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Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia


bumblebee

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This moving and insightful documentary by John Pilger about the Pol Pot/Killing Fields period in the late 70s is must viewing for anyone with an interest in Cambodia's dark history.  i got talking to a guy my own age last year, and he described his time in one of the camps/farms, harrowing stuff to say the least.  

 

it really struck home when i though that at the same time, in our early teens, i was in my safe family home worried about my homework, while on the other side of the world this guy in front of me was just hoping to survive, very sobering indeed.

 

http://johnpilger.com/videos/year-zero-the-silent-death-of-cambodia

 


http://youtu.be/SIYLD5iAJOE

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As back up, for those who read, if you make it to Cambodia any time, there's a heap of good literature on this topic for sale as photocopy copyright violating cheap books on the bookstands along the Phnom Penh esplanade drag (for example). The two world experts on Cambodian history, David Chandler & Ben Kiernan, are at Monash University in Melbourne. Between them they have written 10 or so books on this.

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I remember visiting the killing fields with some of the guys in November '11.  The look on Ninewive's face when he came out of the museum said it all.  He turned to me and remarked "what the hell went on here, madness" with a visibly shaken look on his face. 

 

I was the same.. almost brought me to tears.

 

The thing that got me the most was wandering around the killing fields and the number of bones that we visible under foot...

 

I couldnt bring myself to visit the torture museum, S21 i think.

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By December 1978, because of several years of border conflict and the flood of refugees fleeing Kampuchea, relations between Cambodia and Vietnam collapsed. Pol Pot, fearing a Vietnamese attack, ordered a pre-emptive invasion of Vietnam. His Cambodian forces crossed the border and looted nearby villages. Of the 3,157 civilians who had lived in Ba Chúc,[40] only two survived the massacre. These Cambodian forces were repelled by the Vietnamese.

Along with the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, an organization that included many dissatisfied former Khmer Rouge members,[41] the Vietnamese armed forces then invaded Cambodia, capturing Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. Despite a traditional Cambodian fear of Vietnamese domination, defecting Khmer Rouge activists assisted the Vietnamese, and, with Vietnam's approval, became the core of the new People's Republic of Kampuchea, quickly dismissed by the Khmer Rouge and China as a "puppet government."

At the same time, the Khmer Rouge retreated west, and it continued to control certain areas near the Thai border for the next decade. These included Phnom Malai, the mountain areas near Pailin in the Cardamom Mountains and Anlong Veng in the Dângrêk Mountains.[42]

These Khmer Rouge bases were not self-sufficient and were funded by diamond and timber smuggling, military assistance from China channeled by means of the Thai military, and food from markets across the border in Thailand.[43]

Despite its deposal, the Khmer Rouge retained its UN seat, which was occupied by Thiounn Prasith, an old compatriot of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary from their student days in Paris, and one of the 21 attendees at the 1960 KPRP Second Congress. The seat was retained under the name "Democratic Kampuchea" until 1982, and then "Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea" (see below) until 1993. Western governments repeatedly backed the Khmer Rouge in the U.N. and voted in favour of retaining Cambodia's seat in the organization. Margaret Thatcher stated that "So, you'll find that the more reasonable ones of the Khmer Rouge will have to play some part in the future government, but only a minority part. I share your utter horror that these terrible things went on in Kampuchea.".[44] Sweden on the contrary changed its vote in the U.N. and withdrew support for the Khmer Rouge after a large number of Swedish citizens wrote letters to their elected representatives demanding a policy change towards Pol Pot's regime.[45]
Ramifications of Vietnamese victory

Vietnam's victory, supported by the Soviet Union, had significant ramifications for the region; the People's Republic of China launched a punitive invasion of northern Vietnam and retreated (with both sides claiming victory). China, the U.S. and the ASEAN countries sponsored the creation and the military operations of a Cambodian government-in-exile known as the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea which included, besides the Khmer Rouge, republican KPNLF and royalist ANS.[45]

Eastern and central Cambodia were firmly under the control of Vietnam and its Cambodian allies by 1980, while the western part of the country continued to be a battlefield throughout the 1980s, and millions of landmines were sown across the countryside. The Khmer Rouge, still led by Pol Pot, was the strongest of the three rebel groups in the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea which received extensive military aid from China, Britain and the United States and intelligence from the Thai military.
Photos of the victims of the Khmer Rouge

In an attempt to broaden its support base, the Khmer Rouge formed the Patriotic and Democratic Front of the Great National Union of Kampuchea in 1979. In 1981, the Khmer Rouge went as far as to officially renounce Communism[42] and somewhat moved their ideological emphasis to nationalism and anti-Vietnamese rhetoric instead. However, some analysts argue that this change meant little in practice, because, as historian Kelvin Rowley puts it, "CPK propaganda had always relied on nationalist rather than revolutionary appeals."[45]

