Killers let loose on Cambodia

The Post-Angkorian Cambodia was languishing in its traditions without the tradition-setters, the Hindu kings. The capital was shifted from the rice-growing hinterlands of North West Cambodia to the trade-oriented river banks of Phenom Penh. There were increasing incursions from Thailand and Vietnamese and the self-sufficiency and the strength of Angkor was gone. Priestly class and the royal family declined in power and importance, mainly because the kingship failed to protect the population from attacks from the neighbors. Such a scenario continued well into the 19^th century.

Cambodia was poor, depending on subsistence economy. Ethnic Khmer stuck to family-oriented rice farming, where yields were low and irrigation works were almost nothing after the demise of the Angkor kingdom. Marketing and foreign trades were in Chinese and Vietnamese hands; cattle trading and weaving were in the hands of Muslim minorities called Chan; tribal groups survived by collecting forest produce and selling these to the Chinese or Vietnamese traders. Infrastructure, like roads, was conspicuously absent. Most of the people lived in the rural areas.

Society itself was arranged in a hierarchical manner with the King and his entourage at the top, who distributed patronage and titles to the high ranking officials and the elite, who were able to muster strength and followers at times of need, from those under their patronage. Access to rice and manpower meant one was a king-maker, not unlike in India, where such a trend is visibly seen during elections, with caste leaders mustering votes, caste-wise, to whom they extend patronage in return.

But in the 19^th century, there was chaos; king almost ceased to exist. The two neighbors took over. Thailand introduced Theravada Buddhist way of administering things and the Vietnamese the Confucian traditions imported from China. Cambodia was the child to be looked after by the mother Vietnam and the father Thailand. Between the two influences Cambodia just managed to survive by being servile to each in turn.

At this time in history, when the French arrived, Cambodia had no maps, and its borders were marked only by the presence of people, who spoke Khmer language and where leaders received their official titles and seals of office from the King. All people were of ethnic Khmer, rural, occupied in rice cultivation and monastic life, as it was for centuries.

King Duang, restored to the throne in 1848 with the help of Thailand, under the influence of a Catholic priest sought the protection of France by sending gifts to French Emperor Napoleon III. The King perhaps wanted to escape the invasions of the neighboring Vietnam and Thailand, but it was like jumping from frying pan to the fire. Very soon in 1863, France established a protectorate in Cambodia, offering the King protection in exchange of timber concessions and mineral exploration rights. 

Was it the same game being replayed all over again? In the three Carnatic wars in the South India, the local kings and Nawabs sought the help of the French and the British to fight each other and the result was, the British walked away with the British Raj on a platter! African friends have a saying, ‘the Westerners gave us their Bible, but they took away our lands!” During the process of colonization by the West, it was the priests who always went first and then came the troops!

The French rule in Cambodia lasted just 78 years, from 1863 to 1941, much less than the British rule in India, which lasted for almost 200 years, from 1757 to 1947. Still the real and fundamental character of the people and society, whether Khmer or Indian, really did not change, for the hold of tradition was very strong in both the societies.

The French began in full earnest ‘to civilize’ the Cambodians and to make it a rice-making machine. A nation-wide rebellion broke out in 1885 and was put down. French learnt to go slow with their transformation of Cambodia, not unlike the British in India after the First Indian war of Independence of 1857.  King Norodom, great grandfather of the present King in Cambodia, had been weakened considerably and the French supplied him with free opium to keep him out of mischief. By 1897 French Resident took direct control of running the country.

In 1831, French naturalist Henri Mouhat discovered the ruins of Angkor in Siem Reap and started the work of restoration, the only major contribution of French to Cambodia. The first novel in Khmer was published in 1938 and the first Khmer News paper, Nagara Vatta (Angkor Wat) appeared in 1936. Schooling, roads, rail lines slowly made their appearance.

With World War II things changed drastically for Cambodia. King Norodom Sihanouk came to the throne in 1941. Japanese army occupied much of Indochina by 1945. With its surrender, French reoccupied the area. Vietnam War supported by the Soviet, was fought, first against the French and then against USA, who entered the fray to hold the spread of communism at bay during Cold War. The Cambodian Communist Party was started in 1951.

King Sihanouk abdicated and negotiated independence for Cambodia, which arrived in 1953. Elections were held in 1955 and the Prince Sihanouk emerged as the major political actor on the scene and held sway for the next 15 years, treating the country and the people as his personal fiefdom, a fertile ground for the communists to grow and increase in strength. His main contribution was to have kept Cambodia neutral, so that it didn’t get swept into Vietnam War. He was voted out of office by his own party in 1970.

When the Prince tried to purge the Leftists in the country in 1963, Saloth Sar (who will emerge later as Pol Pot), and Ieng Sary, members of Communist party fled the country to Vietnam and were under the protection of Vietnamese Communist troops. Vietnamese advised them to lie low till Vietnam was liberated. Saloth Sar went to China in 1965 and witnessed the Cultural Revolution there and next four years as he spent his days deep in the jungle, he drew up his plans and waited.

