Phnom Penh under Ieng Sary
10
Phnom Penh under Ieng Sary,
By Ong Thong Hoeung
The tired old revolutionary boat navigated all night from Kompong Cham, and all the next morning as well. Towards mid-day we could make out Phnom Penh, in the stifling heat, and we moored at dismal riverbank in front of a row of rundown houses on the north side of the gardens of the Royal Palace. Nothing moved. Clearly no one had taken a walk along here for a very long time, or bothered to do any maintenance. The place had lost all its charm.
“Here we are,” said Rom. “Now you’ll be going back to Phnom Penh again. Rest here while you wait. Someone will come and fetch you and take you to where you will be carrying out your new tasks. Goodbye Den, goodbye, uncles, bothers and sisters!” We looked at each other for the last time, not without emotion, and went our separate ways.
We were invited into an untidy house, with farming tools lying all over the place. The yellowing walls were rotten from damp, covered in mould. The taps no longer worked. The toilets were in a desperate state and had been replaced by revolutionary latrines in what had once been the front garden leading to the house.
Bounnie fed the baby. I made the most of it and went out for a bit of fresh air at the river’s edge by Quatre-Bras – Chaktomukh. I walked towards the canteen, to the right of our new reception centre. It must have been a recent building, as I didn’t remember seeing it when we left Phnom Penh. There were rows of tables, like in all the other Angkar canteens, and the cooks were laying the places. The thing that caught my attention most was the sight of seafood on each plate. My mouth watered and I wanted to believe that they were preparing this party as a reward for our successful re-education.
It was a pity I couldn’t go as far as the royal gardens, to bring back my memories of Phnom Penh in the old days. But I wasn’t allowed to go more than fifty metres from the house. The town seemed so distant, so gloomy, so lost today. How sad… Like a young girl, her pretty features barely recognisable beneath those of a woman who has been beaten and disfigured.
I recalled with nostalgia the Phnom Penh of my father’ time, a small riverside town with its few tranquil roads where people walked between straw huts and charming houses on stilts, almost hidden by their exuberant gardens, from which the strains of the champey1 could often be heard. The marshes and streams teemed with fish and a variety of animals would venture out of their lairs under cover of night. As a small boy, I used to have great fun watching the countless little green crabs run about. It was during my adolescence that the town had metamorphosed. Luxury residences, modern blocks of flats, and residential and business districts had sprouted like mushrooms, the suburbs overflowing with life. Hospitals, schools, libraries, roads, stadiums, cinemas and theatres were built, turning Phnom Penh into the teeming and hardworking capital of a country determined to wrest itself from under-development. This was a time full of the promise of rosy tomorrows. I could see once again the faces of my former comrades, as if I were watching an old, long-forgotten film. Oh, Phnom Penh! You are no longer the town that I saw grow up. You are now a prisoner, abused and raped. They want to make you lose your soul forever.
It was already five in the afternoon. Although the sun was setting, it was still very hot. A man in a white shirt arrived on a motorbike, a Honda. He politely introduced himself as Cheap, from B1 – in other words the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ieng Sary’s headquarters. “This house is too small to accommodate everyone. Big Brother Ieng Sary has asked me to take you to Vatt Phnom, to the guest villa.”
We got ready to leave. Too bad about the seafood.
On the way, Phnom Penh looked as monotonous and deserted as it had when we left. Abandoned houses were surrounded by dense vegetation. We saw only a few peasants, wearing a black khau. So the city-dwellers had not yet returned, contrary to what Ieng Sary had promised during his trips abroad.
We got nearer. There were soldiers standing guard, guns over their shoulders. A few dozen people in white shirts, probably Chinese technicians, were walking in groups. Before the war, Vatt Phnom had been one of the most frequented places in Phnom Penh. People used come here to bring offerings to the statue of Buddha or to admire the colonial style garden.
Cheap invited us to enter three lovely villas in groups. These were luxury buildings, reserved for Chinese and North Korean experts. Bounnie and I, together with about ten other couples, were accommodated in a house which had once belonged to Chhean Vam, a former president of the Council. The electricity and taps worked, and the toilets and basins were made of porcelain. For the first time since July 1976 we had a WC with a flush that worked and toilet paper. What luxury! There was even a radio in the living room. It was already dark outside.
Among the cooks who prepared the welcome dinner that evening, I recognised a woman I had known in Paris, Hong, the wife of Khun, a friend of mine. I wanted to talk to her, but she signalled that it wasn’t allowed. After their stay in France, both of them had gone to North Korea. We hadn’t seen each other for five years. I would have liked to have news of her husband, but she just smiled at me shyly as she went about her work. That first evening on our return to Phnom Penh, we could eat as much as we wanted. That was the main thing, for the time being.
There could be no denying that in the last few weeks, we had been much better treated than before. It had a lot to do with Ieng Sary and his wife. The radio gave regular reports on the activities of our comrade the Minister of Foreign Affairs and comrade Ieng Thirith, Minister for Social Action. Yesterday, on the boat, Rom told us that she had attended a seminar given by bâng Ieng Sary. Which was probably why she could tell us in such detail about the cleansing of the traitors’ networks. What were we to do? And think? Rejoice in the improvement in our situation? After listening to Rom, I was even more suspicious of this kind of charm offensive. But if I wanted to survive, even at the risk of losing my soul, I had to play the game, take the bait, and above all avoid drawing attention to myself.
I was half asleep when Seva, who was living in the next house, came in, a radiant expression on his face, to invite us to go and meet Ieng Sary. Fortunately, thinking that Bounnie and I were already asleep, she left us in peace.
The next morning, we woke up quite early for the manual labour. My companions and I began to collect branches and sweep up the rubbish from around the houses and the pavements. Although much neglected, the trees here had retained all their beauty. No one had had the disastrous idea of felling them and replacing them with fruit trees, as had happened in the other areas of the city. The process of ‘ruralisation’ was less visible here, even though hens and pigs roamed freely along the pavements.
A little further on, I saw a group of about fifteen Chinese technicians doing their morning exercises. We talked as we worked.
“How long will we be staying here? What is Angkar going to do with us?”
“According to what people are saying, we are supposed to be going to work in a Ministry soon. But which one?”
“Foreign Affairs. That’s the only one they’re talking about at the moment. And the Ministry for Social Action. But not so much.”
