MEET AN EX-KHMER ROUGE SOLDIER

My driver Non is an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier!

When I’m traveling overseas and need a taxi or motorbike taxi, I always look for the oldest driver I can find. Old men usually drive safer than younger men, and they are less likely to cheat you. 

My Cambodian driver today is Non. He's 65 years old and short, with salt and pepper hair. When he smiles I see a blackened socket where one of his teeth should be. Despite his need for dental work, I chose well today, he's been a good driver. But it’s a good thing that he only has a 120cc motorbike. Non is so short, that he’s not tall enough to handle anything bigger. 

He's bringing me and my translator back from the former rebel village of Svay Samsep. Since it's a hot day, we stop at a highway cafe for a cold drink on our way back to Neak Luong. While we enjoy our drinks and chat, that's when I learn the truth about Non. 

He's an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier! 

Non was originally from a village called Snoul, about 10 miles away. He was from a farming family, and after his father died, he moved to Neak Luong. At the age of 20, he became a Buddhist monk. 

When the Prime Minister, King Sihanouk,  was removed in a coup, he decided to fight. He wasn't drafted, or forced to pick up a gun. He chose to go to war on his own, a surprising choice for a Buddhist monk.

“I go by myself,” he says. “Sihanouk called me. To go to the forest, to the hills.” Sihanouk's radio broadcasts urged young men like him to join up with the communist Khmer Rouge. Like thousands of other rural folk, he blindly followed the king. 

Non tells me he was a Khmer Rouge soldier for 2 1/2 years, although he refers to that time as when he was 'fighting for King Sihanouk'. He once saw the old king, back in Mondulkiri during the war. Sihanouk had not yet been betrayed by the Khmer Rouge, and he was rallying the troops. “He said every soldier must try and try again, to take the country back,” Non recalled. “We must make peace for the people.” 

Making peace by going to war doesn’t make sense now, but it did to his loyal subjects back then. Sadly, neither Non nor Sihanouk knew that the group that they had joined would turn genocidal and kill over a million Cambodian civilians, including some of the king's own family. Just like Sihanouk, young Non was duped.

Sihanouk (center) regretted joining the communists

Non's Khmer Rouge unit fought in the same area where we had traveled through earlier in the day, around Phnom Cheu Kach. Fighting there was so intense, that those hills are still full of landmines and unexploded munitions today. I ask Non if he was scared when they used to get bombed by B-52 bombers. 

“Scared or not scared, no problem,” he says. “I love my country. If I die, that’s ok. I’m very happy to die for Cambodia.”

He admits to killing just one person during his time as a Khmer Rouge. The man he killed was a government soldier.“I killed one in battle, but I didn’t want to, because he was another Khmer,” he says. “I had to fight. I had to shoot, but I didn’t want to.” Given the massive number of civilians killed by the Khmer Rouge, I don't know if I believe him. 

Non left the Khmer Rouge when their first war ended in 1975, and like everyone else in the country, he became a farmer on a forced labor commune. As he was of marrying age, the Khmer Rouge leader of his commune later selected his wife for him. He was in his 30’s, his wife in her 20’s. For a blind marriage that was arranged by cult-like communist radicals, this one worked. Non and his wife are still together today, with six sons and two daughters. 

Non's wife also came from a poor family, which made her a good fit for the Khmer Rouge. “My wife is illiterate, she didn't go to school,” Non tells me. “Pol Pot Regime made her a nurse.” She’s still a nurse now, and even delivers babies. With so many illiterate nurses, it’s no wonder that the health care system in Cambodia is still a disaster. 

I ask Non when life was better in Cambodia, before the Khmer Rouge, or after their era. He angles his answer back to his beloved king again.  

“I love the family life during the Sihanouk Regime,” he says. “Now it’s bad for living. There's government corruption. The poor have problems; the rich and the foreign companies have so much.” 

