Survival in the Killing Fields (69 page)

I enjoy acting. It gives me an opportunity to use my natural gifts. It allows me to meet new people and explore many different locations. But acting is only a means to an end. It gives me the
money and the free time to do my real job, which is helping Cambodians. In the future, perhaps I will make my living some other way. I have not given up my dream of working again as a doctor.

Whatever happens, I am not worried about my future. I have always survived. I still drive my 1980 VW. I still wear the clothes that Uncle Lo had made for me when I was living in Lumpini. I live
in the same apartment I lived in before I won the award. I will probably move somewhere else, but there is no hurry. Whether I go on with acting, or become a doctor again, or return to my old job
at the Chinatown Service Centre is not terribly important.

What is more important than what I do, or what Dith Pran does, or what any Cambodian does, is the fate of the country we came from. Cambodia is now called the People’s Republic of
Kampuchea. Heng Samrin, the former Khmer Rouge commander, is still the puppet leader. The hand inside the puppet is still Vietnamese. Vietnamese ‘advisers’ give the orders, and 150,000
well-armed Vietnamese troops make sure the orders are carried out.

Quietly and without formal announcements the Vietnamese have colonized Cambodia. They take huge amounts of fish from Tonle Sap, our inland sea, and truck it to Vietnam. They take our rubber and
rice and other natural resources. They encourage Vietnamese nationals and Cambodians of Vietnamese descent to settle throughout Cambodia. Vietnamese men take Khmer women to be their wives, whether
the women want it or not. Vietnamese crimes against Cambodians go unpunished. In the schools there is little study of Cambodian culture. Vietnamese and Russian languages are taught, and the
brightest students are sent off to Hanoi or to Moscow for higher education.

Though the Vietnamese do not tie people up and throw them into mass graves, the way the Khmer Rouge did, their system of ‘justice’ has much in common with that of the Khmer Rouge.
They arrest people for making remarks against the regime, for listening to unauthorized radio broadcasts and for marrying without permission. They do not give the prisoners hearings or trials. The
prisons are filthy and excrement-filled. Torture is common. The interrogators beat their victims, whip them with chains and rubber hoses, attach electrodes to their skin and suffocate them with
plastic bags. I know this from refugee accounts, but you do not have to take my word for it. You can read it in the reports of Amnesty International.

The Vietnamese use forced labour, not to build canals and dams like the Khmer Rouge, but to cut roadside trees to deprive anti- government guerrillas of ambush cover. The new war slaves clear
land, build barriers and lay mines, particularly near the Thai border. In the labour camps malaria is widespread, and so is loss of legs from accidentally stepping on mines. Amputees are a common
sight.

The war still goes on in Cambodia. When the Vietnamese army goes out in force in the daytime it can travel wherever it likes, but as soon as its troops pass or as soon as night falls, the
countryside belongs to the resistance forces. Night-time curfews are imposed in all the cities. It is a guerrilla war without fixed lines and with many different participants. The resistance forces
get most of their assistance from mainland China. The Vietnamese get assistance from the USSR. So in a sense the war in Cambodia is a war between the two communist sponsors, China and Russia.
Cambodia is a pawn in their struggle for power and influence in Asia.

The resistance has three factions. Over time the thieves and warlords of the Khmer Serei were joined by more and more Cambodians who were serious and patriotic. They formed the two
anti-communist factions: the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF) and the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC in its
French initials). Sad to say, both factions have leadership problems. The head of FUNCINPEC is Prince Sihanouk, who lost credibility for siding with the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and who lives now
in China and North Korea. The head of the KPNLF is Son Sann, a frail old gentleman without much military experience. Their Thailand headquarters both have had problems – public quarrels and
power struggles and many, many reports of
bonjour.
But both the KPNLF and FUNCINPEC have good men in their organizations, particularly those who get out in the field and do the actual
working and sweating and fighting. I admire these men very much.

