Cambodia is a nation with a tragic history. Unfortunately, many of its recent tragedies were brought on by its own people. The Khmer Rouge ruthlessly controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and is responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people (Larmer).These atrocities were made possible by the silence and secrecy surrounding many events and identities before, during, and after the Pol Pot dictatorship.

The first significant secret began in 1970 when the U.S. started bombing Cambodia. The U.S. government was hoping to destroy the suspected Ho Chi Minh trail, used to supply the North Vietnamese army operating in South Vietnam. These secret bombings destroyed Cambodia economically and politically. They destroyed numerous agricultural lands, resulting in the deterioration of the economic state of Cambodia Shawcross, 220-221). The bombings also disrupted the former leadership, which allowed another to overthrow it. Before the U.S. secret bombings, Pol Pot’s group was not a threat to the government. But after the bombings, the U.S. pulled out of Cambodia and abandoned it when it was the most vulnerable allowing the Khmer Rouge to overthrow the government and take control of the country (“Extreme Regimes”).

On April 17,1975, the Khmer Rouge took control and they immediately cIeared out Cambodia’s cities, including Phnom Penh, and forced all inhabitants into the country. In Phnom Penh, they emptied out the hospitals first. In the book Sideshow, William Shawcross writes, “Men with no legs bumped downstairs, blind boys laid their hands on the shoulders of crippled guides, soldiers with one foot and no crutches dragged themselves away...”(366). Then they forced out all of Phnom Penh’s remaining inhabitants, refugees and residents. Some of the people were taken to different villages across the country, where they worked for at least twelve hours a day. They were forced to do hard labor, such as digging canals and building irrigation systems, but were lucky to receive half a pound of rice to feed eight people each day (Yathay). Many people died from starvation and exhaustion. During the Pol Pot dictatorship, Cambodia had no occupied cities, only agricultural production sites, also known as cooperatives, controlled by the Khmer Rouge (Raszelenberg, 66). The people were only useful as labor, so if they got sick they were allowed to rest in a clinic, but they were penalized by receiving only half of their food ration (Yathay).

Other people were taken to detention centers, such as the infamous Tuol Sleng, where many prisoners were executed for “crimes” like being educated, speaking in another language or even wearing glasses (Collinwood, 53). Prisoners were often executed in gruesome manner, such disembowelment, decapitation and clubbing (Vincent. 2003). It is estimated that within the three and a half years that the Khmer Rouge dictatorship ruled Cambodia, 1.7 million people died. That was approximately one third of the population of Cambodia (Larmer). In Tuol Sleng, out of about 15.000 people who were sent there, only seven of them survived (Panh). One of these seven was a man named Rithy Panh. He describes the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge as a “silent” genocide, The Khmer Rouge imposed a reign of terror, and most executions were carried out without witnesses and without noise. The world let Cambodians die and didn’t seem to care. Not many people denounced the massacres” (Panh).

There were numerous reasons why many people within the international community did nothing to end the massacre. When the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK, also known as the Khmer Rouge) took control, it essentially closed off the country by evacuating almost all the foreigners. This made it very hard for media to obtain information. For several months into the Pol Pot dictatorship, personal telegrams were sent outside the country. Following the overthrow, the last known telegram to be sent was from a Cambodian reporter working for an American newspaper. On April 17,1975, after Khmer Rouge soldiers had occupied Phnom Penh, he wrote:

Another reason why no one denounced the massacres was that there weren’t enough witnesses. It was unusual for the prisoners of Cambodia to escape. Khmer Rouge soldiers patrolled the borders and created mine fields across the country (Yathay). The scarcity of witnesses made it easy for the international community to ignore the conflict in Cambodia. But even the accounts of massacres that did arise were rarely reported because the media had no way to verify them since they were not allowed into Cambodia. Also, the earliest survivors had such appalling stories that most Western journalists thought they were exaggerating. Some journalists dismissed it as CIA propaganda against the communist government (Shawcross, Sideshow, 368).