These complaints sound exactly like those used by the Khmer Rouge to attract recruits back in the 1970’s. So I ask him, “If the king asked you to go to the hills now, to go fight again, would you go?”

His answer is chilling, and there's no hesitation on his part. “Yes. Sihanouk is a very good leader. He take care of the people.” It seems that Non didn't learn anything from the genocide of the Khmer Rouge years. Much like the Nazi's, he's content to just follow orders. 

So I've been sitting here, having a chat with an Ex-Khmer Rouge, one of the most murderous regimes in history, and he has no regrets. And I bought him a soy bean milk too. 

I head back to Neak Luong, and then on to Phnom Penh. On the way, I think about this ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, and his lack of remorse for joining them. I guess for some people, ignorance is bliss. 


*Added Note* The above discussion with the Ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, took place before King Sihanouk's death.

DICTATOR AND HIS MANSION

Hun Sen's Sihanoukville mansion, built with ill-gotten gains

I’m one block off of the beach on the upper floor of a beach town hotel. Looking right next door, I'm eyeing up the most elaborate, most expensive mansion in all of Sihanoukville. This isn't just one house, it’s a grand compound. The new luxury home is surrounded by high walls, and entered through an elaborate gate. Not that I can get in, that won't happen. That's because this beach home belongs to none other than Hun Sen, Prime Minister of Cambodia. It's only one of his many mansions across the country.

Hun Sen has come a long way. As the long time Prime Minister (and dictator) he's now the richest man in the country! That's ironic, since he had sworn off money during the communist era, when he began his rise to power as a radical Khmer Rouge soldier.

He's not very fearful looking. His big glasses don't quite disguise that he has a glass eye; a war injury from fighting near Phnom Penh in 1975. After the Khmer Rouge victory, this communist chameleon was posted to the eastern region. There he rose to be a regimental commander, covering Kratie to Kampong Cham. But that didn't last; Hun Sen fled for his life in 1977, fearing the purges that killed so many other eastern commanders. He defected to Vietnam, where he joined up with the Vietnamese military. Soon he returned to Cambodia with his new masters, helping them to kick out his former Khmer Rouge comrades.

There is suspicion among Cambodians that Hun Sen is merely a puppet. “Hun Sen was installed by the Vietnamese,” a street vendor once told me. King Sihanouk himself agreed. He called Hun Sen the, "one eyed lackey of the Vietnamese".

With the Vietnamese occupying most of Cambodia for the next decade, Hun Sen was the puppet government's first Foreign Minister, and later became Prime Minister in 1985. 

Hun Sen traded his communist garb for suit and tie (photo:Wikipedia)

Then the United Nations entered the scene, bringing democratic elections. In the only free and fair election in which Hun Sen competed in 1993, he lost. Not content to fade away gracefully, he refused to vacate power, throwing the country into political crisis. A UN brokered 'compromise' left Cambodia with 2 Prime Ministers: Hun Sen, and Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the real winner of the elections. Not content to share power either, he seized power after street fighting with forces loyal to the opposition party FUNCINPEC. Sadly, Hun Sen's troops prevailed. Over 100 Khmers were killed as his army attacked troops loyal to the Prince, looted shops in the capital, and arrested and executed political opponents. The prince fled to exile in France. Although many Khmers still support Hun Sen and his political party, one thing is clear: today he is the most hated man in Cambodia.

I recall an afternoon back in Phnom Penh, when I saw Hun Sen’s motorcade speeding down Monivong Blvd. His vehicles were big black SUV’s, all with tinted windows. Policemen blocked off all traffic. I've seen motorcades of top politicians before in Vietnam, and in the USA. Normally they drive calmly and slowly, but Hun Sen's convoy was different. His motorcade came flying down the street like madmen; it was as though he expected someone to open fire on him at any second. Here was a man running scared. In 1998, an assassin in Phnom Penh fired on Hun Sen's motorcade with a rocket propelled grenade. It missed, flew over his car's hood, and killed a young boy. Nobody knows who did it; Hun Sen made many enemies over the years.

