Khmer Rouge regime: It originates from the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party in 1951 who conducted guerrillas actively in jungle areas before the establishment of the Royal Government of National Union of Cambodia in 1975. The scale of the party was constantly expanded by admitting farmers unsettled by the US bombing. Since the party came to power, radical revolutions and political movements were carried out, leading to the death of tens of thousands of Cambodians, thus historically known as “Cambodian genocide”.
It is said that originally Khmer Rouge special tribunal put the major leader Khieu Samphan of Khmer Rouge on the next stage of trial this month. Now it postpones the restart of trials due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Khieu Samphan was jailed for life for committing crimes against humanity in 2014. Instead of capital punishment, life imprisonment is the ultimate legal means to punish the evil in Cambodia. This is not the first time for Khieu Samphan to return to the court. It will not be the last neither if he can live long enough. As the only alive Khieu Samphan leader, he bears multiple charges whose number is still increasing. Only the working efficiency of the special tribunal can affect the speed of posing crime upon crime on him.
This is also the tangled. Over the past decade, special tribunal has shown its most glamorous side to the international media. In Cambodia, however, it gains poor reputation. Most Cambodians are highly tolerant of its low efficiency and huge expense---what they are truly concerned with is whether the seemingly rightful “judger” will trigger a new round of violence. As for the survivors of Khmer Rouge regime atrocity, a court that cannot bring all criminals to trial is meaningless.
When I told this news to my Cambodian friend at lunch, he shrugged his shoulders and continued his lunch. His reaction reminds me of my experience of interviewing victims outside the special tribunal. In 2009, when the court judged Kang Kek Iew for the first trial, there were hundreds of victims waiting outside. The instant they knew that Kang Kek Iew was sentenced to prison for 35 years, they broke down and burst into tears. Personally, the trial to them is more like a memorial ceremony that they had no choice but to look to instead of a representation of legal justice. Regardless of the meaning of the special tribulation to survivors, the number of people waiting outside the tribunal has decreased every time. To them, the nuances between anti-humanity and genocide in legal context do not matter at all. Victims are forever victims. At the age of Kang Kek Iew, there is no different between thirty-five years in imprison and life imprisonment.
Before returning Phnom Penh, I recommended a film First They Killed My Father directed by Angelina Jolie to my friend. The film, in the perspective of a small girl, recounts the atrocity made by Khmer Rouge regime. I hope he can give me some comments as a witness. “Not bad”, he paused, “I am just curious about why Americans mention their country with such an understatement. Besides, Phnom Penh at that time was not a cozy place.”
He refers to the Phnom Penh yet to be stationed by Khmer Rouge troops in 1975, shown at the beginning of the film. At that time, Phnom Penh was filled with farmers from the south who rushed here to escape the US bomber. According to decrypted information released by the Clinton Administration in 2000, the US air force had conducted air strikes in the south of Cambodia since 1965. In the sequent 9-year period, American armies had dropped out more than 540,000 tons of bombs. The bombing destroyed the country’s agriculture, many farmers forced to leave from ravages of war for cities.
Therefore, the condition Phnom Penh was lousy in 1975. According to his memory, hunger and violence had already penetrated every corner of this city, before Khmer Rouge governed this city. “There were so many homeless. At first, mom could give them something to eat. Later, we also had scarce food.” At the dirty and chaotic streets, people fought for a bit food. As days passed by, stores stayed open for shorter time and finally shut down. Things could be bought nowhere. “I hated them”, my friend said, “I didn’t know why they couldn’t be back to the country side. I felt everything was their fault.”
After the war was ended, people made a rough calculation. The population of Phnom Penh had maintained around 2 million above since 1969, the peak reaching 3 million. While the total population of Cambodia was only 8 million. What my friend did not expect was that things could be worse. The US bomber did not annihilate Khmer Rouge guerrillas. The latter took in vagrants in the north and promised to lead them to defeat American armies and to rebuild farm lands and villages. Within a few years, this force burned as wild fire from the north to the south and finally came to Phnom Penh.
In 2009, when I just arrived in Phnom Penh, he was my translator. I thought, at his age, he must experience the horrific governance of Khmer Rouge. Therefore, I suggested finding someone else to do the job when I was going to make interviews outside the tribunal. He laughed, “Then why I take this job?” He was very calm when interviewing victims. He acted like a priest listening to a short shrift when facing crying interviewees. The calmness made me wonder whether his family survived through the Khmer Rouge governance. The truth was not what I thought. He told me his experience post April, 17th, 1975. After leaving Phnom Penh, his father was recognized as an intellectual because he wore a pair of glasses, which brought more suffering to him than usual people. “Beating and interrogation were not torturing,” he said, “The true torturing was that they kept you working without eating. They were executing you by squeezing all your energy out.” People failing to work were worthless to them. His parents, regarded as “parasites”, were brought away when losing their labor ability and never came back. His brother received a short-term military training and was sent to the battlefield. Who he was fighting with? Was he alive? My friend had no idea at all.
When he was telling about all this, he appeared unruffled, the same calmness while he was interviewing other victims. I could not understand why he could be confronted with the grievous pains with such an attitude. “It seems that time has soothed the pain.” I said, “Maybe,” he replied, “I think that is mainly because I am also a father now.”
While doing interviews in the following few years, this conversation makes me realize that those victims who did not wait outside the special tribunal do not choose to forget, but choose another way to appease pain. For them, though Khmer Rouge regime is the indelible past of Cambodia, they can get over it. Rather than to open the old memory, what they need to do is to prevent tragedy from happening again and move toward the future in a more cohesive way.