The third and strongest resistance faction is the Khmer Rouge, who are now well fed and well armed once again. The Khmer Rouge claim they are not communist anymore, just nationalists who want to
drive the Vietnamese out of Cambodia. They also claim that Pol Pot has ‘retired’. Pol Pot has been seriously ill, but as long as he is alive he is likely to stay in command. After all,
he has had years of practice pretending that someone else is in charge. His successor will probably be Son Sen, who was minister of defence when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia and who oversaw the
prison system, including the prisons where I was tortured. Son Sen’s wife was minister of culture, responsible for the slaughter of the monks and the elimination of Buddhism as a religion in
Cambodia. The other contender for the leadership position is Ta Mok, a notorious military commander who killed his main rivals to get the job of Southwest Zone commander while Pol Pot was still
ruling the country.

In 1982 the three resistance factions’ backers – China, the five ASEAN or noncommunist countries of Southeast Asia, plus the United States – forced the Khmer Rouge, the KPNLF
and the FUNCINPEC to form a coalition government-in-exile. This coalition, which is called Democratic Kampuchea, the same as the old Khmer Rouge regime, serves a certain practical purpose. It has
enabled the combined resistance forces to keep Cambodia’s seat at the UN. The diplomatic presence has helped keep pressure on Vietnam to get out of Cambodia. Each year a resolution passes the
UN General Assembly by an overwhelming majority calling on Vietnam to leave. Militarily, by working together, the three factions have made the occupation of Cambodia expensive for Vietnam. They
have not been able to defeat the Vietnamese, but neither have the Vietnamese been able to defeat them. Someday this combination of military stalemate and diplomatic pressure might lead to a
conference that will pave the way for a political solution. The first signs of yielding to the pressure have already appeared.

Morally, this coalition government is another matter. It is a terrible, terrible thing to have to accept the Khmer Rouge into a partnership to drive the Vietnamese out. Like the sign said on
National Route 5, ‘Khmer Rouge – Enemy Forever’.

Reluctantly I agree that it is necessary to fight on the same side as the Khmer Rouge until the Vietnamese leave the country. But I do not think it is necessary to wait to put the Khmer Rouge
leaders on trial for their crimes. They have committed genocide against their own people and they should pay the price. Currently, an organization called the Cambodia Documentation Commission is
trying to arrange for the trial of top Khmer Rouge leaders before an international tribunal.
⁸
I support this effort completely. Besides serving justice, the
removal of the top Khmer Rouge leaders would have a practical effect on diplomacy: it would take away Vietnam’s excuse for staying in Cambodia, which is to protect the country against the
return of Pol Pot.

The previous phases of the war have left more than three hundred thousand people along the Thai-Cambodian border and in the remaining refugee camps inside Thailand. The Thais have closed most of
the camps and would like to close the rest. The Western countries have tired of accepting Cambodians for resettlement. Unable to go forward, unwilling to go back, the people of the border live in
huts. They eat handout food because they do not have the land or the security to grow their own. The boys become soldiers before they are men. In the hospitals and clinics, Cambodian staff and a
few Western volunteers continue the job of medical treatment. The case load never ends: malaria, tuberculosis, dysentery, rifle wounds. You see men who have stepped on mines hobbling about on
low-cost artificial legs. You see refugees suffering from depression, from the trauma of losing their families and from the powerlessness of their existence as refugees. When I am in the refugee
camp hospitals and I see that almost nothing has changed, I feel powerless too. Because nothing I have done, from my medical work to my acting in
The Killing Fields
to my fundraising, has
been able to change the basic conditions along the border. At times like this, when patients fill every bed and the breeze barely filters through the split-bamboo walls, my Oscar award means
nothing to me at all.

The Cambodian holocaust ripped through our lives, tossing us randomly, leaving none of us the way we were. You can blame who you want, the outside powers for interfering, or
our own internal flaws like corruption and
kum
, but when the talking is over we still do not know why it had to happen. The country is still in ruins, millions have died and those of us who
survived are not done with our grieving.

Of the Cambodians I knew, most died. That is the overall pattern. But it is hard to get information. I do not know what happened to Uncle Kruy the bus driver; to my doctor friends Pok Saradath
and Dav Kiet; to Chea Huon, my former teacher and later Khmer Rouge leader; to Sangam, my friend from the fertilizer crew, and to many others.