“But I don’t know anything about diplomacy, I’m a chemist.”
“Yesterday, bâng Ieng Sary came to visit us and he told us he would be attending to us right away.”
“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”
Everyone commented on the meeting with the minister. He had been relaxed, smiling and even joking, asking Sarân, who had studied in England, if Scotland Yard hadn’t recruited him. He assured us he had thought of us constantly over the last two years and he wanted to know who had sent us to the Red Land, and why. He asked us what we had done there. Hadn’t life been too hard for us, we who had now become his favourites? Nevertheless, Thol’s reaction was one of suspicion: “Come on, there’s no way bâng Ieng Sary didn’t know, he was the one who sent the Yothears there to fetch his nephews. The whole thing’s impossible to believe and highly suspect.”
Also during the meeting, Ieng Sary had claimed that the enemy networks had all been liquidated, providing confirmation of the ‘cleansing’ that Rom had told us about in the boat. What was more, at that time all the Khmer Rouge cadres were repeating the same thing about the “grandiose victory won under the clear-sighted leadership of comrade Pol Pot.” On the river, as we returned to Phnom Penh, our doctor had simply been repeating the lesson learnt from the minister’s mouth.
Ieng Sary had said that from now on he would turn his attention to us. He had questioned each of us about our skills, leaving us with the hope that he would soon summon us to work in the areas where we had each been trained. We seemed to have been granted permission to speak freely. Finally, regarding our food, from now on we were entitled to three meals a day.
Towards four thirty in the afternoon, Cheap, still wearing a white shirt and black trousers and shoes, came to find us on a motorbike. He was followed by an old bus from the Phnom Penh-Kampot transport company, although the name had been hastily obliterated. “Get ready to leave. You’re going to join our friends.” The expression ‘our friends’ was by now part of his active vocabulary, used every time he addressed us, always with the same little smile; he did not say which friends they were or what our destination was, though. When we had all got into the bus, the engine started up and we followed Cheap’s Honda, heading towards the south of the capital.
Another significant change: the bus driver spoke to us. This wasn’t one of those of mute driver we had had before our departure for the Red Land. Nevertheless, the principle of not telling us where we were going until we arrived still applied.
The Phnom Penh landscape had not changed much. In some districts, like the area surrounding the Olympic stadium, the vegetation had grown so much that it was like being in the country. Around the Independence Monument, the garden looked neater than before. Young coconut palms were growing here and there along the pavements. In the grounds of some properties, flower gardens had been replaced by vegetable gardens. On areas of wasteland, you could also see lots of banana palms and potato plants, two crops considered to be strategic.
I glimpsed the beautiful roof tiles of the temple of the Vatt Langkar pagoda, looking sumptuous in the midst of dense green foliage. I longed to see once more the monks’ house where I had lodged for three years, at the beginning of the Sixties. Oh pagoda, how sad it is to see you being stifled in your gold! But my meditation was soon interrupted. “We’ve arrived,” announced the driver. I threw a questioning glance at Bounnie, sitting on the other side of the bus with her friends, as the rules required. I hadn’t taken any notice of where we were going. We were back at Bœng Trabek. We were about to find out that the since our departure, the camp had been divided into three: B30, B31 and B32.
After the positive words of the great Ieng Sary, our colleagues were a bit disappointed to be returning once again to the same place we had been two years earlier. I myself had nothing but bad memories of the place. One thing was sure: Angkar’s intentions were as impenetrable as ever.
I looked at the area surrounding the camp. The countryside had changed a little, but in essence was the same: the banana and coconut palms were still there. Only the rice fields seemed to have increased significantly and were better dug than before. In the ponds of Bœng Trabek, a few people, probably ‘people from abroad’, were fishing here and there from canoes. The sun was setting slowly. In spite of my disappointment, I hurried to take Bounnie’s bag and my own and entered the camp with the others, hoping to find some familiar faces within. Cheap appeared, accompanied by Ek, dressed in black like the rest of us. Bounnie and I were happy to see him again. It was the first time we had met up since our return to the country. His wife, Srey Mouy, was one of Bounnie’s cousins.
Ek waited for us by the door. Kem Thy jokingly shook his hand.
“Oh, I thought you were already a cadre!”
“Come off it…”
I discovered many new faces, like Ek’s, of people who had returned from abroad after we had left for the Red Land. Bounnie and I quickly asked if Ros was there.
“No, I thought he was with you in the Red Land.”
“Do you know if there are any other camps reserved for people from abroad like us?”
“No, I don’t. Our friends from the camps in Talei and Takhmau came back here a long time ago.
It came as an extremely unpleasant surprise to discover that most of our friends were neither in the Red Land nor in Bœng Trabek. And I noticed that many of the former inhabitants of this camp were missing. Where were they then? I started to get seriously worried. We tried to trace them. We exchanged information: “Have you seen my sister, my brother, my parents, my friend?” A mixture of anxiety and hope was written in every face. But anguish about those who had disappeared without another word dominated. What about the people whom we asked after in vain, would they re-appear one day in the near future?
We got to the canteen and put our bags down. It had been built after our departure according to the current style. Around it, planted with the careful eye of an artist, were aubergines, tomatoes and peppers, their colours lending a certain charm to the place, the most frequented in the camp.
We were accommodated forty metres further on, in a wooden house on stilts where Boramy and two other couples were already living. The first couple had known Bounnie well when she was a student in Paris. They had lived together in Vitry, in Ros’ apartment. While they helped us sweep our new room, in a voice choked with tears, Boramy confided to us her anxiety about the lack of news of her parents and brother. Her father, Svay Bory, had been one of Cambodia’s most competent and respected civil servants and a close collaborator of the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sarinn Chhak. On his arrival in Phnom Penh, he had worked as one of Ieng Sary’s collaborators, before disappearing with his wife. To this day, Boramy had had no news of her parents. She was afraid, without saying as much, that they had belonged to the ‘enemy networks’ destroyed by Angkar.
After some cursory housework, Bounnie left our baby to sleep. We met up in the hall before going to the canteen. All of a sudden, we heard the baby crying and screaming at the top of her lungs. Bounnie rushed back inside, where she had the unpleasant surprise of seeing that our little daughter had literally been attacked by a battalion of fleas.
