Cambodia: The Raped Land; progressive recovery or more trouble ahead?

We are flying back from Hong Kong after 12d in Cambodia- 3 in the bustling capital of Phnom Penh, 3 in the small former French colonial coastal area of Kep and Kampot, 2 in the now southern Chinese investment boom-town port of Sihanoukville, and 4 in the tourist Mecca of Siem Reap with its nearby innumerable staggering temple complexes of the former city of Angkor. Earlier we spent 2wks back in Malaysia with a side-trip to the quiet but impressive regional/royal capital of Alor Setar and nearby limestone hill of Gunung Keriang, as well as Sungai Petani , rice fields and SEAsia’s oldesttho limited, archeologic site and nearby Jerai hill station., and a day in Hong Kong hiking/exploring the Sai Kung peninsula. I have been reading Elizabeth Becker’s “When the war was Over” on the Khmer Rouge revolution and atrocities in an attempt to understand Cambodia’s very strange genocide under their 1975-79 rule.

Some things about Cambodia are very straight forward- the food is amazing- a mix of tropical Asian exoticism with French gourmet flair. (like Vietnam, France ruled from 1863-1953, artificially creating the region of “Indochina’- which had no prior validity in history or culture- with boundary btw the 2 nations roughly corresponding to a dividing line btw Indian (Cambodia) and Chinese (Vietnam) influence. Now, however, despite the 2 being traditional enemies, to the traveller’s eye there is a considerable similarity to the 2 countries- mostly due to France’s influence on food, language and tourism [our timing unfortunately coincided with Parisian school winter vacation in addition to Chinese New Yr], but also due to the abundance of motorbikes and tuk-tuks creating both atmosphere (tuk-tuks were our main mode of intracity transportation- quite romantic!) and terrible air quality- Cambodia is ranked 162/178, but has no actual monitoring stations… in many ways Cambodia felt like Vietnam-lite to me: in order to cross the road you had to venture out into traffic, trusting that the oncoming motorcycles and cars (a considerable minority- tons of Toyota Camrys; my 1st car from ’85-’97!) would go on either side of you, but not quite the parting of the onrushing sea that I recall from Saigon).

Back to food: Fish Amok, the mango, peanut and shrimp-type salads, Kep’s crabs (had a peppery crab and egg soup, and crab amok) and anything with Kampot fresh peppercorns (it has a geographic indication, similar to French cheese, we visited a farm) being the highlights. On the topic of food, I must mention that I ate 3 fried tarantulas and beef with tree ants at the “good cause dining’ restaurant of Romdeng, where former street youth are taught to be staff. Equally memorable was PP’s fancy French Van’s restaurant where I had the best beef tartar of my life –raw, spiced and succulent, mixed with avocado and caviar-topped, -, housed in the pre-KR colonial mansion of a wealthy Chinese banking family, opened as a restaurant afterwards by their returning daughter ). Finding a non-prearranged restaurant where we could breathe tobacco- and exhaust-free air while eating especially in the main downtown areas of the smaller cities and hotels was a constant problem, as were weak air-conditioners- mid 30s and mostly sunny (or polluted-hazy) our entire stay.

Equally beyond question is the scope and splendour of the ruins of the 9th-14th century Angkor empire [SEAsia’s largest at the time. Today’s better known Thai dance actually is derived from Ayuthaya’s 15th century conquest of Angkor and its carting off of their dancers and artisans). Angkor Wat, the largest and most famous of the ruins, is only one of a half dozen or so that are each individually world-class- others include the multi-mega human-faced Bayon, and partly jungle-reclaimed Angeline Jolie/Lara Croft-famed Ta Phrom with huge several hundred yr old tree roots strangling their stone bases , and maybe another 2 dozen smaller ones). I must admit going into this with a bad attitude- it was more something that I felt I had to see as a traveller rather than something I was looking forward to. In many ways my hesistance was well-placed, even trying to avoid peak times the major sites are teeming with tourists and tour groups, and, by itself, Angkor Wat is not much better than many of the other major Hindu, Buddhist, Greco-Roman or Aztec/Mayan/Incan ruins that I’ve seen elsewhere.