By 1970 riots broke out against the presence of Vietnamese communist troops in Phenom Penh. USA and South Vietnam invaded eastern Cambodia to fight the Vietnamese. In 1973, USA is said to have rained 100,000 tons of bombs on Cambodian country side to flush out Vietnamese. On cease fire agreement between USA and Vietnam, North Vietnamese troops withdrew in 1973.

Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), under the leadership of Saloth Sar, massacred civilian Vietnamese living in the capital and also the Cambodians who returned from Vietnam. On April 17^th 1975, Saloth Sar and his colleagues took on Phenom Penh, converging on it from on all sides. The sitting Prime Minister Lon Nol flew out of the country. The Prince was already in China.

The communists commenced their rule naming the country as Democratic Kampuchia (DK). Revolution and drastic transformation of Cambodia began almost immediately with lightening speed. The leaders of CPK who remained hidden in the first few years, believed that family life, individualism, and fondness for feudal institutions like monarchy and religion, stood in the way of progress of Cambodia and began mercilessly to demolish each of these institutions.

It began with the evacuation of the cities and the urban areas. All people, including those in the city hospitals were herded out and given orders to march to the rural areas. It was brutally executed; millions died in the process. The city people were commanded to work in the rural rice fields for long hours to enhance production. City people not used to such hard labor in the sun died like flies.

The idea was to produce excess rice, export it and earn hard currency to import machinery to industrialize the country. The original occupants of the villages, ‘the old people,’ were given preference over the ‘new people’ moved from the city, but everyone had to work hard and long hours in the fields. Many people were moved twice or even thrice to different regions. Many were put to work to construct reservoirs and channels for irrigation. The old people supported the revolution, without knowing what it really stood for.  

By 1976 surplus rice was produced, but it was all removed from the villages to export to China, who gave the Cambodian communists arms and ammunition. The villagers, who worked hard to produce the crop, were left without food. Weakened by hard labor and absence of nourishing food, people perished. CPK famously told them, ‘Keeping you is no profit; losing you is no loss.’ The leaders came out in open now and Saloth Sar assumed the office of the Prime Minister of the country as Comrade Pol Pot. The name could be a shortened form of Politique Potentielle, a French equivalent of Brother Number One, but really had no special meaning. The claws came out.

A constitution was drafted which abolished private property, organized religion, and family-oriented agriculture. By 1977 collectivization of all Cambodian property started and people were asked to eat in common community sheds, including the old residents of the villages. Next, the children were removed from the parents. Schools run by the monks were closed. Monks themselves were defrocked. The old residents resented these moves bitterly. Support to the revolution in the country side waned. Markets and currency were abolished.

By 1977, only rice gruel was served in the communes and taking mismanagement as the cause of malnutrition and death among the population, CPK let loose a severe purge of its own cadre. Confessions from these unfortunate cadres were got under torture and they were put to death. Search for enemies within the party intensified and people who had fought under Lon Nol, Vietnamese, those exposed to foreign countries, teachers, and professionals, all were eliminated.

Offences were mounted on the minorities who were living within Cambodia for generations and scores of Vietnamese, Chinese and Muslim Chans were massacred. CPK armies even crossed the border into Vietnam and massacred Cambodians who had fled there. They were called people with ‘Cambodian bodies and Vietnamese minds,’ dangerous for the success of revolution and had to be eliminated.

By December 1978 Vietnamese attacked Democratic Cambodia on several fronts. Pol Pot abandoned Phenom Penh and escaped in a jeep to Thailand. Cambodians welcomed Vietnamese invasion. And the horrible regime, Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot came to an end. Just within three years, eight months and 20 days, the communist regime in Cambodia managed to kill 2.5 million people. In 1979 and 1980 thousands of Cambodians crisscrossed the country searching for loved ones, dead or alive.

Gradually Buddhist schools were opened; markets and currency were reintroduced; Buddhism thrived again and family farming came back to life. Still there was no crop in 1979 and famine struck the country. Large scale foreign aid by way of grains flowed into the country. Mass graves were dug up and skeletons and skulls were unearthed, the places being named the ‘Killing Fields.’ The horrendous atrocities committed by Pol Pot and his soldiers gradually came to the knowledge of the world. Still CPK managed to find shelter in Thailand.

Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia after 10 long years in 1989. Under International scrutiny, The State of Cambodia was formed in 1991 and Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who was in exile, was brought back and instituted as the figure head of the country. In 1993 elections were held and a government was formed and the refugees returned.

Khmer Rouge was outlawed, but still they remained unrepentant, until the support of Thailand faded and fragmentation took place in the leadership. Still they fought against the new government using guerrilla campaign. Most of its cadres defected to the government. Implicated in the murder and liquidation of the Son Sen with 13 members of his family, who was his right hand man during the revolution, Pol Pot fled the country, but was captured and brought to trial by his own organization, Khmer Rouge. He was condemned to life imprisonment and died in deep jungle at the age of 73, on 15 April 1998.

Thus ended Pol Pot’s inglorious Khmer revolution, which tore the country apart, killing millions of innocent people. The country is limping back to normalcy. Still bogged down by poverty, corruption, and deep conservatism, Cambodia has a long way to go, to erase the wounds of the past and to become a healthy nation. What a suffering the people of Cambodia had to face! What a tragedy!