40 Years After Cambodia Fell to the Khmer Rouge, Perhaps We Shouldn’t Focus So Much on Anniversaries
Remember Nixon '69-'74Ford '74-'77
"In an Unsettled Cambodia, Preparing to Confront the Government"
By Justine Drennan April 17, 2015 - 2:59 pm
On April 17, 1975, the sound of mortar explosions and rifle fire around Cambodia’s capital gave way to cheers. After years of fighting, the ultra-Maoist guerrillas from the jungle had finally defeated General Lon Nol’s American-backed government. Many people watching from the streets of Phnom Penh, a city swollen with displaced villagers, hoped the black-clad Khmer Rouge cadres marching into town would bring peace.
Soon, loudspeakers began blaring orders for the city’s residents to leave immediately for the countryside. Khmer Rouge soldiers pushed families out of their homes and even patients out of hospitals, some with IV-drips in tow. Within a week, the last residents had joined millions marching down the hot, dusty roads away from the city, leaving it mostly silent for the next three years, eight months, and 20 days. In that time, the Khmer Rouge would force nearly the entire population into rural collectives, and about 1.7 million people would die from disease, starvation, and overwork, or be tortured and executed for suspected disloyalty.
Some survivors, who decades later testified at the U.N. tribunal trying Khmer Rouge leaders, recalled cadres telling them they had to leave Phnom Penh because the United States planned to bomb it. That stirred fearful memories. The United States had actually ended its bombing campaign in Cambodia almost two years before, but by then American planes, mostly B-52s, had dropped more than 2.7 million tons .. http://www.yale.edu/cgp/Walrus_CambodiaBombing_OCT06.pdf .. of bombs across the country. Compare that with the 2 million tons dropped by all the Allies in the entire course of World War II. The U.S. aim was to destroy Vietnamese supply lines through Cambodia and ultimately help stop the spread of communism. Instead, the widespread destruction helped .. http://tinyurl.com/md4277n .. the Khmer Rouge recruit desperate villagers.
The United States [ Presidents Nixon/Ford should have been ]was well aware of that threat. After surveying Khmer Rouge strongholds south of the capital, the CIA’s Directorate of Operations reported in a May 1973 cable .. http://tinyurl.com/md4277n .. that the rebels were “using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda.” Two years later, when the communists encircled Phnom Penh, many U.S. officials and displaced villagers knew — as the urbanites who cheered the rebels’ entry didn’t — that a Khmer Rouge victory wouldn’t bring peace. The guerrillas had already shown their brutality in the rest of the country as they emptied towns and collectivized the fields.
In a sense, then, April 17, 1975, is an arbitrary date. It represents just one point in an ongoing disaster wrought by not only the Khmer Rouge but also France, whose decades of colonialism in Indochina triggered nationalistic communist responses, the United States, and others. That context can easily fade from view with the focus on anniversaries like April 17. By suggesting clean beginnings to tragedies, these dates can help conceal the events that led to them. And there’s some comfort in that.
--- Sectioning off precise periods of devastation makes them easier to dismiss as the one-off actions of singularly evil madmen — even as new cycles of military intervention bring new unintended consequences. ---
That’s not to downplay the Khmer Rouge leaders’ enormous guilt — or the huge significance of April 17 in Phnom Penh. Commemorating the city’s fall to the Khmer Rouge gives victims and witnesses the opportunity in a news-oriented world to .. http://www.phnompenhpost.com/video/fall-phnom-penh-40-years .. memorialize .. http://www.voanews.com/content/reporter-recalls-phnom-penh-evacuation/2718629.html .. their experiences. Much less directly, it’s a chance for people like me to recall months spent watching Khmer Rouge tribunal testimony and studying the history. (I covered the court in 2012 and 2013 for the Phnom Penh Post and the Associated Press.)
Still, anniversaries suggest the same problem facing the U.N.-backed trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders: They draw too clear a line between those considered guilty and the rest — whether former low-level killers still living alongside victims’ families in remote northern Cambodian villages, or U.N. Security Council members like France and the United States, both key backers .. http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/faq/how-court-financed .. of the tribunal.
Of course, the court had to draw the line of guilt somewhere if it was ever to rule on anything. It only got its start in 2006 after years of political instability and government foot-dragging, and so far it’s only managed to finish trying and convicting one person, former prison director Kaing Geuk Eav.
Its second case is vast. On trial are Pol Pot’s right-hand man, Nuon Chea, and head of state, Khieu Samphan, the regime’s two most senior surviving leaders, and evaluating their charges requires looking at the entire Khmer Rouge period. The court has convicted them for crimes against humanity for the evacuation of Phnom Penh and other forced relocations and killings, but it’s still working through trying them on another set of charges, including genocide. In the meantime, another defendant has died, and the court deemed yet another unfit for trial due to dementia.
It’s unclear if it will ever try anyone else — not least because the Cambodian government wants the current case to be its last. Several current top Cambodian officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, were once themselves Khmer Rouge cadres, so they have an interest in promoting the notion that culpability is confined to a few key former leaders. Hun Sen’s cronies have ignored court subpoenas, and the government is refusing to arrest suspects a judge named .. http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/03/22/cambodia-stop-blocking-justice-khmer-rouge-crimes .. in March on charges that would expand responsibility beyond the Khmer Rouge’s most senior figures.
