Sketches of life, death and genocide

"No.02 Lon Nol Soldiers ordered to lay down weapons & strip off army uniform" by Bun Heang Ung

It's been 38 years since Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, but the people who lived through it will always remember.

Bun Heang Ung was a political cartoonist during the Lon Nol regime, survived the Khmer Rouge, fled Vietnamese occupation and eventually found refuge in Australia. (The Radio Australia interview is worth listening to for the discussion on whether his political cartoons are racist.)

To chronicle his experience, he created 90 detailed black-and-white ink illustrations that were published in "Murderous Revolution: Life and Death in Pol Pot's Kampuchea." As that was in 1986, it's long been out of print (though pirate copies reportedly can be found in Cambodia). But instead of reprinting it, in 2008 he uploaded all the illustrations to a blog called Khmer Rouge Toons.

Other political cartoons are available on his blog. (He's not a fan of the current administration, and he's not subtle.)

A collection of Bun Heang Ung's work is also hosted at the Australian National University.

The hollow city

It's hard to comprehend Phnom Penh being that empty.

Hat tip to CamboDonut.

Update: To compare, this is Phnom Penh today:

Denying genocide

This started out as a comment on Alex Tabarrok's post on Marginal Revolution, where he expressed shock about an article in Counterpunch headlined "Cambodian Genocide Denialism in Counterpunch."

I've not read the Counterpunch article, and I probably won't because I agree with Tabarrok's assessment — and anyway he's far smarter than I am. However, I did live in Cambodia for several years, know many Cambodian-Americans and like to think I can provide some context.

There is a strain of denialism in Cambodian society. About half the population was born after 1980 — so half the population has no direct knowledge of the events. A great many Cambodians who survived the experience don't like to talk about it. There's a cultural aspect: It's considered bad luck to talk about bad things.

And some people — young and old — simply don't want to accept that Cambodians would massacre other Cambodians. It doesn't help that the current regime, which is not considered a paragon of democracy and liberty, uses the genocide and the Vietnamese-backed invasion that ended it as a significant source of legitimacy. There is a sense of "if the dear leader says the sky is blue, maybe it isn't."

It's not uncommon to hear people — even educated, worldly Cambodians who have studied and lived abroad for decades — muse that the Vietnamese orchestrated and planned the genocide to erode Cambodian power. At least some former Khmer Rouge soldiers (especially the holdouts on the Thai border) have expressed no remorse at what happened because they say they were defending the homeland against foreign threats.

On the issue of genocide versus class-based killing, everything I've read and heard indicate that the killing originally targeted the "urban" class (a class broad enough to include anyone who had lived in a city, spoke a foreign language, or had even passing contact with a foreigner) and rapidly spread to anyone who could be considered a threat to the regime. Toward the end, the regime was demanding almost a quota of traitors, leading to random people being rounded up and killed (at least in some areas — enforcement seems to have been uneven). Of course, there are many scholarly works on this subject and reasonable people disagree on the details.

In short, it's not surprising that someone could travel to Cambodia and find a few deniers. I would like to think the U.N. tribunal is helping to change that, but maybe not.

Anyway, if you prefer a first-person account instead of watching an academic grind an ideological ax, check out this reddit question-and-answer session with a Khmer Rouge survivor and her daughter.

That's something worth reading.

Histories: Doughboys and twisted pistols

Cambodia has changed dramatically over the years — days even. When I lived in Pursat for a year, I would return to Phnom Penh every few weeks and feel lost because so many many buildings had sprung up or a functional roundabout had been torn up and replaced with a treacherous intersection.

But while the skyscrapers rising over Phnom Penh are new, the constant rebuilding is not a new phenomenon. The Southeast Asia Digital Library exhibit "Then and Now: Historical Photographs of Cambodia" has thousands of photographs charting Cambodia's evolution over the past 70 years.

The above photo shows a monument built to honor those who died fighting to preserve Cambodia's imperial master, France. Standing in the middle of the Stad Jas traffic circle, it would be impossible to miss for people entering Phnom Penh from the north — a potent symbol of France's sway over Indochina.

But the doughboy is a symbol of a conflict many wars past:

This monument was built by the French to commemorate those who lost their lives in World War I. The statue was later destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. ... The site of the former monument is located close to the French Embassy, north of Monivong Boulevard.

A different monument, a pistol with a twisted barrel, now stands in the middle of the circle. It is intended to symbolize nonviolence, but it's easy to miss if you're roaring into Phnom Penh from Chroy Changvar or National Road 5.

Understanding the Khmer Rouge

Journalist Elizabeth Becker is in Phnom Penh to testify at the Khmer Rouge tribunal. She sat down with AFP reporter Michelle Fitzpatrick to talk about her brief and bizarre 1978 visit to Cambodia and interview with Pol Pot, just days before the regime was toppled by invading Vietnamese forces.

That Becker was granted a visa is somewhat remarkable since she had already published several critical pieces about the Khmer Rouge, based on the horror stories that were trickling in from Cambodian refugees.

“Do not presume they were all-seeing and all-wise,” Becker said about the Khmer Rouge leadership. “The one thing people keep forgetting is how incompetent these people were. They were cruel and ruthless and incompetent.”

The interview is on Andy Brouwer's blog and is well worth the read. Becker's book on the Khmer Rouge and the aftermath of the regime is required reading.

Creating "The Golden Voice"

I got to interview Greg Cahill, director of "The Golden Voice" and "Two Shadows" while he was in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately it was via Skype as I'm stuck in Oregon.



Sophea Pel's and Greg Cahill's re-creation of the song "Chaul Chnam Thmey" for "The Golden Voice" is positively dripping with atmosphere and tension. It manages to faithfully follow the song and yet add so much.



I'm really looking forward to seeing these two feature-length films when they are released.

Histories: Politics and the Khmer Rouge

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia is grinding on despite scandal and disappointment. But while the day-to-day revelations are fascinating for people who have been immersed in the subject for years, others find it confusing.

The history of what led up to the Khmer Rouge regime, the horror of the Killing Fields, and the absurd international politicking that followed the Vietnamese invasion are difficult to explain in casual conversation. So, I'd like offer some recommendations for those who are interested in digging deeper.

(A caveat: These are broad histories of the multiple wars and struggles that engulfed Southeast Asia. I hope they can provide some context to what is being discussed in the tribunal. There are many other books written by survivors that share personal, more focused narratives. I intend to mention some of those in other posts.)

Elizabeth Becker's "When The War Was Over: Cambodia And The Khmer Rouge Revolution" is one of the best places to start. That's not just my opinion, as the prosecution has attempted to enter it into evidence in the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Her writing is knowledgeable and encompasses the wider conflict, but she can also drill down and offer moving anecdotes about individuals — including Hout Bophana, whose story is an archetype for all that Cambodians suffered during the 1970s.

Another excellent choice is Henry Kamm's "Cambodia: Report From a Stricken Land". While shorter, it offers an honest portrayal of Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia's former king and sometimes tyrant. It also offers a brutally frank analysis of the problems the country faces (or faced in 1998 when the book was published). A criticism would be that he doesn't detail Khmer Rouge atrocities as he is focused on the political machinations — but if you've seen "The Killing Fields" or talked to a Cambodian you have an idea of what happened.

If you have any suggestions for other political histories, please leave them in the comments.