Although Pol Pot relinquished the Khmer Rouge leadership to Khieu Samphan in 1985, he continued to be the driving force of Khmer Rouge insurgency, giving speeches to his followers. Journalists such as Nate Thayer who spent some time with the Khmer Rouge during that period commented that, despite the international community's near-universal condemnation of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule, a considerable number of Cambodians in Khmer Rouge-controlled areas seemed genuinely to support Pol Pot.[46]

While Vietnam proposed to withdraw in return for a political settlement excluding the Khmer Rouge from power, the rebel coalition government as well as ASEAN, China and the US insisted that such a condition was unacceptable.[42] Nevertheless, in 1985 Vietnam declared that it would complete the withdrawal of its forces from Cambodia by 1990 and did so in 1989, having allowed the government that it had instated there to consolidate and gain sufficient military strength.[45]

After a decade of inconclusive conflict, the pro-Vietnamese Cambodian government and the rebel coalition signed a treaty in 1991 calling for elections and disarmament. In 1992, however, the Khmer Rouge resumed fighting, boycotted the election and, in the following year, rejected its results. It now fought the new Cambodian coalition government which included the former Vietnamese-backed Communists (headed by Hun Sen) as well as the Khmer Rouge's former non-Communist and monarchist allies (notably Prince Rannaridh). In July 1994 a "Provisional Government of National Union and National Salvation of Cambodia" was established by Khmer Rouge authorities.

There was a mass defection in 1996, when around half the remaining soldiers (about 4,000) left. In 1997, a conflict between the two main participants in the ruling coalition caused Prince Rannaridh to seek support from some of the Khmer Rouge leaders, while refusing to have any dealings with Pol Pot.[45][46] This resulted in bloody factional fighting among the Khmer Rouge leaders, ultimately leading to Pol Pot's trial and imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot died in April 1998. Khieu Samphan surrendered in December.

On December 29, 1998, the remaining leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologized for the 1970s genocide. By 1999, most members had surrendered or been captured. In December 1999, Ta Mok and the remaining leaders surrendered, and the Khmer Rouge effectively ceased to exist. Most of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders live in the Pailin area or are hidden in Phnom Penh.

 

 

Taken from wikipedia...

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Good post Azza, isn't it shocking that it took over 20 years for the Khmer Rouge to finally fade away after the Vietnamese invasion.

 

That was exactly my thoughts as well.... 20 years... but when you read that US, China, UK and even Thailand were supporting them in some form.. maybe its not that shocking.

 

I was in Cambodia in 2007... my 1st & only trip.... my memories of PP were of a vibrant bustling city... watching that video of an abandoned city i could hardly believe what i saw.

 

I remember walking alone through parts of the city feeling unsafe because some desperate people were eyeing me off.

After seeing that i film im filled with guilt and wish i had helped them in some form.

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I was the same.. almost brought me to tears.

 

The thing that got me the most was wandering around the killing fields and the number of bones that we visible under foot...

 

I couldnt bring myself to visit the torture museum, S21 i think.

toul sleng/s21-the torture school was far worse IMO........If my friend hadn't have been with me i'd have broke down for sure......it still gives me the shudders 2 years later.......Nixon and Kissinger played a part in the KHmer Rouge coming to power-let's not forget that!

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. watching that video of an abandoned city i could hardly believe what i saw.

 

I remember walking alone through parts of the city feeling unsafe because some desperate people were eyeing me off.

After seeing that i film im filled with guilt and wish i had helped them in some form.

Seeing the abandoned city with the kid running down the street says so much.  He was the future, maybe I passed him as an adult in his late 30, in the now bustling city, while i was there last year.  The khmers are a friendly people and it's a genuine smile they have, maybe they are just happy that they survived, because when you think about it, almost everyone you meet over 40 went through that nightmare

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I went to S21 in the morning and then went to the killing field in the afternoon. I'm glad I did it in that order. We had a guide at S21 for US$4 that was very good and took a full hour to explain it all. She was just old enough to be around at the end of the madness. When you finish walking through S21 there is a souvenir shop with some tee shirts that struck me as IMO a bit tacky all things considered. The typical Cambo "WARNING: Land Mines" tee shirts, etc. Assuming it is still the same you will have a group of beggers at the entrance of S21 missing various hacked off body parts.

 

By contrast we had a guide at the killing field that cost more and did much less. If I had a good printed guide of the place I would skip the human guide. We were walking across a built up walkway across a mass grave that had sunk a bit. You can see some material from uniforms that had worked up to the top and was sticking out. The guide saw something and bent over and picked up a tooth. He tried to hand it to me but I said "NO THANKS!". Maybe the souvenir shop wasn't so tacky compared to this.

 

Got extra pages put in my passport in PP a few years ago at the embassy. In line in front of me was a young Cambo guy from Boston, his fiancee and her aunt. The Cambo guy had come back to take a bride (a plump little thing, he was quite fit) and they were filing the paper work so they could get married and his bride could go to the US. The aunt talked a little bit about having to hide out in the country side during the terrible times but didn't really want to talk about it a lot (no surprise).

