Session 62: Chasing History the Genocide in Cambodia

Today's chasing history dives in the Genocide of Cambodia.  This was a tough episode since I came face to face with survivors of the genocide.  Please give it a listen.

*I meant to say 25% of the Cambodian population not 25k%.  


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to Chasing History with the Buddhist heav podcast.
I am your host. No a chance of VISUK. Today
we're discussing one of the darkest periods in Southeast Asian history,
the Cambodian Genocide. Special Shout out to my best man Leang,
who has been very supportive of this show, probably from

(00:23):
day one. One of the the ogs of supporting the show.
I told her I was gonna do this about a
year ago after I finished the Secret War in Laos.
So here it is. Yeah. It took me a year
of just reaching out to various people and and interviewing

(00:44):
them in person, interviewing them over zoom, and so thank
you to those who took time to speak with me
in person and over zoom. You have no idea how
thick a Southeast Asian accent can be until you hear
it through zoom with a very bad Internet connection. So
shout outs to the people of Lowell, Massachusetts, which is

(01:08):
the second largest concentration of Cambodians outside of Cambodia, followed
by Long Beach, California, Lynn, Massachusetts, Stockton, California, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
and Jacksonville, Florida. Respectively before we jump in. Please, if
you get a chance like share, subscribe so we can

(01:28):
grow this show organically. If you don't want to listen
to the personal stuff, I have other things chasing history,
book Club, all that good stuff. So yeah, you can
follow the podcast on Instagram at Buddhist af Podcasts. You
can message me there like many have before with comments criticism,

(01:49):
just say hi, I want to go ahead and say
that I'm probably going to butcher some of these names,
So apologies ahead of time. I am not Cambodia, so
a lot of tongue rolling, and I should be able
to do that considering I, you know, pretty much lived
in Mexico while I was out in California, and I

(02:11):
listened to a lot of Shakira, So I should be
able to roll those ours, but I can't. So apologies
at a time. Now let's get started. We're going to
talk about the origins of the genocide. It's going to
be a small little package and then we're going to
dive deeper into it. So the Cambodian genocide began in
nineteen seventy five when the Kamara Rouge led by pol Pot,

(02:34):
seized control of Cambodia, the companies regimed aimed to transform
Cambodia into an agrarian utopia, forcibly evacuating cities and abolishing money,
private property, and religion. The Kamara Rouge's radical vision led
to immediately, our mediate and devastating changes. Within days of
taking power. They forced approximately two million residents of Panoun

(02:58):
Pen to evacuate the city on foot, closed all schools, hospitals, factories,
and banks, abolished the Cambodian currency, the Reality, and destroyed
all money. They banned religious practices and converted temples into
prisons or storage facilities. Their Year one or their Year

(03:19):
Zero policy aimed to completely reset Cambodian society by separating
families and forcing people into communal living arrangements, requiring everyone
to wear black clothing and maintain the same appearance, forbidding
personal possessions beyond basic necessities, and implementing twelve to fourteen
hour workdays in agricultural labor camps. No cost was too

(03:42):
great to bear, no amount of suffering would be too much.
The regime enforced these changes through a system of extreme
surveillance and brutal punishment. Anyone suspected of opposing these policies
or maintaining connections to the old society, faced torture and execution.

(04:04):
The key figures. Pol Pot formerly known as Solath Sar
born into a prosperous family farming family in nineteen twenty
five in the Kampong Tom province. He received a privileged education,
studying at an elite Catholic school in Panampen, later in Paris,

(04:26):
where he became involved in the French Communist Party. His
time in France significantly shaped his radical political ideology. The
name pol Pot was his revolutionary alias. Poe came from
politique French for political, and Pot was reportedly a common
Cambodian name. He adopted this name during his time as

(04:48):
a revolutionary leader, leaving behind his birth name Saloth Sar
as he rose to power. Nuan Chia born in nineteen
twenty seve to a Chinese command family in the Battambang providence.
He studied law at Tamasat University in Bangkok, where he
joined the Thai Communist Party. His education and early exposure

