A Human Butcher Has Died

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fountainhall

A Human Butcher Has Died

Post by fountainhall »

Back in the mists of time, I believe in 1984, I was on business in London. I went down to the underground to catch a train to somewhere. Walking aimlessly along the platform, I noticed a young Asian couple looking quizzically at the underground map. They were clearly a little confused. I approached them and asked if I could help. The smile I received from both was heart-melting. Although I had lived in Asia for about 5 years, I did not believe I had ever seen such a beautiful couple.

We chatted for the short time in very halting English before their train arrived. I learned they were from Cambodia and were on their first trip overseas. Then they boarded their train, waved goodbye, smiled again - and disappeared.

I had only started to learn about the dreadful atrocities inflicted on that lovely country a few years earlier. The politicking of King Norodom Sihanouk, the CIA inspired coups replacing one Prime Minister with a series of others. As Max Hastings writes of one in his masterful history of the Vietnam War,
Ky was a slick dandy with a pencil-thin moustache; he affected a custom-made black flight suit and an impressionable procession of wives and girlfriends. He was publicly affable, fluent, enthusiastic about all things American . . . and as remote as a Martian from the Vietnamese people.
Then the USA without approval from Congress and therefore illegally began a 14-month bombing campaign against this blighted country. The destabilisation that resulted led directly to the rise to power of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. The Americans departed and the country was soon closed off. Town and villages were emptied and all citizens sent to the countryside.

Only in 1979 with the reports from British journalist William Shawcross did the world start to learn of the extent of the genocide inflicted on the poor Cambodian population. Over those four years, at least one and a half million people were either killed, murdered or tortured to death. The Killing Fields were born.

The world knows about the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot - now bracketed along with Stalin, Hitler and Mao as one of the most murderous distractors of the 20th century. Pol Pot was left to die of natural causes in the jungle. Only a few of his murdering cohorts have ever been brought to justice. Now we learn of the death two days ago of his No. 2, Nuon Chea, known during the terror as "Brother Number 2". He was captured in 1998 and finally faced a Court of Law in 2007. He never accepted any responsibility for being the mastermind behind Pol Pot's ultimately disastrous agrarian revultion. Even then it took another seven years before he was sentenced to life in prison. Now this personification of evil is himself finally dead. He died on Sunday.

As I watched that beautiful young Cambodian couple disappear on their train, I often wondered what they themselves must have suffered. And why the world had totally washed its hands as all that suffering was taking place.

The Rules for Prisoners at the infamous Tuol Sleng Prison. More than 12,000 were jailed. Less than a Dozen emerged alive
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Monument at the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh
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Further reading - three riveting books:
Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross - revised edition published by Cooper Square Press
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy by Max Hastings - published by HarperCollins
The Gate by Francois Bizot - published by Vintage

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49234224
thewayhelooks
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Re: A Human Butcher Has Died

Post by thewayhelooks »

I would also recommend A Cambodian Odyssey by Haing S Ngor best remembered for winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of journalist Dith Pran in The Killing Fields.
fountainhall

Re: A Human Butcher Has Died

Post by fountainhall »

Haing Ngor is surely one of the greatest of many great tragedies of the Killing Fields. When the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh he was forced along with the rest of the population to evacuate the cities and live in the countryside. Although a gynaecologist he had to conceal his profession or he would certainly have been killed as an "intellectual". When his wife was about to give birth to their child, there were complications and she required a Caesarian section. I cannot imagine what then then went through his mind - virtually a Sophie's Choice. Attend to his wife, be discovered and almost certainly all three would have been murdered. Watch in unbelievable agony as his wife and child died in front of him but not reveal his identity as a doctor. He and his wife chose the latter.

After the war, he eventually found his way to the USA. Free at last he never remarried and started a new life as a bit part actor. In 1996 he was murdered outside his home in Los Angeles by a street gang of oriental youths. He was just 55 years old.
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