However the Angkor complex as a whole, with both its multiple immense structures and their ubiquitous well preserved intricate carvings, certainly competes for the #1 overall ranking (hard to compare given my fading memories). Furthermore, although our ½d at Angkor Wat was not that enjoyable (in part thanks to a rooster who wouldn’t let me sleep after 5:30am, we changed hotels after the following night’s room at the near end was contaminated by road exhaust and a neighbour burning trash), on our other visits to the complex our driver took us to smaller (but still impressive) ruins that where we were either alone or nearly so, and also managed a quiet run and bike ride through smaller dirt roads/trails, all of which was very enjoyable. I’ve seen it postulated that that cruelty necessary to make a relatively small population labor to build Angkor-sized monuments may have been a harbinger of things to come under the KR. At minimum its leaders used it to further their notion that Cambodians had a special destiny and were therefore capable of a purer revolution then their international comrades.

Also saw some impressive active wats in PP and the karst cave wat of Kiri Sela near Kep, kayaked on, and swam in, the Kampot river overlooked by our room, and some good snorkelling next to a small island 10min by boat from Sihanoukville’s boozey-cruisey noisy tobacco-filled Otres beach (we checked out next am, staying at the inland Don Bosco (Italian priest- charity for brainwashing) (training) Hotel School-. These do-good institutions, most connected more to Angelina Jolie-types than to religion are everywhere in Cambodia, and are quite interesting to see, very friendly-staffed and enjoyable and rather good quality). Cambodia certainly still has quite a need for these, altho abject poverty and despair (including on rural bike paths) were not readily seen. Land mines are only in remote areas, and Lonely Planet states that inadequately-treated snake bites have overtaken them as the leading cause of amputations (diabetes not mentioned, but I’d bet well behind motorcycle accidents [also young popn, no obesity]- JC saw a dog hit and killed by one). Planning the trip I searched “Cambodia guide” on Amazon- and the #2 hit was a sex tourism guide (it had a free peek inside- no pun intended- option which I couldn’t resist: some interesting tips on how to make sure your vendor is not underaged- “trust your taxi driver”!). Child safety posters are everywhere (as are young children selling stuff in reasonably good English, all claimed to be also attending school. We did see quite a few older Caucasian men with young local women, but nothing much seedier than that- even “infamous , touristy and very crowded Pub Street in SR was quite family-friendly, (tho we headed home by 10pm) and I didn’t get offered anything beyond massages in front of superficially legit establishments (do they have a backroom?).

Cambodia’s other not to be missed site is, unfortunately, PP’s Tuol Sleng prison (now “museum of genocidal crimes”- technically these mass killings were not a genocide- unlike the Holocaust or Rwanda in Cambodia only a small part of the killings were an attempt to get rid of an entire ethnic group, much more of it was a “national class-icide” ), the Khmer Rouge’s principal torture until desired false confession is elicited- prison, before shipping off to nearby Choeung Ek killing fields (1 of hundreds), whereby 17K were killed. The KR killed ~2 million/8m popn or ~25%. Nazis systematically killed Jews after centuries of hatred, Hutus killed Tutsis in a weeks-long orgy of neighbour on neighbour violence with similar past origins of hatred. Srebrenica’s Christians killing Muslims is similarly easy to understand. But who killed who in Cambodia? Why and when? And why did the international community not only do nothing, but also say nothing, and during the very years that Mrs Charlap and my other elementary school teachers of the Holocaust were telling us “never again”? Much closer historical parallels exist in Maoist China and Stalinist Russia, however although the absolute numbers who died/were killed in those regimes were clearly higher (mostly due the much, much greater denominators in those countries), and I haven’t studied either in detail, most of those either died of starvation due to gross economic mismanagement ( most of Mao’s Red Guard executioners were true believers in their cultural revolution), or were specifically targeted as political opponents. Both those regimes really did try to convert the overwhelming majorities of their populations into citizens of their dogmatic revolutions.