(05:12):
to communist ideology led him to become the Khmer Rouge's
chief theoretician theoretician There You Go, earning him the nickname
Brother number two, Que Sampong Samfang. Yeah, there you go.
Born in nineteen thirty one in Sveriang Providence, he received

(05:34):
the highest education among the Kamar Rouge leaders, earning a
doctorate in economics for university from the University of Paris.
His dissertation criticized Cambodia's economic dependency on foreign countries, which
later influenced the Kamara Roug's policies of extreme self reliance.
All three men shared similar patterns in their development as

(05:56):
revolutionary leaders. They came from relatively privileged back crowns, received
advanced education, and were heavily influenced by the communist ideology
during their studies abroad. This background, paradoxically led them to
implement policies that targeted educated individuals once they gained power.

(06:18):
So that's just a quick set of who's in play
right now, who are the big players in the Khmer Rouge,
And now we're going to dive deeper into the timeline.
So from start to finish, if you're still with me,
appreciate from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy five, a civil
war had been fought in the rural areas of Cambodia.

(06:39):
A war between the Khmer Republic, a Western backed military
regime which had seized power in nineteen seventy and the
Marxist community, the Marxist communist group known as the Khmer Rouge.
By April of nineteen seventy five, the fighting had reached
the outskirts of PanAm Pen, the Cambodian capital. The city
felt to the Communist Khmer Rouge, thus ending the civil war.

(07:04):
During this devastating period, and estimated one point five two
million people died through various means, mass execution and the
infamous killing fields, starvation due to failed agricultural policies, disease
in overcrowded labor camps, and exhaustion from forced labor in
rural areas. This represented approximately twenty five thousand percent of

(07:29):
Cambodia's population at the time, making it the most lethal
regimes in the twentieth century. Yeah, I wrote that, and
it's stabbed at my heart just like writing it. And
now that I read that out loud, twenty five percent

(07:51):
in four years, twenty five percent of an entire population
in just four years. Think about that, Like, I don't
even know two million people my entire life. I'm forty
two years old. I don't think I've ever met two
million people, and yet in four years, two million people

(08:16):
just wiped off the face of the earth. The systematic
killing particularly intensified in nineteen seventy seven through nineteen seventy eight,
when the regime's paranoia about alleged enemies peaked. The systematic
nature of the killings during this period was evident in
several key developments. One, the regime intensified its internal purges,

(08:40):
particularly in the Eastern Zone, where thousands of cadres were
executed on suspicion of Vietnamese sympathizers. The Toul Survey Prey
High School would be converted into the Tool Slang Interrogation
Center or more commonly known Secure S twenty one process

(09:02):
its highest number of prisoners during this period, with details
records showing increased torture and execution. It was ran by
a man named Kang kek Leeu, who went by the
name A Brother Dutch. He was so obsessed with pleasing
his leader that he had prisoners take before and after

(09:26):
death photos to prove that he had done his job.
Specific days were set aside for the elimination of various
type of prisoners, one day, it might be the wives
of enemies, another day, the children on a different day,
factory workers, and so on. Out of the sixteen to

(09:49):
eighteen thousand men, women and children who were sent to
S twenty one, only seven people were known to have survived.
Agricultural quotas became more extreme, leading to widespread starvation as
food was exported while people died of hunger. The paranoid

(10:11):
of the regime manifested in several ways. Regular self criticism
sessions were held where people were forced to confess imaginary crimes.
The regime began executing even loyal command rouge members based
on increasingly paranoid conspiracy theories. Children were encouraged to spy

(10:31):
on their parents and report any suspicious behavior. The killing
machine became more efficient during this period establishment of more
execution centers across the country. More on this later, development
of more systematic methods of torture and interrogation, creation of

(10:54):
detailed documentation systems to track enemies of the revolution. By
late nineteen seventy eight, the paranoid reached such levels that
entire village populations were sometimes executed based on mere suspicion
of disloyalty. This increasing violence eventually contributed to the regime's downfall,

(11:17):
as many Khmer Rouge cadres fled to Vietnam fearing that
they would be the next in the purgase. So who
were the targeted individuals? Once the Khmara Rouge took over again,
they pretty much got rid of anyone who they thought
was going to stand in their way, So the targeted
groups were intellectuals and professionals. People with soft hands, being