Knowing Hun Sen and his family's reputation for corruption, I look at the opulence of his beach town mansion not with awe, but disgust. Cambodia has some of the world's worst poverty, and I wonder, how many schools could have been built with the dirty money he used to build this mansion?

In 2012 Transparency International's annual Corruption Perception Index ranked Cambodia 157th out of 174 countries in the world. They were tied, with the equally disgraceful governments of Angola and Tajikistan. US Ambassador Carol Rodley stated that Cambodia was losing $500 million a year to corruption. Not surprisingly, the Prime Minister's government denies it.

My hotel is so close to Hun Sen's fence, that I could leap across from the hotel walkway right onto the rooftop of one of his buildings, and do some mayhem. There are no guards in view, could I really pull it off?

But I'm not that radical, and I'm only visiting Sihanoukville. I don't want to be arrested, and become another of Hun Sen's many nameless political prisoners. 

PALACE DOWNFALL - ROYAL DEATHS

Buddhist stupas and memorials in the royal palace

I'm continuing my visit to the Phnom Penh's royal palace. This luxurious compound was best known as the home of King Sihanouk, Cambodia's most famous monarch.

Passing through a palace gateway, my view is filled with a whole new courtyard filled with memorials and Buddhist structures. Interspersed between carefully manicured trees, are numerous pagodas, Buddhist temples and shrines. At a few of them, Cambodians and monks in bright orange robes are praying. 

At the center of this peaceful courtyard, is the silver pagoda. This houses numerous statues of Buddha, made not only of silver, but also gold. Some are encrusted with diamonds. It’s a small miracle that these weren’t looted by the Khmer Rouge when they took over the palace; these must have been hidden away during those dark years. Many other treasures were taken away by them though. 

Controversial ex-King Sihanouk (photo: Wikipedia)

Some of these memorial stupas, are for deceased royalty, but the final resting places for many of Sihanouk’s own royal family remain unknown to this day. That was due to the King's complicated, and failed, relationship with the communist Khmer Rouge. 

It was Sihanouk who years back, coined the term ‘Khmer Rouge’, which meant ‘Red Khmers’. Nobody could have known then, that the Khmer Rouge would eventually become the most murderous communists in world history.

Way back in the 1960's, the communist movement that grew in neighboring Vietnam crossed the border into Sihanouk’s own kingdom. As the US war in Vietnam escalated, Sihanouk publicly declared Cambodia to be neutral in that conflict. Meanwhile, he did little to stop the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army, who had almost free range of Cambodia’s eastern provinces, moving troops and arms down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Sihanouk's refusal to confront the Vietnamese communists, greatly frustrated the US government who were fighting them at the time.

While Cambodia stayed out of the Vietnam conflict, Khmer communists began to appear on the scene. In those early years, they didn’t pose a serious threat to the country, and the king and his security forces fought to keep them down. Sihanouk was far more popular with the people than the communists, who brought with them some strange foreign political ideology imported from Vietnam and China. 

Gardens surround the royal memorials

As the wars raged next door in Vietnam and Laos, Sihanouk turned away from politics and began to spend his time on another occupation: film making! He became a movie director, making movies in Cambodia. He also took a major interest in jazz music. Given the growing crisis in Cambodia, Sihanouk was appearing increasingly out of touch with what was happening within his own nation’s borders. 

Finally in 1970, while Sihanouk was out of the country, he was ousted in a coup. The putch was led by a general named Lon Nol, amid rumors of American involvement.

Sihanouk stayed in exile, where the monarch made another move that few would have expected.

The king allied himself with the Khmer Rouge! Joining his former enemies, Sihanouk soon made radio broadcasts urging his subjects to also join up with the radical communist rebels.

If there was any American involvement in the coup which had forced out Sihanouk, it had backfired. Thousands of Khmer men from all across Cambodia left for the countryside to join the rebellion. These young men new little about communism; they had joined the KR to fight for their king.