The KR’s murders are best seen as a combination of communist dogma taken to a ridiculous extreme, combined with xenophobia, racism and in the later years mostly paranoia as they refused to believe that their crazy experiment was clearly failing due to its own economic infeasibility. Pol Pot and his clique felt that not only was the USA the enemy, but that they had been betrayed by the communists of Vietnam, China and Russia. They also felt that, as Cambodians, their revolution had to be even “more pure” than their comrades’, hence the need to go much further in their dogmatism (most of you know my views on religion- actually it is dogmatism- the blind unchallengeable holding of beliefs of any sort that I actually detest and view as “the enemy”- religion just happens to be the largest subset of dogma). The US- backed regime that the KR defeated Apr 17, 1975 was a corrupt mess- Lon Nol was an incompetent, superstitious, racist and murderous leader, believing in magical protection for his soon-to-be KR-defeated untrained child soldiers, and initiating pogroms against minorities including Cambodia’s Vietnamese and Chinese. Many of Phnom Penh’s middle class therefore at first welcomed the KR into PP, mistakenly believing that their main goal was independence and that they would treat the vanquished fairly. It took only hours for them to see different as by noon the KR literally was ordering everyone out of the city (not allowed to take any possessions), which had swelled to a popn of 3M from countryside refugees.

Everyone was told to go to their home villages- even if they had been in the city for generations and had none. They were lied to (secrecy and lies were constant- Pot Pol didn’t even admit to the revolution being run by him or even Cambodia’s communists for another 2yrs!) –and told that the evacuation was temporary, to protect them against US bombing (which had long stopped). Along the way KR interrogated the people, dividing them into 2 lines nazi-style- “pure peasants/workers” continued to their “home” villages, while anyone connected with Lon Nol’s government or military, or who was an “intellectual”- doctor, lawyer, business-owner, artist, teacher, even student were sent for re-education- in reality a quick murder. This was only part one of the genocide. The nazis at least used a horrid logic: could you be of use to their war machine. The KR however believed that they could run a society without any educated individuals- they thought 2-3d of teaching a peasant was enough to turn them into a doctor or even engineer for one of their massive planned agricultural projects. Unlike Mao or Lenin/Stalin they truly eliminated all personal property and money and possessions overnight. No urbanites, no markets, no education, even no families (everyone had to live in co-operatives segregated by gender and age beyond 6yrs old), culture or entertainment. All connections to the outside world were eliminated- there was no one left to report on the atrocities beyond rare unconfirmed reports, that were generally not believed- why would Cambodians kill their own, esp now that the true patriots had won their war against the US puppet regime?

Yet, somehow, they expected productivity (and also population size) to very rapidly increase. When this didn’t happen they needed to uncover the secret agents (Vietnam, CIA or KGB-backed) subverting their flawless plans. They had long suspected any of their own comrades who had spent time in Vietnam as being untrustworthy (the Vietnamese communists were responsible for getting them started, but they would refuse to acknowledge this, fearing that it was as a means to absorbing Cambodia into a larger Vietnamese communist state), and began to purge (=genocide part 2) these individuals along with any ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese , Cham Muslims or other minorities. Torture would continue until one falsely admitted to the crimes they wanted to hear, and implicated others as well. One unfortunate westerner caught sailing in their waters succeeded in limited revenge by implicating Colonel Saunders as his CIA boss before he was killed! Needless to say, their economy continued to deteriorate and soon they were blaming entire geographic sectors of their country, purging sector leaders who had until then been part of the KR leadership, and much of the corresponding KR cadre (for instance SW sector cadre were sent to the East sector to purge it) and sector population = further genocide. Pol Pot and his small clique continued to refuse to face reality, eventually forcing some Eastern Sector leaders to join forces with the Vietnamese and turn the imagined” traitors” into real opponents.