Additionally, journalists were reluctant to report their accounts, because most survivors didn’t even know who was in charge of the persecutions. They weren’t given any information about the leadership’ they were only told that “Angka” ran the country. In his article, “Escape from Cambodia,” written after his escape in 1978, Pin Yathay never refers to the CPK, Pol Pot or even “Brother Number One.” He writes that when Phnom Penh was evacuated, the people were merely told “’Angka [the organization] will take care of you’” (Yathay).

It was the CPK’s theory that the less the people knew about the leadership, the more powerful CPK would be. So following that philosophy, the names, places and objectives of the CPK were concealed from the people. Nobody knew that Pol Pot was “Brother Number One.” Nobody knew where Angka was located, and nobody knew that Pol Pot’s goal was for Cambodia to achieve a truly independent and self-reliant communist society. In fact, he didn’t just want to achieve it; he wanted to leap into it. Pol Pot believed that surpassing the socialist stage of transforming a society into communism was Cambodia’s only hope for preventing Vietnam’s looming invasion (Raszelenberg, 65).

During this rapid development, the CPK transformed schools and places of worship into labor and re-education camps. It outlawed singing, dancing, praying and other common acts (Panh). Crimes such as being immodest, performing illicit sexual acts and stealing were punishable by death (Raszelenberg, 67). There were even severe cases of hunger where people were executed for eating human flesh. Pin Yathay describes two such incidents:

All of these atrocities were committed without protest from the people of Cambodia or the international community. Then, finally, in September 1977, the CPK announced that it was in control of the country. Pol Pot also revealed himself as Saloth Sar, and Nuon Chea, also known as “Brother Number Two,” insisted that ‘secret work was fundamental’ to the Khmer Rouge revolution (“Extreme Regimes”). The public began to take notice of Cambodia, because by then there were too many refugees to ignore. By October 1979, there were over a 25,000 Cambodian refugees in Thailand (Holocaust, ‘79). Some leaders pushed for their countries to give aid, such as senators Danforth, Sasser and Baucus from the United States. However, like the U.S., most Western nations were reluctant to stop Pol Pot because he was fighting against the Vietnamese (Holocaust ‘79).

PAINFUL MEMORIES
In 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ended the Khmer Rouge dictatorship. Today, Cambodians are learning to confront the painful memories of the Pol Pot regime. Many Cambodians suffer from mental illness and still experience post-traumatic stress symptoms, such as insomnia, night terrors and poor appetites (Chandler 178). Many Cambodians believe pain and mourning are things to be kept secret. In “Cambodia, A Painful Hush,” Prusher provides an account from a woman in Cambodia. When asked if people talk about the past massacres, she replied, “People don’t want to talk. Even I don’t want to talk.” Like this woman, many Cambodians think their memories are private and should not be shared with the public (Raszelenberg). To channel the hatred and relieve some of the pain felt about the Pol Pot regime, the State of Cambodia declared a “Day of Hatred” in May. On this day, events and ceremonies related to Pol Pot take place across the country to express some of the pent up hatred felt by the survivors (Chandler, 178).

Another reason the Khmer Rouge massacres are hard to discuss is because Cambodians don’t actually have a word for what took place. Westerners have used labels such as “auto-genocide,” “Cambodian Holocaust, “Cambodian Genocide”and “sui-genocide.” But the Khmers have yet to adopt any of these terms; instead, they prefer silence (Raszelenberg, 77).

The memorial sites dedicated to the Khmer Rouge massacres are also more recognized by Westerners than by Cambodians. Today, Tuol Sleng is a gruesome museum visited daily by tourists. It displays pictures of the victims taken by their Khmer Rouge captors, bloodstained floors, and the original regulations. The regulations are very strict and say things like, “When receiving lashes or electrification you will not cry out at all.” The killing fields are still scattered with human bones. White signs in the fields, describe what the Vietnamese found there in 1978: “Here lay the bodies of 450 people” and “Here 150 children were found beheaded” (Vincent). Tuol Sleng and the killing fields are popular tourist attractions, but their locations are unknown to most Cambodians. Cambodians feel they don’t need to be reminded of their past through memorial sites, because they are reminded of their past every day. They still live with the aftermath of the Pol Pot regime, continuously dealing with dangerous minefields, corrupt governments, a re-developing health care system and a re-developing education system (Raszelenberg, 79).