(11:42):
able to speak a foreign language, or just wearing glasses
was enough to have one singled out as being educated
and therefore potentially harmful to the cause. Members of the
former military and government officials, urban residents who were seen
as corrupted by Western influence. Children's of targeted groups were

(12:02):
often persecuted to prevent future revenge. People would foreign connections
and those who spoke foreign languages, anyone who questioned or
appeared to resist Khmer Rouge policies, religious groups, including Buddhist monks,
ethnic minorities, Vietnamese, Chinese, john Muslims, anyone suspected of connections

(12:24):
to the former government. The educated class was particularly targeted. Teachers, doctors, lawyers,
even those who wore glasses were suspected of being intellectuals.
I can't stress that enough. Like if you wore glasses
or if your hands were soft, you were done. You
were taken away and you were probably never seen again.

(12:46):
Artists and performers were systematically eliminated, leading to near destruction
of traditional Cambodian performing arts. A person I talked to
who again they everyone I talked to you didn't want
to be named in this report. But a person whom
I talked to UH said that the dancers, particularly the

(13:10):
female dancers, if you've ever seen Cambodian or law or
tie dancing, it's pretty similar. The dancers tell a story
with their moves and their hands and their feet. And
the person I talked to said that the females were
were taken out in the streets from from the from

(13:32):
the classes, from the dance classes, and they had their
hands broken and their feet broken, and then they were
told to go work in the fields, and like, yeah,
I'm sorry, that was your livelihood, Like that that was you,
That was your way of teaching your culture to the

(13:54):
younger generation, and you no longer had that ability. There
was no speaking involved when you're a dancer. Everything was
all emotion it was within your eyes, your hands, your
body movements, and that was taken away and you were
just told to suck it up with your broken hand

(14:15):
and your broken feet and you know, twelve fourteen hour
days just farming essentially, and she broke and I broke.
It was this was rough. This is very rough. I again,
I can't fantom seeing that. And she saw it as

(14:37):
a student, she saw her teacher being dragged out by kids,
not even by men, but by kids with guns. And yeah,
her like kids her age, if not younger, you know,
and so she was fighting back and you know, trying

(14:57):
to speak as clear as she could. Again, she's an
older individual, and her English wasn't as good and I
didn't have an interpreter at the time, so you know,
we spoke very slowly to each other. And I think
the fact that we spoke slowly to each other and
as soft and as calm as we could, I think

(15:19):
the impact of her story made it a little bit
more for me. Okay, back to it. New people, urban
dwellers were forcibly located to rural areas and subjected to
harsh labor. So some examples of this persecution, I gave
you a fuel already, but students and educators at the

(15:43):
Panama Pen University were immediately evacuated and many were executed
right on the spot again, dragged out of the schools
for all, you know, for all everyone to see. And
you were either going to work with labor or you
were just going to die right then and there. Who

(16:06):
remember when I mentioned execution centers. Yeah, Buddhist temples were
destroyed or converted into prison camps, where an estimated twenty
five thousand Buddhist monks were killed. The Khmara Rouge took
places of worship and turned them into execution centers. The
Chom Muslim's population was decimated, with over one hundred mosques destroyed,

(16:31):
and religious practices were forbidden. Ethnic Chinese communities saw their
language banned, schools closed, and many members executed or worked
to death in labor camps. Women and girls faced systematic
rape and forced marriages, with an estimate two hundred and
fifty thousand women subjected to these atrocities. During the regime,

(16:56):
children were separated from their parents and indoctrinated into the
Khmer Rouge ideology, with many forced to work in labor
camps or serve as child soldiers. Medical professionals were specifically targeted,
leading to the deaths of approximately ninety percent of Cambodia's doctors,
resulting in devastating health care consequences. Artists and performers who

(17:21):
didn't escape the country were systematically eliminated, with traditional dance
troops and theater companies being completely destroyed. Residents of panom
Pen were given just hours to evacuate the city, with
hospitals being emptied of patients, including those in critical condition.

