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Epoch Times
28-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
When Pol Pot Read a Book on Marx
Commentary Recent polling reveals a startling development: one in four young people has a One in four is, by chance, around the same percentage of Cambodians who were murdered by the Khmer Rouge government's policies of political torture, arbitrary execution, forced labor, mass resettlement, and brutal, intentional starvation in the 1970s. Between two and three million people were killed in just three years under a 'political experiment' run by young people who were, unbelievable as it may seem, convinced they were remaking the country into a peaceful, egalitarian utopia. When Saloth Sâr, like many idealistic students at Harvard or Yale, saw Western capitalism as a corrosive force. He believed it was stripping Asian peasants of their nobility and moral worth. He and his friends wanted to create a new national identity and trigger a 'Year Zero' event, after which all people would be equal and the needs of the poor and weak would be addressed. This was 1959: world wars and colonialism had torn Asia apart. Saloth believed the Cambodian people deserved better than to be a puppet state of Japan or Vietnam, or a bombing buffer zone for western militaries. He had returned home to work as a teacher, and was emulating his fellow Marxist and Chinese neighbor, Mao Zedong, when he helped formalize the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Related Stories 11/29/2024 5/8/2025 He became convinced that to return people to their natural innocence and equality, his society must be purged of the corrupting influences of banks, factories, hospitals, universities, and other modern influences. Anyone who was highly educated (besides his inner circle, of course) and anyone who chose to live in a city or practice a profession, clearly thought he was too good to be a subsistence farmer. Saloth Sar and his friends saw it as their responsibility to punish and reeducate such people to usher in an agrarian golden age of egalitarianism. Only after returning to Cambodia would he take on the name by which he is now known, though culturally, it is a placeholding non-name, akin to Jane Doe, John Q. Public, or Joe Schmoe: Pol Pot. The Communist Party of Kampuchea (the name for Cambodia in Pol Pot's native Khmer language) would become known to the rest of the world as the Khmer Rouge, a horrifically murderous regime that massacred millions. But it didn't begin that way. The mild-mannered farmer's son fell in love with a political vision of his country and his people, and he believed in that vision so fiercely that he would destroy both trying to perfect it. To label Pol Pot and his close cohort as murderous psychopaths risks, as Calling what happened in Cambodia 'genocide' also risks obscuring the banality of that violence and the twisted idealism of the communist cause. Pol Pot had no interest in ending the genetic legacy of the Khmer people; on the contrary, he saw himself as perfecting his beloved people, purging only those who would undermine the revolution or were insufficiently committed to the future, perfect society. As the communist regime failed (as all communist regimes do), the search for scapegoats and traitors turned more and more people into acceptable sacrifices for the greater good. Christian Vollmert/Shutterstock And Pol Pot could not have done such horrors alone. Thousands of people helped him. Once the vision of a perfect, Communist Kampuchea took hold, many people—even as they who saw their own families murdered, their children kidnapped, their homes burned, their friends exiled, their cities emptied—would continue to believe in the dewy, sepia-tone vision that had begun germinating in intellectual salons in Paris. The intellectuals who survived defended their participation in the communist 'political experiment' that made them literal slaves to the state. Even as the Khmer Rouge abolished the notion of the family and made children into Party property, some believed. When peasants were stripped of clothing and forced into 'To keep you is no benefit,' went the Khmer Rogue slogan, 'to destroy you is no loss.' The very ideas of freedom, individuality, creativity, intellectual self-betterment—they had become anathema to being a good Cambodian. Freiderich Hayek wrote in ' Stephen Barnes/Shutterstock Money was abolished. Mass communications—radio, newspapers, even public gatherings—were eliminated. Private travel was banned, cutting people off from one another completely. Religious practices, including Buddhism, were also banned. The Khmer Rouge controlled all sources of information, and few could resist the ideological narrative of government power being used to reorder humanity for its own benefit. Those who tried to resist were imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, or executed. 