In the canteen, the kitchen team was busy preparing the evening meal. I saw Srey Mouy, Ek’s wife, wiping the tables. She was a former teacher. She gave no sign in acknowledgement of our friendship when she saw me, even though our families had been very close for many years. Bounnie and I were very fond of their three charming children. Two girls and a boy, who had been on the same plane as me on the way back from France. But far from speaking to me in a personal vein, to tell me for example when she and her husband had arrived in Cambodia, she began to bombard me with a speech about her loyalty to Angkar: “I have been reproached for being too virulent, which I willingly accept,” she said, staring at me, “but I am proud to be virulent in order to defend Angkar.” I couldn’t understand what made her speak to me like that. Was it to justify herself, as she knew that many people living here really didn’t appreciate her and her husband’s aggressiveness towards them, an aggressiveness which they are prepared to make her pay for? Or was she trying to make me understand that if I still wanted to enjoy her friendship, I had to behave like her and her husband: in other words, be ready to defend Angkar?
It was quite a different matter with Madame Phlek, who came up to me. She looked visibly distraught, very sad and had aged considerably. I remembered her as a plump and cheerful lady. She touched my hand and stared at it, like an elderly, abandoned woman who had finally found someone she could count on. Since her return to Cambodia, she had had no news of her children, all of whom were well-known figures in the country. I didn’t dare to let her know what I had been told: her son, Phlek Chhat, my doctor in Phnom Penh, had been arrested at the end of 1975 in the province of Preah Vihear. Amongst his belongings, so I had been told, the Khmer Rouge soldiers had found a bag full of American dollars. I asked her to explain what had happened here since our departure for the Red Land, and particularly what had happened to her daughter, Viphar, and son-in-law, Tun Chot Sirinn. They had apparently both been accused of anti-revolutionary sabotage (destruction of materials, axes, hammers and sickles) and of plotting against Angkar, and had had to leave Bœng Trabek. In Paris, her son-in-law had worked as a biology researcher at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research. The couple had been very popular in the Cambodian student circle, where they ran the artistic group. Sirinn was an indefatigable organiser and a much-appreciated teacher of classical Cambodian dance.
It was almost six o’clock in the evening. The meal was nearly ready. Everyone was sitting at the tables. We were invited to listen devoutly to the Educational Tribune, which was devoting its programme that evening to the latest “astounding and historic victory of the revolution under the perfectly clear-sighted and very intelligent leadership of our comrade the Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.” We learnt that the Party had decided to make major changes to the way in which the cooperatives were run in order to strengthen them, as the pillars of our revolution. From now on, all members of cooperatives were to be considered as equals: the distinction between the old people and the new people was to disappear.
The Educational Tribune was a new programme on Democratic Kampuchea radio. Although no one had ever said in so many words that it was Pol Pot in person who spoke live on the radio every day at six in the morning, everyone knew it was him. This had been confirmed by people who had met him. A week ago, a number of us with technical backgrounds had been selected to take part in a seminar with the party secretary, in the Chaktomuth room. The purpose of the meeting had been to announce the opening of the Technical Institute. On this occasion, they had been able to see him for the first time and listen to his speech at first hand. Some had been impressed by his personality and his art of persuasion. It seemed that Khieu Samphân, who had had a great deal of influence in terms of political commitment, was nothing but a stooge, a puppet in the hands of Pol Pot.
At the end of the broadcast, everyone hurried off to eat. The ration was correct: we had almost enough to eat. It was hard to define the atmosphere in the canteen. The first thing I noticed was that there were two groups sitting separately from the rest: the first was made up of people who were members of the camp committee, and the second of people who were ex-members. No one spoke much in either group. All the others, the majority, seemed to be less fearful than before: they expressed their thoughts more freely.
Many people had been separated from their families and were imploring Angkar to bring news of them. They wanted to talk to us, tell us of the anguish that had tormented them after we had left for the Red Land. Life in Bœng Trabek had been hell for them under the rule of Savân and his henchmen, To Ti Pheak, Try Meng Huot and Ek. They spoke well only of Tun Chot Sirinn and his friends, and were worried about their fate. Some thanked Big Brother Ieng Sary for having liberated them from these tyrants. Others confided in me, telling me that all these events were disturbing and suspect. In their view, the truth was being kept from us.
“Look at Try Meng Huot,” a close friend said to me. “He always stays in his little corner, and now no one wants to talk to him. He has treated us really badly. He was a docile instrument, manipulated by Savân. To get in their good books, he needed to find some scapegoats, and this he did by throwing the other committee members into the lion’s den – particularly Tun Chot Sirinn, who showed understanding towards the camp’s inhabitants. Try Meng Huot thought that in order to take Sirinn’s place, he had to bring him down. So much for friendship. For Try Meng Huot, the only thing that matter was achieving his ends. However, things weren’t that simple. As the situation progressed, Try Meng Huot became more and more arrogant and uncompromising. Just when he thought that he was at last about to savour his victory – now that most of his rivals had been eliminated – it was the turn of Savân, his protector, to be accused of being an enemy agent.”
I left the canteen feeling confused. As I went back to my new house, I caught sight of Ek through the open window of his office. The camp president was alone, sorting out some papers. I decided to make the most of the opportunity and go in and see him. He was an engineer, with a degree from the Faculty of Agronomy in Gembloux. He belonged to the same generation as Ieng Sary. They had studied together in Europe, but today Ek never mentioned Ieng Sary’s name without first using the respectful title bâng yeung, ‘older brother’. He told me to come in and closed the door behind me as if he was afraid that someone might see me, which made me feel somewhat ill at ease. Then he adopted a conciliatory air.
“I’m very busy at work and haven’t had time to chat to Bounnie and you yet. Have you settled in all right?”
“Yes, everything’s fine, no problem.”
“In any case, your stay here won’t be very long. I believe your name should shortly be on the list of people to be seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” In contrast, I was frank with him about what I had heard since arriving: that he was one of Savân’s accomplices. He defended himself.
“It’s always the same group of malcontents. They’re not reliable elements. All I have done since arriving has been to re-educate myself. Perhaps I have made some mistakes, or said aloud things I should have kept to myself, or been too rough. I’m quite sure I’ve wounded some people’s pride. But I did it for Angkar and I’m proud of it. Carrying out a revolution means accepting to betray your social class, the intellectual middle class. Pride just perpetuates the ideology of the old class. I can see that we are still thinking like the middle classes here. Only people who do nothing make no mistakes. Personally, I am willing to stand corrected if I have done anything wrong. Only Angkar is never wrong. Who told you all this, anyway?”