(17:41):
So how did the US and the international community respond
to this well? The United States response was complicated by
the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Initially, there was limited
intervention due to the political climate recent military withdrawal from

(18:01):
Southeast Asia. The US later supported the Vietnamese intervention that
ultimately ended the Khmer Rouge regime. The US involvement and
response to the Cambodian genocide was shaped by several complex factors. One,
the trauma of the Vietnam War led to Vietnam Syndrome,

(18:24):
making American politicians and the public hesitant to engage in
another Southeast Asian conflict. The Cold War politics complicated the response,
as Vietnam, who eventually stopped the genocide was aligned with
the Soviet Union. Congressional restrictions on military interventions in Southeast
Asia limited potential US actions. Despite these constraints, the US

(18:48):
took several notable actions. They provided diplomatic support for the
ASEAN the Association of Southeast Asian Nations effort to address
the christ, offered humanitarian aid to Cambodian refugees fleeing to Thailand,
eventually supported UN sanctions against the Khmer Rouge. Later declassified

(19:11):
documents revealed that some US officials had early knowledge of
the atrocities, but were constrained by political considerations. The US
Congress has since passed resolution and acknowledging the genocide and
supporting efforts to bring perpetrators to justice through the ECCC,
the Extraordinary Chamber in Courts of Cambodia Tribunal process. Media coverage.

(19:39):
International media coverage was initially sparse due to the Kamara
Rouge isolation of Cambodia. The full extent of the atrocities
only became widely known after the regime's fall, when journalists
and investigators could finally access the country and document the
killing fields. One of the most significant media portrayals of
the Cambodian Genocide was the nineteen eighty four film The

(20:00):
Killing Fields. The film, directed by Roland Jaffe, follows the
true story of Cambodian journalist Diath Prong and his relationship
with New York Times reporter Sydney Scamberg or Schanberg during
the Khmer Rouge regime. The film was groundbreaking and bringing
awareness of the Cambodian genocide to the Western audience. It

(20:24):
won three Academy Awards and featured an emotional performance by
doctor Hag Snore himself a survivor of the Khmer Rouge camps,
who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his
portrayal of Tith Prong. The Killing Fields not only depicted
the horrors of the genocide, but also highlighted the personal

(20:45):
cost to Cambodian families, the role of foreign journalists in
documenting the crisis, in the complex relationship between Western observers
and local survivors. The film's title refers to the sites
where millions of people who were killed and buried by
the Khmer Rouge regime. They were yeah anybody who was

(21:07):
executed was Their bodies were transported to what is known
as the Killing Fields. And their bodies were in all
intense purposes, were used as fertilizer for agricultural purposes. They
would grow grains and rice and what have you, and

(21:28):
then they would sell that off to buy more bullets.
In the meantime, the people who are working on the
fields are starving to death. And again this is all
for the greater good of the Khmara Rouge. Like this is,
We're gonna be completely self reliant. We're not gonna need
the Western world. We're not gonna need anybody. We're gonna

(21:48):
we're gonna all live in this happy utopia no matter
what the end of the regime. The genocide ended in
nineteen seventy nine, when the Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia and
overthrew the Khmer Rouge. However, the Khmara Rouge continued guerrilla

(22:10):
warfare from the Thai border until their final surrender in
nineteen ninety nine, twenty years after the initial fall of
the regime. The aftermath of the Khmara Rouge regime left
deep scars in Cambodian society that continued to impact the
nation today. Some key developments during the post regime period

(22:32):
included the Khmer Rouge, maintaining control of Cambodia's un seat
until nineteen ninety three. Despite being ousted from power, many
Khmer Rouge leaders and soldiers were granted amnesty in exchange
for laying down their weapons in nineteen nineties, even given
seats of power. Yang Sorry, better known as Brother Number three,

(23:01):
was pardoned by the king and was given a high
ranking position in the Cambodian government. He was arrested in Hey,
I'm sorry. He was arrested on November twelfth, two thousand
and seven, at his private villa, surrounded by security guards,
and tried for crimes against humanity. He died on March fourteenth,