This I do know: Pen Tip, who tried so many times to kill me, is now in medical school in Phnom Penh. I am sure he has many friends among his new masters, the Vietnamese.

My Aunt Kim, who told the chief of Tonle Batí that I was a doctor, has settled in a certain city in the United States. With her came her sons Haing Seng, who had the argument with me in
Tonle Batí, and Haing Meng, who to the best of my knowledge (or as Americans say,
allegedly
) was a Khmer Rouge officer who managed to slip through his Immigration interviews without
being caught. He has changed his name; I do not know where he is.

Of my other relatives, my brother Hong Srun is still in Cambodia with two of my older brother’s children. My youngest brother, Hok, lives with his wife and child outside LA. My cousins
Balam and Phillip Thong still live in LA and are doing well. I also have cousins in Macao and France and one niece in France, the only surviving daughter of my sister Chhai Thau.

As for my niece Sophia, she was not happy living with me. Perhaps I was too traditional and Cambodian to understand what she was going through as an American teenager. I came home from one of my
travels to find an envelope addressed to me. I never read the letter inside. She has never come back.

All the arguments I had with my father, all my quarrels with my brother, and now this – this last, painful blow in my family’s troubled history.

I miss Sophia.

I live, for now, in my two-bedroom apartment with a balcony outside and a view of the towers of downtown Los Angeles in the distance. The walls are covered with awards I have received and
pictures from
The Killing Fields.
Higher than the rest, in the position of honour, is a photograph of Huoy, enlarged from the ID picture I begged from the chief of Phum Ra so long ago.

I still wear the locket of Huoy on a gold chain around my neck. Her spirit still guides me. She would allow me to get married and raise a family, but so far I have not. It is not easy for me to
find someone to take her place.

Someday, when Cambodia is free, I will return to the leaning
sdao
tree on the hillock in the rice fields. With me will be Buddhist monks. We will hold a ceremony and build a monument for
her next to the temple on the mountainside. We will pray for Huoy and her mother and my parents and family, and for all those who lost their lives. Then maybe their souls will be at peace. And
maybe mine will be too.

I remember walking with her along the riverfront in Phnom Penh, in the evening. The lights reflected off the surface of the water, and the wind blew through her hair. We strolled along without
cares, talking about the future. How bright the future seemed then – working hard and prospering, having children, staying close to our families. How bright it all seemed. But our lives did
not turn out the way we planned. Her life ended too soon. And I will never be forgiven by my memories.

Fifteen years have passed since this book was originally published. With this new edition comes a chance to explain how this book came to be written and to tell the story of Dr
Haing Ngor’s later life.

In 1980, when I was a young freelance journalist, an American magazine assigned me to write about the refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos pouring into Thailand. In the dusty
Thai border town of Aranyaprathet, I stayed a night in a house full of American doctors and nurses who were working at Khao-I-Dang, the nearby refugee camp for Cambodians.

The house’s only Asian resident was a man who emanated a powerful negative aura. Though I didn’t catch the name I learned that he was a Cambodian doctor and a refugee
from the Pol Pot regime. My attempt to get him to tell me about his experiences didn’t get very far. He didn’t speak much English. He was tired of trying to explain what he had gone
through to
barang
s or foreigners who didn’t know much about his country, and he seemed exhausted and depressed. That evening I went out on the town with American doctors and nurses
from the house. When we came back to the dormitory room where everyone slept on mats, there was the Cambodian, staring at us through the mesh of his mosquito net, his eyes like burning coals.

The next morning the Cambodian doctor and I went our separate ways. He left for the US soon after, and I stayed in Thailand for several years, getting to know people involved in the
refugee effort, such as John Crowley and Susan Walker (mentioned in Chapter 37 and 38). Another notable westerner was Father François Ponchaud, a Khmer-speaking missionary in
pre-revolutionary Cambodia, who had returned to work quietly in the refugee camps. Ponchaud’s masterpiece,
Cambodia Year Zero,
was the first knowledgeable exposé of the Khmer
Rouge regime and a great influence on me and on others who were trying to understand the Cambodian holocaust.