Cambodia's Brutal History

---

Last Monday, I flew from Luang Prabang, where I’ve been living, to Siem Reap, Cambodia. My friend Gabriel, who has also been living in Luang Prabang, came along.

After disembarking the plane on the tarmac in Siem Reap, we walked in to a new, shining modern airport. Thirty government officials sat at a long, curved desk and as tourists we were instructed to line up in front of the first official. We formed a single line of about two-hundred because a few planes had arrived at once. The line moved slowly because our passports had to pass the eyes and stamps of all those thirty officials before we were officially ready to enter Cambodia. Our passports were literally handed down person-to-person behind the desk and our names called out to pick them up at the end of the line. As well, the government fee for entering Cambodia was $20 US dollars. No other currency was accepted.

We were about to learn that the Cambodian riel is little used in Cambodia. ATM machines in this country actually dispense US dollars. Almost all services sold are in US dollars; food, transportation, hotels, clothing.

When talking about Cambodia, it’s important to be aware of its recent tragic history. This country has had a hellish last forty years. It started around 1970 when the US, ensnared in the Vietnam War, backed a military coup to overthrow Cambodia’s leader, Prince Sihanouk. General Lon Nol was installed in his place.

In the following years, in the midst of the Vietnam War, the US bombed the hell out of Cambodia and briefly invaded, attempting to disrupt Viet Cong supply routes. Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Cambodian civilians died from the bombings, and two million Cambodians were forced to flee the country. The remaining Cambodians believed Lon Nol was allied with the Americans and maybe even behind the bombings.

Angry and eager for a new leader, Cambodians began to support the Khmer Rouge, a rogue communist group that had made several attempts to over throw the government. At the conclusion of the Vietnam War in 1975, an overthrow was successful, and the Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.

The Khmer Rouge immediately went about creating a purely communist, agragarian society in an insane and violent manner. All educated, skilled or rich people were murdered, as well as anyone who had worked for the prior regime. Money, religion, family and private property were immediately abolished and banned. All the cities were evacuated and the people forced to live and work on farms, planting rice, building roads, creating dams, eating and sleeping communally.

Can you imagine if this just happened to you one day?

At first, many Cambodians supported the Khmer Rouge; they believed that this new system, although radical, could transform Cambodia in to a changed country. That trust was quickly destroyed as twelve to sixteen hour work days, near-starvation food rations, and systematic murder of family members became a normal occurrence. Two million Cambodians, or twenty percent of the population, were executed or died from starvation or disease during the five years of Khmer Rouge power. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, removing the Khmer Rouge from power. For the next nineteen years, violence and political chaos reined. It was only ten years ago that the country finally saw peace again. Sadly, to this day, only a small fraction of the perpetrators of this mad regime have been brought to justice. Cambodians live sometimes side-by-side with former Khmer Rouge officials who tortured them and killed their families.

This violent history is so recent, yet when you visit, you might not even notice anything awry. But when you start to look closer, you notice things, like the young population, mostly under thirty. The few people over thirty you see, you think, “What happened to them? How did they live through the regime? What do they remember? What were they forced to do? What happened to their families? How did they survive?” People appear enduring and weathered yet are quick to smile. And when you ask individual Cambodians about the this period in history, no one wants to talk about it, but everyone attests to close family being killed, parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, friends.

Being aware of this history and American, I expected to be hated by Cambodians, seen as the perpetrators of acts that led Cambodians into trusting the regime that would later kill many of them. Yet, there was no difference in Cambodian reactions to declarations of European, Canadian or American citizenship. Perhaps the events prior to the horrors of the regime are long forgotten, an unimportant footnote in a devastated country, an unknown memory to the young population, not taught in schools. The Cambodian youth know Americans as those who send aid to them.

Yet writing this, it’s hard to believe there‘s no hatred toward Americans, as Cambodia is literally littered with land mines from the American bombings. They have one of the highest rates in the world of land mine injury, with one out of every 256 Cambodians disabled by a mine. A shocking and unacceptable rate. It’s usually children, who play in the jungle, or poor farmers who are impelled by necessity to farm new land who are the victims. The cities are perfectly safe, as are the main roads and paths in the countryside. But forty years later, many, many areas have not been cleared of mines. The government is working to clear mines from land that can be developed and profited from, but rural areas are only cleared if private organizations do so. As in Laos, the US does not hold themselves responsible for cleaning up the mess they made.

---