The Cambodian genocide

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Vivien Lambert
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1 The Killing fields The Cambodian genocide 1

2 I see tears falling For the waste My heart breaks Pain beyond words How can I bear it? I must 2

3 Background There are many sited on the web where good background information can be obtained. (1) (2) Here are the brief facts:- In 1953 Cambodia gained independence after nearly 100 years of French rule. In the 1960s the population was over 7 million and was almost completely Buddhist. The country was ruled by a monarch, Prince Sihanouk. In 1970, Sihanouk is deposed and Prime Minister, General Lon Nol, took power. He established the Khmer Republic and sent the Army to fight the North Vietnamese in Cambodia. On 17 April 1975, Khmer Rouge forces entered the capital city, Phnom Penh and defeated the ruling Lon Nol Army. The seizure of Phnom Penh marked the beginning of genocide in Cambodia. Khmer Rouge Khmer Rouge ideology stated that the only acceptable lifestyle was that of poor agricultural workers. Factories, hospitals, schools and universities were shut down. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers and qualified professionals in all fields were thought to be a threat to the new regime. Religion of all kinds was banned as were music and radios. Money was abolished and all aspects of life were subject to regulation. People were not allowed to choose their own marriage partners. They could not leave their given place of work or even select the clothes that they would wear. People died through starvation, disease and exhaustion. Thousands were executed by the State. Estimates of those murdered range between 1 and 3 million men, women and children. The vast majority of those forced into the countryside were made to work as agricultural slave labourers collective farms. These are now known as The Killing Fields because so many workers died or were murdered there. S-21 Killing in Cambodia developed on an industrial scale. At the centre of these murders was the concentration camp at Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21. Previously a high school, the building was converted into the Khmer Rouge centre for interrogation, torture and murder. S-21 was controlled by the Khmer Rouge Special Branch Santebal, and the Commander was Kaing Guek Eav. 3

4 Thousands of men, women and children went through S-21 and meticulous records and photographs of the interrogation, torture and executions were taken. Liberation Those who did survive their time in The Killing Fields were liberated by Vietnamese troops on 7 January Survivors faced a country in ruin. Buddhist temples were destroyed, homes within cities had been ransacked and left to rot and those who survived faced the agonising challenge of finding whether their friends and families had survived. Genocide voices It s hard to isolate individual voices in this massive genocidal activity. Unlike Auschwitz, where we can get reasonable figures, this genocide was spread over the whole country. What happened in the Killing fields to thousands of people will never be known. For many of them the destruction was not physical but mental. The scars will run deep in the country, but isolating individual scars reduces, in a way the intensity of the genocide. A Schoolteacher's Story At the beginning of January 1976, twenty of us were sentenced to death for traveling without permission. We were taken away in a truck with our hands tied behind our backs. One Khmer Rouge sat behind with a gun and two more sat in front with the driver. One of us managed to free himself and secretly untied eleven others. Then one of us tried to kill the Khmer Rouge sitting in the back of the truck, but the guards in front saw him and turned around and started shooting. The twelve who had their hands free jumped down from the truck and dived into the river by the side on the road, then disappeared into the forest. The other eight were killed on the spot. (3) A Court Clerk's Account of an Execution In October 1975, the Angkar chose us to cut bamboo at O Ta Tam, near Phnom Rodaong, for eighteen days. One afternoon we were in a group of thirty wagons carting bamboo to the national highway. We had loaded and were about to turn around when we saw a military truck enter the forest carrying about ten young men and girls. A moment later we heard shots, and then the truck came back empty. We were very frightened, and harnessed up to go home. Then we heard moaning and somebody calling for help. 4

5 One of our group went over and saw a young man with bullet wounds in both arms and one thigh, and his arms still tied behind his back. Sambath untied him, gave him a little rice, and told him how to get to the road to the west. On the way home Sambath told us, That young man told me that the people who had been shot hadn't done anything wrong, they had simply gone to look for food in the forest, so they weren't working with their group. That's why they were killed. (3) In the killing fields After the first day s work, I am so tired and stiff that I can barely swallow my precious bowl of rice. It s precious because it s the last bowl of good white rice we ll be allowed. From tomorrow it ll be consistently mixed with corn. Angkar has supply problems, so we must tighten our belts and feed the children first. Within a few weeks both the young and old lose several kilos. The children no longer have any vitality, no inclination to play or to laugh. My husband, by nature quite robust, used to his daily whisky and his cigarettes, sees his spare tyre melt away in the space of a few days and must submit to a diet of rainwater and bartered tobacco, rolled in dried banana leaves. His face wrinkles quite noticeably. I learn to work the earth. Bit by bit, I learn how to deal with my gaolers, how to navigate in their troubled waters and how to play at being submissive to escape death. Because of my French nationality, the converted Khmer peasants and the Khmer Rouge, particularly their women, make fun of me viciously and call me ye barang (old French woman) or ye ponso (old ponso it s a corruption of my family name, which Cambodians can t pronounce): So, ye barang, in your country, would you work like this? Oh no, comrade! Are you happy to be here? Yes, comrade! Thanks to Angkar I ve learned lots of new things. In my country, I would never have learned all this. Yes, yes, I m very happy to do what I do here because otherwise I d have never known any of it. It is what they want to hear and I gibber it at them in Khmer, of course. I bend in the direction of the wind, like the reeds. (4) S-21 This is where the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge imprisoned and brutalized its enemies from 1975 to I (The reporter) visited the once secret S-21, now a museum, with Van Nath, a former inmate. He remembers being brought here blindfolded and terrified: 5