The Cambodians also deal with the lack of closure to the past. None of the Khmer Rouge leaders were ever tried in an internationally recognized court. When the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia in 1978, Pol Pot and leng Sary were sentenced to death for their crimes against humanity in a show trial. However, Pol Pot and leng Sary weren’t even present, so the sentence was more for propaganda than anything else.

In 1997, Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen requested a tribunal against the Khmer Rouge. In “Cambodia and the Perils of Humanitarian Intervention,” William Shawcross speculates that the prime minister’s motives were purely political, rather than ethical. But by the time the request was accepted, the relationship between Hun Sen and the Khmer Rouge had improved. Now, Hun Sen was reluctant to reveal the Khmer Rouge secrets fearing it could worsen the relationship between Cambodia and China. Nevertheless, many Cambodians still demanded a tribunal so they could understand the reasons behind the massacre. “What the people want is not revenge against the Khmer Rouge,” explains a member of the Cambodian National Assembly, “What they want is the reality, the truth, of what lies behind the Khmer Rouge, because I don’t think anyone really understands that. We need to have this trial so we can prevent genocide, but the people also need it so we can write our own history (Prusher, “Judicious”). But the demands were eventually silenced by Hun Sen’s continual avoidance of the subject and uncooperative attitude (Shawcross, “Cambodia”).

This lack of closure makes it very difficult for the Cambodian youth to learn about the Khmer Rouge atrocities. Today, Cambodian educators are struggling with a way to teach their students about the painful past Many of the current textbooks barely cover that part of history. One ninth-grade textbook published in 2000 sums up Pol Pot by stating that he formed a new government and that “a lot of people were killed at that time” (Prusher). Another twelfth grade textbook attempts to include more information addressing the Pol Pot Regime, but the sections are written by government officials. They hope to discuss how the masses suffered from hard labor, harsh treatment and starvation, but they wish to avoid tallying death tolls and identifying the leaders (Unmacht). One of the writers, Chhut Sereyrun, justifies their decision by saying,

We didn’t want to show the children how the Khmer Rouge soldiers killed people with hoes, axes, and bamboo-stick beatings over the head. We need to think about the security of the students and how they will think. We need to think especially about the former Khmer Rouge who come back to live with the Cambodian community. We want them to live peacefully with us. We don’t want people to remember too much (Unmacht).

This explanation seems very reasonable considering many former Khmer Rouge persecutors still live in Cambodia. On the other hand, many Khmer Rouge leaders are already living peacefully and enjoying more comforts than the average Cambodian. In fact, many government officials are former Khmer Rouge members as well, including Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen. Khmer Rouge leader leng Sary now owns a gem mine on the Thai-Cambodian border. And even Ta Mok and Duch, the only two leaders arrested for the Khmer Rouge atrocities, enjoy comfortable cells with a private bathroom and air conditioning (Shawcross, “Cambodia”). Sadly, it is not uncommon to see a former Khmer Rouge leader living in luxury amongst the multitude of suffering Cambodians.

Unfortunately, it is more difficult for some Khmer Rouge cadre, like Khieu Ches, to integrate back into society. In 1977, Khieu was a sixteen-year-old soldier in charge of guarding prisoners at Tuol Sleng. He is now living in a small village, growing rice and raising a family. But he is still haunted by guilt, justifying his actions by saying, “If I didn’t obey orders, I would’ve been killed. If you did something wrong, they wouldn’t just kill you, they’d kill four or five of your friends and relatives, too” (Larmer).

However, when confronted by Vann Nath, a survivor of Tuol Sleng, Khien didn’t apologize. Instead, he claimed he was a victim too (Larmer). Nath politely disagreed, but, like many Cambodians, realizes that everyone suffered, directly or indirectly, from the secrets and silence, which led to and sustain the Pol Pot legacy.