“Practically everyone.”
“Can you give me their names?”
“What for?” And I said nothing.
After the arrest of Tun Chot Sirinn and his friends, several members of the camp at Bœng Trabek had spoken out to denounce Savân’s dictatorship. “What you’re doing here is insane and has nothing to do with the fundamental principle that we’ve learnt from Angkar. You are abusing your authority in order to crush us. You are unjustly accusing innocent people. We’re telling you: enough’s enough! Now you can do what you want with us. But you should know that we’ll defend justice right to the end.” All those who took part in this protest disappeared after the meeting.
Savân wasn’t the first Angkar representative to make life unbearable in Bœng Trabek. In the name of the Organisation, his predecessor, Mân, had one day told To Ti Pheak and his friends to sow terror in the camp. They had obeyed blindly. But a little while later, Mân had been named as a traitor by Angkar. Without batting an eyelid, To Ti Pheak and his cronies had started repeating that Mân had been an enemy of the people. He was soon arrested and replaced by Savân. He, in turn, had incited the same little gang to terrorise of the inhabitants of the camp. This they had done with zeal. But the wheel of history kept on turning, even faster, more violently, and it wasn’t long before Savân found himself also accused of being an agent of the adversary. This enabled Ieng Sary to now say that the people who had been responsible for us before him had all been traitors.
I knew that Ek was very well acquainted with Toch Kham Dœng, a physician and former researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, who had also been accused of being a traitor by Angkar. I asked Ek what he thought of him. He told me that the former members of the Union of Khmer Students (UEK) in France were pro-Soviet revisionists.
I was shocked, but when I described the encounter to Bounnie a few minutes later, she took a more indulgent line.
“You mustn’t be too critical of him though. By maltreating other people, he has harmed himself. I’m convinced he’s not happy here. He’s suffering like the rest of us. He belongs to the elite of senior officials, you know that. He was director of agriculture and a professor at the Agronomy Faculty. He wasn’t just anyone. I know these people’s mentality. They were careerists thinking of their own future and trying to climb higher. Now Ek thinks that the best way for him to survive is to forget the past and not show any feelings. He has hardened his heart. That’s the current trend. These officials aren’t as idealistic as you naive students. I’ve tried time and again to get you to understand this, haven’t I?”
Under the personal supervision of Ieng Sary, camp B30 took an increasingly active part in the running of the Ministry. We supplied daily vegetables, poultry and pork to Phsar Touth, a shop for diplomats posted to Phnom Penh.
Thanks to the radio, we knew that a whole succession of foreign delegations were visiting Cambodia, to see with their own eyes the successes of ‘national construction’ directed by the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Things didn’t always go according to plan, however. One day, we saw the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a state of panic: they had searched in vain for flowers to make a bouquet for some prestigious visitors due to arrive at Pochentong Airport. They had been everywhere, not just in Phnom Penh but as far as Takhmau and Prek Toch to the south of the capital, but there were no flower gardens left in Cambodia.
There was a spate of good news. From now on, Angkar took care of our well being. We weren’t made to work so much and our meat and fish ration was increased. We were given permission to eat as much fruit as we wanted from within the camp. Our dispensary was finally run by someone competent. From now on we could also wear coloured shirts… if we had any left. Most of us didn’t, in actual fact. The effects of this generosity were not long in coming: our state of health improved.
Angkar talked more and more of family reunification, promising to look for people who were missing. “Sometimes chance makes things work out right. I found my brother while I was out walking in Phnom Penh,” Ieng Sary told us. He omitted to mention the fact that we were not allowed to leave the camp. Even so, it gave us a glimmer of hope that we would see our friends again one day.
In reality, of the hundreds of people who had been ‘summoned’ by Angkar, only two had been seen again: Duch San, an electrician, and Tiv Vino, an architect. They had both previously lived in France. But these swallows did not make spring. At the same time as promising to do everything possible to find the people who had disappeared, Angkar encouraged their husbands or wives to re-marry. In this way, new couples were formed to contribute to the sacrosanct objective of fifteen million inhabitants, the figure considered ideal by Pol Pot in order to defend and rebuild the country.
We had been summoned to a meeting with Ieng Sary at the ‘Rond-Point’ room. This venue was not unfamiliar. It was there that we had assembled to listen to Phum when he had been responsible for our re-education. His last speech came to mind: he had seemed less energetic, less passionate, less convinced and less smiling than usual. He had sat bolt upright behind the table of honour and had told Ros Sarin, my brother-in-law, and several others to get ready to leave to carry out the new task which Angkar had assigned to them. I had found his behaviour strange, but had had no inkling at the time that this was a farewell.
As we waited outside, I saw a group of people approaching in single file, wearing a black khau and a kramar around their necks, each holding an exercise book, like schoolchildren. I recognised them: Sarinn Chhak, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, and his wife; General Duong Sam Ol; Ang Kim Khoan, former Minister of Tourism, and his young wife; the former diplomats Chèm Sgnuon, Hor Nam Hong, Ieng Kun Saky, Sao Kim Hong and his French wife, Élisabeth, Ngo Pin and Moch and their children. I found out that they were in camp B32, reserved for former diplomats and prominent figures under the old regime.
I was moved to see them again. I had known them for a long time. Sarinn Chhak was someone whose competence I admired, and he also came from my region. As soon as he saw me he asked about his son, Khin Van Chân, of whom he had had no news since he had returned. He and his wife looked upset on hearing that he was not in the Red Land. At that time, we did not know that Khin Van Chân was imprisoned in Phnom Penh, barely one kilometre away from our camp. Only Ieng Sary knew that he was being tortured in Tuol Sleng. A single word from him would have sufficed to enable those who were still alive, such as Sarinn Chhak’s son and the painter, Mok Sun Khun, to escape death. Finally, Sarinn Chhak and his wife asked me whether my older brother had come back. They were relieved when I answered in the negative.
They let us into the meeting room. The room was filled with people from camps B30 and B32, sitting separately in perfect order. No one was missing from the roll call; even the elderly were there.
