocide. In the pages of the American Spectator, Peter Rodman memorably dissented from Shawcross's indictment. Shawcross responded, and the Spectator gave Rodman the last word. Shawcross's magnanimity is reflected in his inclusion of the entire Rodman/Shawcross exchange in the Appendix to the most recent edition of Sideshow.

Shawcross does not take the valuable space afforded him by the Times to note that, as I recall, the original Shawcross thesis is presented in undiluted form in "The Killing Fields." It is presented didactically by New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston), one of the film's two heroes. The film shows Schanberg accepting the Pulitzer he received for his reporting on Cambodia. In his acceptance speech, Schanberg blames the United States for the Cambodian genocide.

The ironies are manifold. The Times itself celebrated the assumption of power by the Khmer Rouge and Sydney Schanberg was among those who dismissed doubts about the benign intentions of the Khmer Rouge. Gabriel Schoenfeld writes in his Commentary review ("Was Kissinger Right?") of the third volume of Kissinger's memoirs:

In the beginning, middle, and end of this episode, Kissinger shows to telling effect, the barbaric nature of the Communist Khmer Rouge was painted over in soothing tones by much of the American press. The New York Times was the most flagrant offender. In one dispatch, its correspondent Sydney Schanberg described a ranking Khmer Rouge leader as a "French-educated intellectual" who wanted nothing more than "to fight against feudal privileges and social inequities." A bloodbath was unlikely, Schanberg reported: "since all are Cambodians, an accommodation will be found." As the last Americans were withdrawn, another upbeat article by Schanberg appeared under the headline, "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." In short order, the Khmer Rouge proceeded to march nearly two million of their fellow Cambodians to their deaths in the killing fields. Also in short order, Schanberg went on to greater glory and a Pulitzer prize.

Shawcross's second thoughts about American foreign policy in southeast Asia are briefly intimated in today's column, which applies lessons learned to the challenge before us in Iraq. In his column Boston Globe column "Why we fought," Jeff Jacoby quoted from a 1994 Times column by Shawcross:

Those of us who opposed the American war in Indochina should be extremely humble in the face of the appalling aftermath: a form of genocide in Cambodia and horrific tyranny in both Vietnam and Laos. Looking back on my own coverage for The Sunday Times...,I think I concentrated too easily on the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese and their American allies, was too ignorant of the inhuman Hanoi regime, and far too willing to believe that a victory by the Communists would provide a better future. But after the Communist victory came the refugees to Thailand and the floods of boat people desperately seeking to escape the Cambodian killing fields and the Vietnamese gulags. Their eloquent testimony should have put paid to all illusions.

As Jeff commented in a message to us last year: "Whatever else he may believe or advocate, Shawcross seems clearly to be a man of intellectual integrity. That makes his thoughts on the current crisis all the more valuable." For more, see John Miller's "The Shawcross redemption."