Lessons from killing fields of Cambodia – 30 years on
May 5th, 2005 by Jinja
[Read this piece and comments online at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0414/p09s02-coop.html, there is already a fair
bit of discussion, as there should be, in the blogosphere.]
Lessons from killing fields of Cambodia – 30 years on
By Alex Hinton, The Christian Science Monitor, Thursday, April 14, 2005
(Alexander Hinton, author of ‘Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of
Genocide,’ is an associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University.)
NEWARK, N.J. – When the Khmer Rouge victoriously entered Phnom Penh 30 years
ago, many people greeted the rebels with a cautious optimism, weary from
five years of civil war that had torn apart their lives and killed hundreds
of thousands of Cambodians. All of the city dwellers were sent to live and
work in the countryside, joining the peasantry in one of the most radical
revolutions in history.
During the nearly four years following that day – April 17, 1975 -
Cambodia was radically transformed. Economic production and consumption were
collectivized, as Pol Pot and his circle mobilized the entire population to
launch a “super great leap forward.” The labor demanded was backbreaking,
monotonous, and unceasing.
Everyday freedoms were abolished. Buddhism and other forms of religious
worship were banned. Money, markets, and media disappeared. Travel, public
gatherings, and communication were restricted. Contact with the outside
world vanished. And the state set out to control what people ate and did
each day, whom they married, how they spoke, what they thought, and who
would live and die. “To keep you is no gain,” the Khmer Rouge warned, “To
destroy you is no loss.”
In the end, more than 1.7 million of Cambodia’s 8 million inhabitants
perished from disease, starvation, overwork, or outright execution in a
notorious genocide.
Now, 30 years after the Khmer Rouge came to power in a time of war and
terror, we – who also live in a time of war and terror – would do well to
consider what lessons can be learned from the Cambodian genocide. I offer
four suggestions in the spirit of George Santayana’s oft-cited words “Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
* The vision thing: Pol Pot and his fellow ideologues believed that the
“science” of Marxism-Leninism had provided them with the tools to eliminate
capitalist and imperialist oppression. The “all-knowing” Party would
catapult Cambodia toward communist utopia. Like that of other genocidal
ideologues, the Khmer Rouge path to this future was strewn with the bodies
of those who did not fit this vision.
Today, in an era of new fanaticisms, the Khmer Rouge remind us that
vision needs to be tempered with humility and toleration of the sort that
inspired people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and, perhaps now in Iraq,
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
* The enemy within: For the Khmer Rouge, grandiose and unrealistic visions
led to failures, failures suggested subversion, perceived subversion fueled
paranoia, and paranoia sparked purges and the “purification” of the masses.
After Pol Pot’s clique ordered the eradication of “hidden enemies
burrowing from within,” terror and death became commonplace. Sometimes
suspected enemies were executed in public; often they simply vanished. “Be
quiet,” people whispered; “bodies disappear.” In our age of terrorist fear,
as suspect Arabs and Muslims vanish, are tortured, or held without trial,
the Khmer Rouge period cautions us about the dangers of political paranoia.
The enemy within, too often, turns out to be ourselves as – driven by fear -
we violate the rights of others.
* Torture: The Khmer Rouge established an elaborate security apparatus to
identify and eradicate the “impure elements” threatening the purity of the
revolution. Some of these class enemies were killed immediately; others
were imprisoned and tortured. Arrest presupposed guilt, so interrogators
sought to force
prisoners to reveal their treason. “Why did you betray the Party?” they
would ask. “Who else belongs to your secret network?” The Khmer Rouge
utilized a wide range of torture techniques – electric shocks, asphyxiation,
immersion in water, forcing the consumption of feces and urine, stringing
prisoners up in the air, and prolonged bodily stress – that have echoes
today. These brutal methods got results: Most prisoners were eventually
willing to confess to almost anything.
Now, as we learn more about Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and sites
of rendition, the violent practices of the Khmer Rouge warn us that the
information extracted through torture is highly unreliable and that those
who turn down this dark path start to resemble the evil they are pursuing.
* Through a glass darkly: One of the most startling aspects of meeting
perpetrators of genocide is how ordinary they often are. In their path to
evil we catch reflections of ourselves. Most of us have, at some point, used
stereotypes and euphemisms, displaced responsibility, followed instructions
better questioned, succumbed to peer pressure, disparaged others, become
desensitized to the suffering of others, and turned a blind eye to what our
government should not be doing. These sorts of things are going on right now
in the war on terror.
Thirty years later, the Khmer Rouge teach us difficult lessons about
ourselves and the world in which we live. Such understanding can help us
become more self-aware, humble, tolerant, and let’s hope, willing to act in
the face of evil.