At last Ieng Sary arrived with a regal air, clad in a suit, with a Mao cap on his head and a stripy blue kramar round his neck. He entered the room to applause. He was followed by his master of ceremonies, Ek, who had the manner of a docile little boy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs sat up straight behind the table which had been placed on the dais in the hall of honour. He looked hesitant and tense. “A stiff smile – that doesn’t bode well,” Bounnie whispered to me, as we left. I wondered whether he had found his reception sufficiently warm. When he had come to Paris, shortly after the victory of 17 April, he had been given a hero’s welcome by more or less the same audience, totally enthusiastic at the time, and looking forward returning to the country. But today’s applause was without soul and without conviction, applause which the hostages felt obliged to give, for fear of provoking their executioner. Given the choice, almost all these one-time admirers of Ieng Sary’s would have gone abroad again. Bounnie, with her feminine intuition, sensed that he was acting a part and trying to cover up something serious. “He looks like a waxwork model to me,” she said. “He carries in his face the weight of the disgusting things he has done. I’m worried about the ones who have disappeared.” Behind him hung a banner, which read: Long live Democratic Kampuchea. In front of the entrance, some Yothears stood guard and bodyguards watched over his jeep.
Ek, as president of the B30 camp, gave a report in three parts, according to the method he had learnt: policy, organisation and ideology. “With respect to policy, we have applied the clear-sighted line of Angkar. We have worked to produce enough, in terms of quality and quantity, to supply Phsar Touth, the diplomats’ market. We have increased the land area given over to crops. We produce red cabbages, turnips, aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, lettuces, peppers and different varieties of mint.”
Ieng Sary looked bored and pretended to be reading his papers.
“So as not to waste too much manpower on watering the crops, we have dug irrigation canals right into our camp, B30. We are also continuing to work in the pond at Bœng Trabek, pulling up the water hyacinths to make room for growing water spinach and water lilies. As regards organisation: since the departure of the traitor Savân, organisation in the camp has been healthy and sound, apart from a few problems of discipline resulting from our class origin. Finally, as regards ideology, the re-education to impregnate us with the revolutionary awareness of the workers and peasants is making steady progress. We firmly support Angkar’s revolutionary ideology, consisting of relying on our own strength.”
Clearly, Ek’s speech on the progress in production in the camp was no longer topical. Ieng Sary was expecting something more from us intellectuals than growing fruit and vegetables. He started to court us once again. Angkar apparently needed our skills to rebuild the country, not to plant cabbages!
This in no way prevented Ieng Sary from starting his speech by bombarding us with facts about the progress attained along the road to modern agriculture, to be completed in ten to fifteen years. Once this agricultural paradise had been achieved, we would have the necessary structures to transform Cambodia into an industrial country. “In certain places, we are producing three tons per hectare, even more. In 1980, we are going to do everything possible to obtain thirty to forty per cent more on average throughout the country. In the industrial sector, we are going to develop the consumer industry side by side with heavy industry.”
I cast a furtive glance at the group of diplomats and economists. Sarinn Chhak and his companions were obediently taking notes, like well-disciplined schoolchildren. Ieng Sary went on: “To modernise agriculture, we are going to have to continue to rely on the support of the cooperatives. If the cooperatives prosper, the country will prosper. We are going to organise model cooperatives in all districts. Each district is to have at least one prosperous model cooperative, to serve as an example to the others.”
Ieng Sary then talked about the enemy, which was relentlessly pursuing its efforts to sabotage this noble enterprise in the service of our beloved people. He gave a short historical account of his group’s struggle against the domination of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and quoted the names of some of the abominable leaders of the traitors’ networks: Ros Nhim, Chhouk, Sâr Phim, Koy Thuon, Non Suon… He wanted to communicate an essential message to us: the great merit of his group was that of having succeeded in ‘Khmerifying’ the Cambodian Communist Party. Without that, Cambodia would have been swallowed up by Vietnam once and for all. Of course, neither he, Ieng Sary, nor his friends would have had it in them to cause the Cambodian people to suffer. If we, the people from abroad, had been badly treated thus far, it was due to the presence of agents of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
The cadres already all knew what I was hearing. On the Mekong, Rom had given us virtually the same speech about the struggle against the enemy.
Sarinn Chhak carried on taking notes obediently. A man of his wisdom would be bound to be asking himself questions about the incredible short-sightedness of the Cambodian elite abroad, who had allowed themselves to be seduced and taken in, wholesale, by the rhetoric of such an irresponsible individual. And today, Ieng Sary was starting to fool us all over again, using the same method: “We’re all in the same boat. If it sinks, we sink together. No one can get out of this alone. Above all, don’t think you’re going to get out of it by telling the Vietnamese that you are just intellectuals from abroad. They’ll massacre the lot of you, mercilessly. It’s normal that you had to make sacrifices. Society has changed, one has to adapt. I have always defended you. I have always said that the intellectuals from abroad were not all enemy agents.”
In different circumstances, Ieng Sary had said that seventy percent of the people who had returned to the country were traitors. He adapted his speech depending on his audience. Naturally, he was perfectly informed of the situation in Bœng Trabek and he knew that the people there hated Savân and his accomplices. In front of us, he stated without batting an eyelid that the people who had had the courage to resist had been good. But a few days earlier, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ieng Sary had explained that they were traitors. Today, he announced that Savân and To Ti Pheak had confessed their ‘crime’: Savân was a Vietnamese agent and To Ti Pheak from the Kuomintang. “What’s more,” he said, “my family also fell victim to Savân. He allowed my sister-in-law, Thirath, to die.” The truth was that she had been suffering from an illness.
The Minister identified another person, Vin Piny, as a bad element from abroad. He assured us that he had been denounced in three documents as an agent of the CIA and the SDECE. “Before,” he explained, “two documents were enough, but now I insist on three before someone can be arrested.” I didn’t understand what he meant by three documents. I would have liked to ask him, but it was better to keep quiet.
I knew Vin Piny well from my time in Phnom Penh, where he had been a close associate of Phouk Chhay, president of the General Association of Cambodian Students. When Lon Nol had carried out his coup d’etat, he had been had adviser to the Cambodian Embassy in Paris. At that point in time, the two of us, with the assistance of Sirinn Chhak and Chhan Yourann, had set up the support committee for the Declaration of 23 March by Prince Sihanouk.