6 I thought that was the end of my life. In my room people kept dying, one or two every day. Van Nath was kept in a room packed with 50 other inmates, shackled together and forced to lie down. We could not sit. If we wanted to sit, we had to ask permission first. No talking, whispering or making noise. Van Nath described how male prisoners were whipped raw, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars. Prison guards mutilated women's genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers. And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered. Van Nath was accused of being a CIA agent and given electric shock torture, but he survived when his jailers found out he was one of Cambodia's most prominent painters. And what did they make him paint? Pol Pot's picture. Big pictures. I had to paint the same one again and again. If they didn't like my painting that would have been the end of my life. So when Pol Pot finally fell in 1979, Van Nath returned to paint what he had really seen and heard at S-21. He did it as a memorial to the 14,000 who had been tortured and executed in the prison. It's one of the few public reminders of the regime's crimes. (5) The man in charge of S-21 Kaing Guek Eav was found guilty of the deaths of at least 12,273 people by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts - a war crimes court set up to try the main leaders of the genocide. (6) 6

7 The Cambodia genocide and Faith Darkness came spite filled snuffing out all light Heaviness came spite filled crushing out all joy Despair came spite filled robbing all hope A cross came love filled restoring light, joy, hope. 7

8 This genocide series is not a historical record, although that is included as vital background. Rather it is attempting to answer, from a Christian perspective, why a particular genocide happened. We must, as Christian theologians and teachers, be able to have some answer to this question, or our Faith will lack integrity. We have to have the courage to look, ask and pray for some indication, however vague, of what was going on spiritually. So what about this genocide? Some years ago, as I was praying for Cambodia, this picture came to me:- The Lord showed me Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. As I looked down, I saw below me a cloud, but not a normal cloud. This one was made up of what looked like ropes or cords. Each one was very tight, and they were all twisted together. There seemed to be so much anger and spite in this cloud. As I looked through it, I saw millions of people, trying to live under the shadow of this anxiety and tension. There seemed to be little freedom. Then suddenly the wave began to sweep around me I felt pain, shame, spoiling, sickness, and despair. They were ugly waves and seemed to have freedom to move as they wanted to. I was very troubled by this. What hope was there? Then I saw a small wave, very beautiful, waiting to come. It was filled with love for this whole area, and I heard a voice in the wave saying I will restore. If this picture is from God, the Cambodia was unprotected. When the enemy launched his attack, he robbed the nation of its freedom, its hope and its heritage. Of all the genocides in this series, the Cambodian one stands out as an assault on the total nation - an attempt to destroy the nation totally. Even the perpetrators of the genocide lost in the end. The very nation they wanted to change was itself destroyed. Like Samson, they succeeded in pulling the Temple down on their own heads, and lost their own freedom. Why was Cambodia unprotected? This is the fundamental issue. Here is something to consider:- The word of the Lord came to me: Son of man, speak to your people and say to them: When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of the land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not heed the warning and the sword comes and takes their life, their blood will be on their own 8

9 head. Since they heard the sound of the trumpet but did not heed the warning, their blood will be on their own head. If they had heeded the warning, they would have saved themselves. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone s life, that person s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood. (7) In Cambodia, before this terrible period, one of two things did not happen. Either the Watchman did not call to warn, or the people did not listen. Either way, that left the door of the nation unguarded. And the result of this is clear in the Bible:- The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. (8) The wolf is always looking to tear down nations. The door of the nation must be forever guarded, and there must be those ready to do as David did:- Your servant has been keeping his father s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. (9) The Cambodian door was unguarded. The wolf came, and tore the nation apart. This was, and remains not a political but a spiritual failure. By whom? Do we blame the Cambodian church? The Christian faith is a worldwide family. We stand or fall together. This was a failure of the intercessors and leaders of God s people worldwide. Healing is needed for Cambodia. Repentance is needed by God s church. We cannot have one without the other. 9

10 Notes Poems are by Father Michael the Solitary Denise Affonço at hmd.org.uk 5. articles.cnn.com 6. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia can be found at Their publications can all be downloaded free, including court reports, judgments and monthly updates. 7. Ezekiel 33: John 10: Samuel 17:34-5 Jim Smith Jim Smith has been an Anglican Pastor for over 40 years. He exercises an intercessory prophetic ministry. He is married to Mary, and they have five children. Jim Smith. November 2012 This material may be downloaded and copied for personal, group or church use. It is not to be changed and it is not to be sold. Also in this series: The Pontus genocide. The Roma genocide. The Guatemala genocide. 10

11 Contact Tel: (U.K. code 0044) Rev Jim Smith: Freshfields, Mutton Hall Hill, Heathfield, East Sussex TN21 8NL. United Kingdom Many of Jim Smith s articles and publications can be downloaded from this site. 11

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