 

I first went to PP in 2008. It also gave me kind of a creepy feeling walking around at night knowing that mass murders and people that hacked off limbs could be anywhere. But six years and five trips have pretty much erased that feeling. I've always thought the Khmer Rouge disaster is why the Cambo people are so much more humble than Thais. Although I really have no idea if that is true.          

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What struck me on my visit to S21 was how small scale it was. As far as I remember, around 7 or 8 people were killed everyday and this went on for 3 years giving a total in the region of 7000. Now to get to the figure of 1.3 million actually executed (as opposed to those who died of starvation or disease) in Pol Pot's regime, there must have been a network of similar camps throughout Cambodia with many thousands involved. Compare this with the system that the Nazis and the Communists under Stalin set up which were industrial scale genocide, this was almost cottage industry genocide - and no less effective or terrible for that.

 

What I find is an appalling inditement on the West and China is that Pol Pot died with his boots on and many of the leaders of modern Kampuchea  were members of the Khmer Rouge and have walked away scott free. Not just free, but now rehabilitated into the political system where they are busy abusing their positions of power. If anyone has an iPhone, you can get a free app to a publication called Intelligent Life which is published by the Economist. In the Jan / Feb 2013 edition, there is a sobering article entitled Beyond the Killing Fields which documents the continuing abuse of power of these people, driven not by a mad  philosophy but by money. It made me angry (which is quite a rare thing for me).

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Excellent docu Bumblebee.  They don't make them like that anymore.  I didn't realise the bombing of Cambodia had such a direct effect on the country's politics.  Nixon should have been hung for that war crime.  And Kissenger goes on to get the Nobel Peace Prize!!!  Fucking outrageous.

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Excellent docu Bumblebee.  They don't make them like that anymore.  I didn't realise the bombing of Cambodia had such a direct effect on the country's politics.  Nixon should have been hung for that war crime.  And Kissenger goes on to get the Nobel Peace Prize!!!  Fucking outrageous.

Dont want this to be a political thread in this vain... I stayed clear of WTP thoughts and wont give my own thoughts.

I recommend reading the khmer rouge thread on wikipedia. The political outcome voiced in the documentary is not universally held and makes for interesting reading.

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I am pleased and pleasantly surprised to see this thread has generated some interest.  I really just posted the video to give members an idea of recent Cambodian history and information on something they may or may not be aware of..  

 

I was 13/14 in the late 70's when this story broke, and I remember being fascinated/horrified that something like this had happened in the world.  My grandfather worked for the Irish Times, and I read the paper every day in his home, and they covered all this pretty comprehensively, so even in my early teens I knew a fair bit about it.

 

The Dead Kennedys released the song Holiday in Cambodia in 1980, and I distinctly remember thinking to myself in my teenage innocence, why would anyone ever go to such a horrible place for a vacation, it just sounded like hell on earth to my young mind.  Little did I know that fast forward 32 years and I would actually be living in that same place and loving it and its people. such are the ways of life.

 

Anyone up for some LB hunting in Bagdad in 2030?

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......Nixon and Kissinger played a part in the KHmer Rouge coming to power-let's not forget that!

 

Well,anyone doubting this statement-or think I have an anti american agenda,check out 40-42 minutes of the film......"two men were responsible of what has happened in cambo-nixon and kissinger....they created the khmer rouge  "-Prince sihanouk.....enough said.

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Great thread. Very interesting stuff. I still haven't been to Cambodia! It is high on the list, and now I want to see the museums. Going to read the wiki now...

 

Angkor is one of the cultural wonders of the world. No matter how much we go on about cocks and deep voices, boys in dresses, one has to realise sometimes there is a world out there that is much larger than sex. The human story is one of amazing triumphs and sadnesses, much of which can be felt in those vast hectares of stone blocks brilliantly conceived, planned and engineered outside of today's Siem Reap.

 

The only other museum I've been to there is the National in PP. Fascinating. I had a quiet lone learning morning there and will go back again.

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Angkor is one of the cultural wonders of the world. No matter how much we go on about cocks and deep voices, boys in dresses, one has to realise sometimes there is a world out there that is much larger than sex. The human story is one of amazing triumphs and sadnesses, much of which can be felt in those vast hectares of stone blocks brilliantly conceived, planned and engineered outside of today's Siem Reap.

 

The only other museum I've been to there is the National in PP. Fascinating. I had a quiet lone learning morning there and will go back again.

Very well put Ken and that was the reason for starting this thread, to raise awareness of the human and historical side to Cambodia and know where the people there are coming from.  

 

It would be shame if such intentions were hijacked and turned into an idealogical point scoring shouting match like what happened in the Chavez thread at one stage, and continued here instead.  Sometimes it's better to read, absorb, reflect and move on.

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