Ieng Sary continued his speech, saying that Cambodia was heading towards greater democracy. In order to attain democracy, he invited us to follow the example of our friends who had criticised Savân. “It isn’t easy,” he went on. “Often, when I meet our peasants, as I did last week at Chhouk, in Kampot province, I questioned the members of the cooperatives to find out if they had really received three meals a day. At first, they didn’t dare speak openly, but then, when they felt they could trust me, they said they hadn’t. So I asked them why they hadn’t insisted that the leaders give them the three meals to which they were entitled. You see, our peasant brothers and sisters have much to say. But they didn’t dare exercise their freedom. So we have drawn up a new method to encourage them to speak. I am telling them that they no longer need to be afraid. There are no prisons here. Before you often used to hear insults: “À Kouk! À Châp Kouk! Miserable convict! Miserable prisoner!”
With a solemn and satisfied air, he went on: “We must stop using the word ‘prison’. Prisons no longer exist here. On the international scene, the vast majority of countries in the world, especially the non-aligned countries, support our foreign policy, based on the sovereignty of the State. The Soviet revisionists and their Vietnamese accomplices are increasingly isolated. In order to combat the enemy from the outside, we must first sweep out the enemy on the inside. Our Party has defeated the enemy on the inside. Without their accomplices on the inside, the Vietnamese aggressors will not be able to defeat us.” Now that he was in his stride, he invited us to take the floor, to exercise our freedom in this country, the only one in the world where you could say everything. No one could harm us as prisons had been abolished.
Kang Sanérath, the author of The Eighteenth of March, a poem which had been much talked about in the aftermath of Lon Nol’s coup d’etat, was the first to speak out, denouncing the oppressive rule of the camp leaders who had succeeded Savân. He lambasted point by point the complicity of the team currently running the camp at Bœng Trabek. Eight others spoke in support of Sanérath. Ek felt alone. He looked disconsolate, his head bowed. Ieng Sary had obviously not been expecting people to dare speak so freely and he saw that the attacks against Ek were aimed at him personally, however indirectly. He could scarcely conceal his displeasure at being faced with an assembly which was beginning to free itself of fear. Deep down, he was probably telling himself that we were animals, still not to be trusted. And he finally decided to interrupt the discussion. “That’s the first time I’ve seen people speak like that to bâng Ieng Sary,” blurted out one of his body guards who had stayed in front of the doorway, amazed that his boss had allowed these people to speak in this way.
They moved on to the next item on the agenda: dissolving the old committee and electing a new one. Ieng Sary used the occasion to announce the creation of a third camp, B31. Ek and thirty or so others considered to be reliable elements would be the first inhabitants of this transit camp, an antechamber to the ministries. Ieng Sary asked them to leave the room, as the appointment of the new camp leadership no longer concerned them. As soon as they had left, he said: “I’ve known Ek for a long time. He’s an opportunist, always changing his colours.”
He then went on to talk about the mountain dwellers in the north: pure and faithful people who didn’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves for the people of whom they were in charge. He himself had seen three of his guards die before his very eyes defending him. Like the other Khmer Rouge leaders, he too was convinced that the mountain dwellers were more reliable than the inhabitants of the plains. These were people who lived a very basic existence and knew nothing of what was taught in schools, people who had always refused colonialism. On the other hand, people from the plains in general, and town-dwellers in particular, if they were well-educated and used to a better standard of living, were the ones who had accepted foreign domination. According to Ieng Sary, the mountain-dwellers had already been living for a long time under a primitive Communist regime: they had no private property, did not use money, were unaware of the concept of profit and therefore had no problem in making a natural and direct transition to modern Communism. They were objectively the most dedicated to the revolution and should therefore be taken as an example.
Then came the moment for us to appoint the new camp committee, as this was, in principle, the way things were to be done from now on. Ieng Sary asked those who wished to present themselves as candidates to raise their hand. “Ours is not bourgeois democracy, but democratic centralism,” he said, meaning that Angkar reserved the right to turn down the candidacy of anyone who did not meet its requirements for this office.
When San, one of the candidates, explained that she was the wife of Hin Chamron, Ieng Sary’s face betrayed a sentiment of remorse. He felt ill at ease and avoided looking her in the face. Chamron, a civil engineer, had returned to Cambodia at Ieng Sary’s request to build the Phnom Penh-Kratié railway line. But San had had no news of him since his departure from Bœng Trabek at the end of 1976. Her candidacy was turned down for no good reason. Next was Thach, from Kampuchea-Krom. Ieng Sary stared up at the ceiling for a long time, as if trying to remember something important. Perhaps he had painful memories of himself as a young boy in this region, whren many Khmer Krom were arrested after April 1975. Yet Thach’s candidacy was accepted.
To my great surprise, some people asked Ieng Sary to put my name on the list. But he rejected the initiative, saying that I had to continue my re-education. Finally, by show of hands, the assembly voted by an overwhelming majority for Ham Huy, a surveyor from the Red Land. He would be president of the camp. In the end, the other committee members were nominated by Ieng Sary himself. In reality, the Minister of Foreign Affairs always guarded his power jealously. He was desperately seeking recognition, not from the members of his entourage, whom he treated like dirt, but from others, as if he were not satisfied with enjoying the admiration only of a group of people who were not really free. In a way, he owed his success to the hatred and jealousy which motivated him, and to his implacable determination, but also to circumstances, which he had been able manoeuvre to his favour. He was a haughty, deceptive and brutal man.
Having crushed the original Cambodian communists in their entirety, Pol Pot decided to celebrate the Party’s anniversary throughout the country. Ieng Sary asked the leaders of the three camps in Bœng Trabek to prepare this grandiose ceremony jointly. We had seven days’ time. A number of teams were set up: cleaning up, decoration, food and artistic expression. Every evening, obligatory sessions were organised to teach the young people the revolutionary songs and dances. They had never had an opportunity to unwind before, so for them it was a welcome opportunity to relax, have a bit of fun and talk of something other than work. The atmosphere became festive. The camps were cleaner, more airy. Leaves from the trees were used to make decorations, people made banners: Long live the Glorious Communist Party of Kampuchea! Long live democratic Kampuchea!…. The colour black was no longer mandatory. We were even encouraged to vary our attire! And the Angkar jeep which brought our supplies continued to spoil us with food products.