It only took the Vietnamese army a couple of weeks to overrun the entire country- and in a sense liberate it from itself. Had the Vietnamese not been provoked it is not clear how much longer the genocidal KR would have lasted. Although Vietnam ended the genocide, this was far from their initial intent when they attacked. They installed a friendly regime soon headed by former low level KR leader Hun Sen who remains in power until this day… Even when the truth of the genocide became clear, as the country’s liberators were a (Soviet-backed, anti-China/USA) Vietnam-sponsored regime, the US, UN and much of the western world ironically and unforgiveably began to view the skeletal remains of the KR based out of the jungles on the Thai border as the legitimate government of Cambodia. Through the ‘80s and ‘90s the KR continued to survive with international recognition despite what it had done. Life in Cambodia remained horrible if no longer genocidal. Only with Gorbachev’s Perestroika forcing Vietnam to re consider alliances did things start to change. Pol Pot died in 1997 age 73 in the Thai jungle (under suspicious circumstances) having never been brought to justice, although in the last decade some of his clique has.

In my readings and the museums there is essentially no mention of resistance from the Cambodians themselves- the Jewish sense of outrage seems to be somehow missing. Elizabeth Becker hypothesizes that this somehow may have been connected to the population’s Buddhist faith (which was outlawed and targeted) and the belief that the world consists of a cycle of misery and suffering and a prophecy (at least in Cambodian Buddhism) of darkness before the end of the world that the KR seemed to be fulfilling. Cambodia today is a very young country- I’d guess at most 20% are over age 42- the minimum age needed to remember anything at all from 1979. We did speak to a few people who lost siblings or aunts/uncles- one killed because he was a Lon Nol soldier, another and his wife for being a doctor ( a relative wrote: “The Last One”-rated 4.5 on Amazon). When asked if he was angry one responded “Yes, but he doesn’t know what to do”. Another recalls being in a children’s work brigade at age 6, and being always hungry and not allowed to speak to his parents.

I became a lot more interested (and mildly concerned) about going to Cambodia when a week before leaving 10 westerners including 2 Canadians were arrested in Siem Reap allegedly for provocative dancing at a party, although they claimed the photos used were years old and not of them. I then discovered that Cambodia has been run by former KR, now functional dictator Hun Sen for decades. Last year he outlawed the main opposition party (they had gotten close in the last election and the next one is due July 29th(!)., and jailed one of its leaders, and a critical english language newspaper was shut down. Western nations have responded by withdrawing support and electoral monitoring, but he remains defiant .I started to wonder whether this means that the relatively good times of the last 2 decades are ending for Cambodians and prospective visitors? Certainly on the ground I saw no signs to suggest such- it seems Hun Sen has decided to style himself after Deng Xiaoping (it is glorious to get rich- as long as you stay quiet and I stay in power) rather than Pol Pot’s inspiration from Mao. Yet his rhetoric continues: Only days ago he threatened to hunt down any Australian Cambodians who burn his effigy in protest on his upcoming trip to Australia and beat them up in their own homes in Australia! Last week a law was passed outlawing insulting the King- and already one reactionary politician is threatening to use it against a radical monk who stated that all Cambodians including the King and Prime Minister are drinking Vietnamese urine from the Mekong River (the anti-Vietnamese racist sentiment though was not of concern). All but one of the westerners- apparently the organizer who had been pre-warned against holding that sort of party- were released after ~2wks in jail. Business continues to thrive, especially Chinese investment with multiple skyscaper hotel/casino developments underway, music continues to blare on tourist-packed Pub Street, and I was able to read follow-up articles on the above, and ironically on the lack of press freedom, in print copies of another English- language newspaper at our hotels.

But who knows what will happen after the start of my next half-century…

All for Now,

Stu