Later after the Khmer Rouge victory, Sihanouk was declared head of state. Still in exile in China, he begged the Khmer Rouge leadership to allow him to return to Phnom Penh. The KR leaders eventually allowed it, but Sihanouk would soon regret coming back at all.

Palace murals were ruined by weathering and neglect

The king became a prisoner right here, in his own palace. Stripped of all power, he was still technically head of state, but he was only a figurehead. The Khmer Rouge central committee held all the power. Sihanouk had been used by the Khmer Rouge, and now he was powerless to help his people, or himself. 

Ending his life of privilege, the KR took away all of his royal servants. His wife and son Sihamoni had to take over the cooking and cleaning of the palace residence. The former queen and humbled prince, were now their own housekeepers.

Many still wonder why Sihanouk made such a foolish political move. When he was still Prime Minister, his security forces had killed more than 1,500 Khmer Rouge. Did he really think that the KR leaders would forgive him, trust him, and make him a full partner? Was it arrogance, or was it just plain stupidity? Like so many men who who were hungry for power, Sihanouk had tried to hang onto power for too long.

Many palace buildings are restored

Once the Khmer Rouge won power, they went to work eliminating their remaining rivals. So they executed many Khmer princes and princesses - Sihanouk's own relatives. They would have killed King Sihanouk as well. But due to pressure from their main patrons, the Chinese government, the KR never went through with it.

As I'm about to leave the palace, I pass a traditional Khmer percussion band, playing drums, gongs, and xylophone-like instruments. Given the luxurious buildings I’ve just seen, I can’t help but notice the immense contrast to the world outside. The king and the rest of the elite continue to live in luxury, while the people of Cambodia remain among the poorest in Asia.

Outside the palace walls are two of the King’s royal guards, standing attentively at yellow guard shacks. I’m surprised at their uniform though. They wear fancy white dress coats, with old American style helmets, also painted white. Their trousers are blue, and they wear US style combat boots. I hold back a snicker as I notice that the coat on one guard, looks to be at least two sizes too big for him.

Both sentinels stand guard holding old American M-16s, with fixed bayonets. Neither have ammunition clips in their rifles. If this old palace is ever attacked again, the best these two could do is try to stab someone! It’s a good metaphor for the present monarchy itself. These days, kings in Cambodia have no real political power. Although impressive looking, they are outdated.

Palace royal guards, with unloaded weapons

When the communist years ended and the monarchy was revived in the 1990's, Sihanouk was declared king once again. However by that time, the old monarch was more of an adviser than power player. His days at the peak of Khmer power were long over. A democratic election, and later a coup, would determine the country’s real leadership.

In 2004, after being in and out of the Cambodian political scene for most of his life, the old king did the unexpected again. 

He abdicated! 

To succeed him, his son the prince was chosen, the present King Sihamoni. The new king had been an ambassador, and a dance teacher in Europe. 

Sihanouk finally died in 2012 at the ripe old age of 89. Despite his failures, many Khmers remained faithful to him to the end. Others despised him for leading the country into death and destruction under the Khmer Rouge. 

He remains the most controversial political figure in Cambodia's history. 

MAGNIFICENT PALACE OF CAMBODIA'S KING

The impressive throne room in the King's Palace, Phnom Penh

Back when I was in Vietnam, I saw what little remained of their pre-colonial royal kingdom. There were only the meager remains of a palace in Hue, and that had been destroyed years ago.  

Over in Laos, the last king's residence in Luang Prabang was a palace in name only. It was really only a cheap wooden substitute.  

Here in Phnom Penh, the king has a palace that Laos and Vietnam can only envy. Today I’m entering his palace, for a view of Cambodia’s royal world. 

Despite years of war and political instability in Cambodia, the monarchy still survives. Under the current constitution, Cambodia is a ‘kingdom’, (with some semblance of democracy.) Although no longer powerful, the king of the Khmers still has official ceremonial functions, and remains an integral part of traditional Cambodian life. 