At the same time, Ieng Sary made almost daily requests for some of us to take on new tasks. In this way, our neighbours, Sâr and Heng, went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Heng, always friendly and ready to help, came from the same region as me. We had never met his wife, Sâr, before. But her kindness, simplicity and charming face had won our hearts right from the first day. We were delighted to be the neighbours of such an engaging couple. Sâr never revealed her true identity, but everyone knew that her real name was Ung Neari, that she was a doctor and the daughter of Ung Hy, a former Prime Minister of Cambodia. She had studied in China, and had been ‘adopted’ by the Chinese Prime Minister, Chou En-Lai.
Later, we found out that Heng, her husband, judged to be unreliable by Ieng Sary, was not allowed to accompany her to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Neari was shot by Vietnamese soldiers on 8 January 1979, together with her colleague Kem Thy, as they tried to leave Phnom Penh. She was three months pregnant.
Film shows and revolutionary artistic performances were also put on for us in the Chaktomukh room; and during an acrobatic display by the army of the People’s Republic of China in the Olympic Stadium, I saw Pol Pot’s wife, Khieu Ponnary, for the first time, next to some Chinese officials.
On the due date, the celebrations took place in a relaxed atmosphere, almost as relaxed as in the good old days. All that was missing were a few Buddhist monks to remind us of the ones in our villages, long ago. Now each family could sit at the same table to eat and drink, and I suddenly remembered Prince Norodom Phurissara, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had been arrested, so it would seem, for refusing to stop his wife from holding his arm as they walked.
A few days later, Ham Huy, the new camp president, ordered us to get ready to go to camp B32. The official reason was that there were only forty people in the camp: Angkar had decided to send a further twenty people to strengthen numbers. In actual fact, however, B30, where we were, served to carry out a selection. The ‘good’ elements went to B31, a transit camp for the ministries. B32 was reserved for the less reliable elements. Thun, a friend from B30, discreetly warned me about my situation: according to him, I needed to be more careful, because someone had told him that I hadn’t made any progress with my re-education. This disgrace frightened Bounnie, but oddly enough, I wasn’t afraid. The prospect of working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the eye of Ieng Sary sent shivers running down my spine.
Once again, Bounnie had to say goodbye to her sister, who still had no news whatsoever of her husband. I too said goodbye to our friends, especially Madame In and Madame Phlek. Once I had left the camp, it would be very difficult for me to come and see them. Although everything seemed less heavy than before, the administrative rules remained basically the same: people who did not live in the same camp were not allowed to meet unless they had authorisation.
Ham Huy issued final recommendations before our departure: wherever we went, we were always remain vigilant and try to re-educate ourselves. Then he accompanied us to the boundary separating the two camps. There, Hor Nam Hong, the president of B32, received us and asked us to follow him. We carried on walking along a gravel path. I saw once more the places where I had been prior to my departure for the Red Land, twenty months earlier. I saw the wooden house I had shared with Ros, and the corners where I had worked with my friends at the time; I remembered their faces.
When we got to the canteen, I was very pleased to see Madame Ieng Kounsaky and some other familiar faces. We were given hot tea and grilled rice crust as a welcome. Delicious! We chatted in a relaxed atmosphere. Before coming here, Hor Nam Hong and his companions had been in Chraing Chamrès, in the northern suburbs of Phnom Penh, on national route No. 5. I had known the place in my youth, as one of my friends of Cham origin used to lived there with his parents, in a large Muslim community. This camp had also been under Ieng Sary’s Ministry. Some people there had disappeared, and others had committed suicide. I was shocked to learn that the wife of Chea San, the formed ambassador of Cambodia to Moscow – one of my older brother’s friends whom I knew well – had been found dead, drowned in mysterious circumstances. The survivors of Chraing Chamrès had been transferred to B32 at the beginning of the 1977. I discovered that during Savân’s time, Angkar had ordered a dozen or so important figures, including Chau Seng, Norodom Phurissara and his wife, to leave the camp.
Owing to the disappearances and recent departures, the majority of the forty people left in B32 were young people without their parents. When we arrived, the number of inhabitants came to sixty and the food improved.
We were shown to our respective dwellings. Bounnie and I had a room in a charming brick house in the shadow of a majestic tree. It overlooked the path to B30. In between, a small field had been planted with sugar cane. On the other side of the house, we could see rows of vegetables planted around a well. A little further on, rampant vegetation separated us from the road to the ‘URSS Hospital’. Finally, close by, there was a ramshackle wooden house containing revolutionary toilets.
On the veranda there were a number of drawers filled with seeds, next to some broken cupboards. Some small birds, which had been pecking at the grains, flew away as we ap
As in B30, every evening we had to listen to the Educational Tribune. Then came the evening meal, which comprised two dishes. “The soup tastes almost the same as in the old regime,” said Bounnie. As for myself, I was happy to have been reunited with some people who had always been close to me, either as friends or through family ties. We talked about the people we knew. My friends told me that in spite of his age, Chau Seng, the former minister, used to climb up the sugar palms as well as any young peasant, and had made a secret supply of alcohol using jack fruits. I thought of his French wife and his two daughters in France, still waiting for news of him. I also found out that at one meeting, Savân had told everyone to hand over their dollars. Prince Phurissara had replied that Angkar should first open up the market, because in the civilised world money was exchanged for goods. I was also told that Hor Nam Hong and Van Piny had been the willing instruments of Savân, and that they had maltreated the people in their charge. That was something that nobody seemed to be prepared to forget.
The young people and adolescents struck me as being more cheerful. They even joked and flirted with each other. For them, life seemed to carry on and become more normal, even though most of them were totally unaware of what had become of their parents.
Our daily labour was as it had been in B30. In the vegetable garden, we grew mainly red cabbages, turnips, aubergines, courgettes, lettuces and tomatoes… We also worked in the pond, growing water spinach and water lilies. I had to admit that from this point of view, since my return from the Red Land, I had no cause for complaint. Compared with what we had been through in the past, our current task was almost a luxury. For Bounnie, too, the day was less tiring. She was not forced to do heavy work or to work far from the house. And in addition, we could now pick the fruit growing in the camp without fear of being arrested and having to confess our error publicly. In spite of my fragile constitution, I felt better, and even had the feeling that I was putting on a little weight. At last we were entering a new phase.
