“Since he is of no use anymore, there is no gain if he lives and no loss if he dies.”
Pol Pot’s Influence
These were the sinister philosophies of Pol Pot, a man intent on disrupting a nation and obtaining totalitarian control over its inhabitants. So absolute was his determination to rule that his ideologies materialised, tearing out the heart of Cambodia’s soul, killing approximately two million people between 1975-1979. The treatment of the Khmer and mass genocide that ensued attests to the veracity of Lord Acton’s shrewd words that, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Pinochet’s Chile and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia represent the devastating effects power can have, including the deprivation of dignity and removal of hope, essential qualities for survival.
An Historical Cambodian Perspective
It was on 17 April, 1975 that Cambodia began to experience the disturbing effects of Pol Pot’s plans to take control of Cambodia. His radical totalitarian, Maoist ideologies had evolved after years of higher education in Paris and begun to be executed, materialising in a flurry of terror. It endured for three years, eight months and twenty days. “The only good bourgeois is a dead bourgeois,” or so he believed.
In line with his fundamentalist words, Pol Pot bent an existing Cambodia into a new nation by dictating his vision of a country characterised by a peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. The result? The elimination of the middle class and any individual who appeared to be in misalignment with his ideals.
Within three days, Phnom Penh was a ghost city. Every living soul had been marched into the provinces under the pervasive direction of Pol Pot’s newly devised rogue guerrilla army: the Khmer Rouge. Cambodia’s landscape transformed into an ocean of people that were malnourished, overworked, disease-ridden and left deprived of hope.
Forced to work fifteen hours a day and fed only portions of watered-down porridge, epidemic levels of malnutrition, starvation and death ensued. Families were separated and men and women were divided. Pol Pot’s suspicious nature resulted in mass bloodshed. Anyone suspected of pertaining to contradictory ideals was eradicated. Those who appeared intellectual - dubbed so simply for donning a pair of reading glasses - were sent to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and brutally murdered.
The fear of death stalked the population, invisibly surrounding their every move.
The Khmer Rouge's Reign of Terror
“I wonder why I was brought to Tuol Sleng. I suspect that somebody might have accused me. I was beaten up, electrically shocked, and whipped with a bunch of sticks. My back was wounded all over; I was in too much pain. I was accused of being a CIA, while I never joined in any CIA. I did not know who brought me into CIA; I have no ideas at all. It was so dark that I did not know anything. I am so wondering why I was accused of joining CIA," reports a Cambodian survivor.
“The Khmer Rouge kept chasing us to walk. I saw the Khmer Rouge’s trucks ran over corpses lying on the road, flattening the bone, flesh, hair, jaws and ears. Corpses were all over the road.”
Such were the experiences of millions of Khmer under Pol Pot’s oppressive regime. Sadly, few survived. The stories of those few who did cast a depressing light over a portion of Cambodia’s history. It's through a lingering memory of said events, though, that a society can begin a process of rebirth and emerge with a renewed sense of identity.
Personal Recollections
“I did not join the resistance movement to kill people, to kill a nation. Look at me now. Am I a savage person? My conscience is clear.”
Pol Pot’s words echoed like a chorus of cicadas ringing in my ears as I walked through the Killing Fields, beside mass graves, sixteen kilometres from Phnom Penh. Flames of indignant fury began burning at my core. Tears coursed my cheeks, sadness draining through me rather than skating over my skin. It travelled through every cell, reaching the dirt on the ground, beside tattered clothes of victims.
The tears I shed on the summer morning are but a drop in the ocean of sadness that pounds down on the face of Cambodia’s survivors.
“It’s up to history to judge.”
Pol Pot, the jury is out and the verdict in: you have been found guilty.
The victims who were blindfolded with their hands bound, transported to killing fields as though livestock and bludgeoned to death - to the eerie music that drowned out their shrilling cries - will never be forgotten. Their names have been etched into the book of life. It is their legacy that serves as a reminder to all of us: humans - especially those with fascist tendencies and totalitarian ideals - are incapable of truly unadulterated and fair governance. Their tendencies toward self-glorification and personal veneration should not be tolerated.
May your example serve as a lesson to all those who challenge the democratic nature of society: atrocities, such as your devastating regime, will not be tolerated. History has spoken.
Although visiting is harrowing, it's not a representation of modern day Cambodia which is a friendly and youthful place. Don't let the dark chapters in the country's history deter you from visiting the Southeast Asian country.