(23:23):
twenty thirteen, at the age of eighty seven. Nuan Chia
surrendered on December nineteen ninety eight. The Prime Minister hun Sen,
himself a former member of the Khmara Rouge, agreed not
to persecute Chia. He was officially arrested on September nineteenth,

(23:48):
two thousand and seven, at the age of eighty one.
He died on August fourteenth, twenty nineteen, at the age
of ninety three. Popot died in nineteen ninety eight while
under house arrest, never facing justice. For his crimes. He
died in an Longvang, a remote area near the Thai

(24:09):
border that serves as one of the last Khma Roos strongholds,
on April fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight, at the age of
seventy two. Brother Dutch converted to Christianity and began working
for the American Refugee Committee as a health supervisor. He

(24:33):
turned himself in in nineteen ninety nine. He died September two,
twenty twenty, at the age of seventy seven. The man
who was responsible for the deaths of sixteen to eighteen
thousand men, women, children documented all of them too, died

(24:59):
at the a age of seventy seven. He got to
live to see pretty much everything, the fall of the
Berlin Wall, the fall of quote unquote communism in Russia.
He got to live a relatively untouched life while men,

(25:28):
women and children died at his hands. And he felt bad,
so he turned himself in in nineteen ninety nine and
got to live to be seventy seven years old. Yeah.
The transition period was marked by significant challenges. Political instability

(25:50):
continued throughout the nineteen eighties and early nineties. The presence
of millions of landmines left by the conflict continuing to
post deadly risk to civilians. Refugee camps along the Thai
border housed hundreds of thousands of displaced Cambodians. International response
in this post regime period included the establishment of the UNTAC,

(26:11):
the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia in nineteen ninety
two to oversee the transition to democracy, major international aid
programs to help rebuild infrastructures and institutions, support for documentation
and preservation of evidence at sites like tul Slang, prison

(26:33):
S twenty one and the Killing Fields. The country's reconstruction
efforts faced numerous obstacles. The loss of a generation of
educated professionals severely impacted Cambodia's ability to rebuild. Widespread trauma
and PTSD affected survivors and their descendants. The need to

(26:55):
reintegrate former kmmand ROUGE members into society while pursuing justice
created social tensions. Despite this challenge, Cambodia has made significant
progress in rebuilding, through the effects of the genocide continue
to influence the nation's development and social fabric. Cambodia continues

(27:15):
its journey of healing from this profound trauma through various mechanisms.
The UN backed Extraordinary Chambers and Courts of Cambodia, established
in two thousand and six, has played a critical role
in seeking justice. The Tribunal has successfully persecuted several senior
Khmer Rouge leaders, including Nuantia and q Semphan, who are

(27:40):
sentenced to life imprisonment in twenty eighteen for genocide and
crimes against humanity. The ecc C has also created important
platforms for victim participation, with over ninety thousand people attending
the court proceedings and thousands more participating at s civil parties.

(28:01):
Beyond legal justice, the Court has supported documentation efforts, public
education programs, and reconciliation initiatives to help Cambodians process their
collective trauma. Ough Man, this dark chapter in history reminds
us of the importance of remaining vigilant against extremism and

(28:23):
the value of human rights. It also shows the resilience
of the human spirit as Cambodia works to rebuild and healed.
One lasting thing I remember being asked by an older
Cambodian women which still rings in my ears, and it's

(28:45):
even hard to read it as I'm getting ready to
sign off. I just want you to hear it too.
She said to me. How many of those sons of
bitches ran off into the forest, how many of them
came out with suits on? And how many of those
people are those associated with them are still in power.

(29:06):
It's the same people. They just have nice suits now.
And that's when I remembered why a lot of people,
everyone actually that I talked to you didn't want their
names attached because they still have family members back in Cambodia. Yeah,
they're the Kamara Rouge is not gone. It's still around

(29:29):
that they just they're hiding like hydra. So that's why
no one wanted to put their names on this report.
And I get it. I completely get It's fair. Remember, guys,
check on your loved ones. Tell them you love them,
even if you told them that yesterday. Until next time.

(29:55):
This has been chasing history with the Buddhisteta podcast hosted
by me No Chance of be suk Um as always
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