At the end of October, a meeting was held in the presence of Ieng Sary to provide camp B32 with a new team of leaders. I did not speak, doing my best to remain inconspicuous. It was enough for me to be present, as was required, and to applaud along with the others. Hor Nam Hong retained his position as president, heading a committee of five people. Ieng Sary repeated more or less the same thing that he had told us a few days earlier: “We are commencing a fight to the death against Vietnam and its Indochinese Federation. It’s either them or us. There is no alternative. The Cambodian people are with us in our struggle against the aggressors. Vietnam is more and more isolated, the international community is on our side.”
I was intrigued by the good relations between Ieng Sary and Hor Nam Hong. The two men seemed to be worlds apart. Whereas the first was a hardline Stalinist, the second belonged to the moderate, non-Communist movement of Sarinn Chhak, Chan Youran and Van Piny. The very same movement that the Khmer Rouge leaders had always tried to destroy. Sarinn Chhak had been forced to resign from his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs to make way for Ieng Sary. Almost all the other members of the moderate movement had disappeared. The only ones left were Chan Youran and Hor Nam Hong, both now faithful servants of Angkar.
Ieng Sary was visiting Thailand. The situation in the camp seemed to get better and better. We even had the impression that we were being spoilt. There was fish and meat – including crocodile meat - in abundance. And progress didn’t stop there. The Minister of Foreign Affairs asked the committee to open a library next to the canteen. Of course, it had very few volumes apart from the reviews published by Democratic Kampuchea and back issues of Chinese newspapers, but it was enough to make me realise – for the first time – the disastrous effect of the Cultural Revolution and the significance of the Four Modernisations, the policy of openness advocated by Deng.
There was also talk of setting up artistic groups, particularly classical and folkloric dance, within each unit. Last year, in the Red Land, our musician friends from Germany had been accused of liberalism after the celebration of the anniversary of 17 April. Their error? Using whatever had come to hand, they had managed to make some musical instruments and had played some tunes for their colleagues. We were also told that we had to wear brighter colours. It was the end of black sampots for the women: now they were preferably to be coloured, and not so long. There was even talk of opening schools across the country, so that young people could be sent there to learn foreign languages, the hotel trade… The people in Bœng Trabek, most of them the children of disappeared diplomats, were to be sent to training schools to become tourist guides.
Now they were talking of leisure time, tourist trips – but in organised groups – and the market. I even heard that Angkar was thinking of reinstating the currency! On the other hand, there were no plans to abolish the communal kitchens, considered to be one of the strong points of the revolution, a brilliant invention which strengthened the country, compared to the Vietnamese who had not had the courage to do the same thing. Result: the Vietnamese had nothing to eat and were obliged to pick grass for food. That was why they would not be able to defeat us. As our proverb said: “You can only cultivate rice when there is water, and you can only go to war on a full stomach.”
There was more traffic on the road to the USSR Hospital: convoys of carts drawn by oxen. They were followed by women, elderly people and children in rags, with gloomy faces. Sometimes they sneaked into our camp to collect coconuts, pick fruit or collect bric-a-brac lying around on the ground which, for them, seemed like luxury objects. They said they came from the eastern provinces, the battlegrounds with Vietnam.
The government published a Black Book, in French, containing irrefutable proof of the criminal schemes of the Vietnamese communists against Cambodia. There was so much talk about the book that Hor Nam Hong and Pech Bun Tong spent almost a whole day translating it into Khmer. Furthermore, there was now a salute to the flag every morning at seven o’clock and we had to sing in time to the radio. Military training was compulsory for the men, and at night, groups of three were posted in shifts to protect the camp against infiltration by Vietnamese agents. It was also announced that guns were to be distributed among the young people.
The threats thus became clearer. People with a radio knew that the Vietnamese troops were approaching the capital. The sound of bomb blasts could be heard from here, making our houses shake. The camp was also in mourning: Phon, a former magistrate, had just had a fatal heart attack. His wife and children wept…
The last meeting in Phnom Penh took place in the afternoon of 3 January 1979. We were summoned to an urgent meeting at the Rond-Point to listen to So Hong, Ieng Sary’s right-hand man. A few minutes later, the inhabitants of B30, B31 and B32 had assembled. It was already dark. The place was poorly lit by simple oil lamps. The explosions seemed to be nearby. Some Migs flew past overhead, but we couldn’t tell whether they were Khmer or Vietnamese combat planes. Hong looked agitated and worried. He said he intended to ban aircraft from flying over the city.
This was no longer the Hong I had known in Paris and seen again at Pochentong in August 1976. He was scarcely able to conceal his anxiety in the face of the alarming situation on the ground. He admitted the situation was serious, but did not consider it beyond hope. “Now it’s drawn swords between the Vietnamese and us. We’ll have to manage to strangle them, otherwise they’ll have our skins. There are no halfway solutions. We must prepare for protracted warfare, guerrilla warfare.” He announced a tactical withdrawal. “Three to six months maximum. We shall be temporarily leaving Phnom Penh to join the resistance. The Vietnamese won’t be able to take us on. The final victory will be ours. Now it’s your turn to get a taste of life in the resistance. You’ll see: it’s enjoyable.”
During the meeting, there were rumours that Cadwell, an English academic, had been assassinated by Vietnamese agents. Vorn Veth, the Minister of the Economy, was said to be behind the plot. I understood why we no longer heard his name, or that of Chen An, Minister for Industry, on the radio. Subsequently, I would learn the version of what actually happened as told by a Yothear who had been on the spot at the time of the events. A few days before the dramatic incident, one of the members of the personal guard of Brother No. 1 (Pol Pot himself), which was on charge of the safety of foreigners in Phnom Penh, fell in love with a young female Khmer Rouge combatant. The feeling was mutual. As a token of their reciprocal passion, the two young people had exchanged scarves. However, such a gesture was a sacrilege, a violation of Angkar’s discipline, a crime which carried the death penalty. Another Yothear, who had been rejected by the same young girl, reported the guilty pair to the superior authorities. The ‘guilty’ solder was relieved of his functions and replaced by his rival. As the latter was standing guard that night, outside the door of the three foreign guests, the former, who knew he was condemned, decided to take advantage of his last night of freedom to avenge himself by killing his rival. Cadwell probably heard the shot and went outside his room to see what was going on. And the murderer fired on him too…
Translate by Jane Hughes