Only a block from the river, I walk in the gate, and I’m awed. The royal palace complex is certainly the most elaborate and luxurious looking place in all of the captial. I’m surrounded by glorious buildings, as though transported to an ancient Asian past. Fantastic Khmer architecture is decorated with gold trim. Rooftops are peaked with stupa like towers. Colorful gardens are meticulously trimmed. Stylish French streetlights line the pathways. 

Old photo of King Sihanouk on palace platform, where king reviews parades

The first palace on this site was built in the 1400’s, with the present layout finished in 1870. About a third of the royal palace grounds are open to visitors like me, with the current king and his entourage occupying the rest. I gaze around at this magnificent site, the stuff of dreams. 

Approaching one of the larger buildings, I’m looking at what may be the most fantastic looking edifice in all of Cambodia. This may not be as well known as Angkor Wat, but it looks more spectacular. This is the throne room, a place of ceremonies and royal traditions. One of the larger palace buildings, this is where the current Cambodian king and those before him, had their coronation ceremonies. It shows the glory of traditional Khmer architecture, although it was rebuilt in the early 20th century. 

Khmer style towers, reach high into the sky, narrowing to pointed spires. The center tower has a large white face built into it, as if the spire is a tall ceremonial hat. Reaching to 180 feet high, I wonder whose face it is; probably the face of Buddha, or a Khmer king. Thin white pillars stretch around the long building. Golden snake-like naga heads rise from every corner of numerous rooftop layers. I’ve never seen that many nagas on one building. I can count 29, and that’s only from this side of the structure. Fanciful colors of gold, yellow, red, white, and green, present an image of royal grandeur. 

Workers lacking safety lines renovate palace building

Inside sits the golden throne of Cambodia’s current monarch. In addition to the rare coronation ceremonies, the king accepts the credentials of foreign diplomats from this throne, one of his official ceremonial duties. 

The throne room was finished in 1919 during French rule, when King Sisowath was the Khmer puppet ruler. An older wooden throne room built here before on this site,  wasn’t holding up to the tropical weather, or the aging process. 

Walking to the far side of the immense building, I’m surprised to see repairs underway by workmen on scaffolding, scraping away old paint. Scaffolding is a relative term; they are standing on bamboo poles lashed together, with few platforms for stability. All of the workers, men and women, wore neither safety harnesses, nor hard hats. Some wore the traditional red Khmer scarf wrapped around their heads like turbans. More worked on levels above, even from the towers on the roof. There were no harnesses at all. 

As they labored above, I wondered how often there were accidents on these sites from the lack of safety precautions. If these workers fell, how much, (or how little) would they receive for disability?

Many buildings need renovations

Repairs on this old palace complex have been going on for years. In fact, the palace and the previous king only barely survived the communist Khmer Rouge era. That monarch, Cambodia’s most famous leader, was known throughout the world as King Sihanouk. 

Born as a prince during the colonial era, Norodom Sihanouk was small of stature, with a notably high pitched voice. Handpicked by the French, they installed him as a figurehead king at the young age of 19. The colonials thought that his youth and inexperience would make him a fitting puppet king that they could easily control. 

They were wrong. 

Instead, Sihanouk became the country’s greatest advocate for independence. He eventually led Cambodia to freedom from French rule, not through violent rebellion, but through political maneuvering and peaceful negotiations. Cambodia became independent from France in 1953, even before Vietnam did. It was freedom from the French without communist revolution, and the Khmers adored him. Sihanouk soon became Prime Minister, and he would lead Cambodia for 17 years.

The popular king led his country on a peaceful path for as long as he could. But Cambodia and its king would later be overwhelmed by events far beyond his control. The Vietnam War would soon spill over its borders, bringing the king and his country down with it. 

King Sihanouk on visit to China (Archive photo)