Even in the face of this obstruction, one of the faltering tribunal’s main strengths is that at least in theory, it grants former Khmer Rouge leaders due process. Despite the near-universal belief that they are guilty of mass atrocities, imprinted in memories and history books, the defendants are legally innocent until proven otherwise. Fighting against the tendency to set these leaders apart as singularly evil, defense lawyers fiercely stand up for their ageing clients’ common humanity and present their actions against a backdrop of Parisian intellectual utopianism, anti-colonialism, and the Vietnam War. In 2013, defense counsel Victor Koppe asked .. http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/kr-not-bombs-emptied-city-schanberg-says .. one witness, a New York journalist, if he might be biased by “too much an American view … some might call it an imperialist view.” Perhaps counterintuitively, these underdog lawyers may represent some of the tribunal’s strongest refutations of regimes like the Khmer Rouge, which didn’t tolerate dissenting views or value its victims’ humanity.
During the hearings, both survivors and lawyers often repeat the familiar numbers that framed the regime’s reign: “three years, eight months, and 20 days.” Sometimes, the victims’ repetition of these figures suggests shock at how long they endured such great suffering — or, conversely, how such a relatively short span of time could have destroyed so much. Other times, especially in the mouths of government officials and some foreign observers, these numbers also suggest a way of encapsulating the suffering in a neat span of time — and ultimately shelving it to gather dust as governments initiate new campaigns of violence.
Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha has been arrested at his home in the capital Phnom Penh, with the Government of veteran Prime Minister Hun Sen saying he was accused of treason.
- Key points:
* Kem Sokha has led opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party since February
* Australian Government says Cambodian authorities must handle the issue openly
* Pro-Cambodian government news website says Sokha and US plotted to overthrow PM Hun Sen -
The arrest marks a new escalation in a campaign against critics, independent media and any potential threats to Hun Sen's hold on power ahead of an election next year at which Kem Sokha has been expected to be his main challenger.
The Government said it had a video clip and other evidence pointing to "secret plans of conspiracy between Kem Sokha, others and foreigners to harm the Kingdom of Cambodia".
"The above act of this secret conspiracy is treason," the statement said.
The Australian Government called for Cambodia to handle the matter in a transparent manner.
"The Australian Government is concerned by the arrest of Cambodian opposition leader Kem Sokha overnight," a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson told the ABC.
"We urge Cambodian authorities to handle the matter in an open and transparent manner, and to take all necessary steps to maintain an open democratic space in which all voices can be heard."
The former Khmer Rouge cadre has become one of China's closest regional allies and has been making increasingly strident verbal attacks on the United States.
Kem Sokha, 64, has led the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) since his predecessor resigned in February, saying he feared a Government plan to shut it down.
Pictures in Cambodian media showed him being led away with his hands behind his back.
Kem Sokha's daughter, Monovithya Kem, who is also an official in the party, said on Twitter that her father had been taken away handcuffed after a raid by between 100 and 200 police, who arrived without an arrest warrant.
"Kem Sokha whereabouts is still unknown," she wrote, after earlier saying he had been taken to city hall.
Kem Sokha made no immediate comment and it was not clear if he had legal representation at this stage.
Government accuses US of supporting Kem Sokha
Fresh News, a pro-government website, had said before Kem Sokha's arrest that it had video of Kem Sokha discussing overthrowing Hun Sen with support from the United States.
Neither the US State Department nor the White House responded immediately to a request for comment.
The Government has recently increased its rhetoric against the US and last month ordered the expulsion of the US State Department-funded National Democratic Institute pro-democracy group.
"Freedom of speech is rapidly becoming a highly endangered right in Prime Minister Hun Sen's march down the road to dictatorship in Cambodia," deputy Asia director of the Human Rights Watch campaign group, Phil Robertson, said.
"Kem Sokha is now the latest victim," he added, calling on donors to condemn the arrest.
Charles Santiago, Malaysian MP and chairman of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, added: "The arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha early this morning takes the ongoing crackdown by the ruling party in Cambodia to an alarming new level.
"With national elections on the horizon, it is clear that this is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to crush the opposition before the campaign even starts.
"For months, we have been witnessing the escalation of Government attempts to cripple the opposition, but it appears now that Prime Minister Hun Sen is so afraid of what might happen in a genuine vote, he won't allow for competition at all."
Hun Sen's Government stepped up attacks on the media last month, halting broadcasts by some radio stations and ordering an independent newspaper, The Cambodia Daily, to close if it did not pay a $6 million tax bill within days.
During Hun Sen's rule Cambodia emerged from the devastating Khmer Rouge genocide to enjoy record years of economic growth of above 7 per cent, but disaffection has been growing and he only just won the 2013 election against a unified opposition.
His Cambodian People's Party also won local elections in June, but the opposition also fared reasonably well, increasing expectations of a close contest in the general election due in 2018.
Kem Sokha took over the party leadership after his predecessor, Sam Rainsy, resigned in February.
Mr Rainsy said he had quit to save the party in the face of a threatened ban on any party with a leader who has been convicted of a crime.
Mr Rainsy lives in exile in France to avoid a defamation conviction he says was politically motivated.
U.S. Demands Cambodia Repay Loan From Vietnam War Era Michael Sullivan May 30, 20176:02 AM ET Cambodia owes more than $500 million for when the nation borrowed to help feed refugees impacted by the war. The U.S. helped create many of those refugees through its bombing of eastern Cambodia. http://www.npr.org/2017/05/30/530683478/u-s-demands-cambodia-repay-loan-from-vietnam-war-era
That's one loan which surely could be dropped in a spirit of, 'well ok, fair enough.'
C'mon Donald, you haven't exactly been a model of propriety re your debts.
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