'To keep you is no benefit,' went the Khmer Rogue slogan, 'to destroy you is no loss.' In the intellectual echo-chamber of Marxist universities, a toxic narrative of 'us' versus 'them,' and a 'Our policy was to provide an affluent life for the people,' Pol Pot Thousands more One architect of the Khmer killing fields, Khieu Samphan said, returning to the capital 20 years after the slaughter: 'I would like to say sorry to the people. Please forget the past and please be sorry for me.' Such was the recompense for a terroristic regime, what The Guardian called, 'a four year reign of homicidal terror that, even in a century featuring such butchers as Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, was almost too shocking to believe.' But the world didn't just look away. Many around the world, experimenting with mid-century Marxism, wanted to believe in Pol Pot's vision for Cambodia, too. Western powers, already exhausted by proxy wars in South East Asia, watched with indifference. And western journalists, many of whom were Marxists themselves, reported glowingly of Pol Pot's 'experiments.' 'It remains a mystery to me that we could have been so fooled,' wrote Gunnar Bergström, a Swedish journalist who took a propaganda tour in 1978. He said, in a later apology, 'we were fooled by the smiles, but maybe most of all by our own Mao-glasses.' In ' The Road to Serfdom,' Hayek reassured readers that the intellectuals and central planners of our acquaintance 'would recoil if they became convinced that the realization of their program would mean the destruction of freedom.' But Saloth Sar is one poignant reminder that few leaders can be stopped, or will stop themselves, from imposing their tyrannical will 'for our own good.' And that too many of us will be willing to look away. Radicals and revolutionaries might capture the hearts of young people, but they cannot be allowed to capture centralized power. Only a respect for the individual and a respect for civil liberties can shield us from the 'good intentions' of idealistic social planners with all their devastating, murderous, totalitarian consequences. From the Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
CBC
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
The Sunday Magazine for April 20, 2025
This week on The Sunday Magazine with Piya Chattopadhyay: The federal election campaign enters its final stretch With two debates down and one week to go in the federal election campaign, The Economist's Rob Russo, Le Devoir's Emilie Nicolas and Real Talk's Ryan Jespersen join Chattopadhyay to break down the state of the race and stakes for major party leaders as the 2025 election nears the finish line. Finding the funny in news satire when real life is no joke For people who work in the business of political satire and news comedy, there's no shortage of rich source material these days. But misinformation, disinformation and leaders who can seem stranger than fiction are complicating the craft. Chattopadhyay speaks with two veterans of the scene – The Beaverton 's Luke Gordon Field and a founding member of The Onion, Christine Wenc – about the challenges of skewering the news today, and how satire can help people make sense of the absurdity of real life. What the first and last words we speak say about us We may think of them as the most cherished or meaningful words we'll ever speak: Our first words as a baby, and our last words before we die. But as linguist Michael Erard explores in his book Bye Bye, I Love You, the significance of them varies according to culture and history, and their meaning is often supplied more by the listener than the speaker. He tells Chattopadhyay that they are nevertheless truly powerful, marking the beginning and end of our life connecting with others. 50 years ago, the Khmer Rouge began its reign of terror in Cambodia. Justice remains elusive April 17, 1975, marked the start of Year Zero, the attempt by the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot to "reset" Cambodia and fashion it into a new Communist society by purging swaths of culture, traditions and people. An estimated 1.5 to two million Cambodians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled to other countries, including Canada. The Sunday Magazine senior producer Howard Goldenthal looks at the legacy of that time, and how far we've come in attempts to pursue justice for war crimes since then.
CBC
17-04-2025
- Politics
- CBC
50 years ago, the Khmer Rouge began its reign of terror in Cambodia. Justice remains elusive
WARNING: This article includes a discussion of genocide and references to extreme violence. It's been 50 years since Bokhara Bun's carefree childhood of climbing trees and making mischief in Phnom Penh turned into a nightmare. The era when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia remains vivid in his mind. His early recollections of hopeful citizens welcoming black-garbed soldiers shift into memories of a disorienting evacuation at gunpoint into jungle labour camps during the sweltering Cambodian New Year season. Life-altering horror after horror followed as soldiers severed families and killed indiscriminately. Even starving children were punished as traitors for "stealing" fruit or a drink of palm tree sap from the wild instead of bringing it to the communal camps. "There's a lot of things that … you see but you cannot touch, you cannot eat ... [because] you're not sharing the food with the rest of the commune," Bun, who now lives in Gatineau, Que., recalled to The Sunday Magazine. One of his sisters was caught in that situation and brutally beaten to the point of permanent brain damage. His parents and older siblings were forced to watch but could not intervene, he said. Any challenge would have meant the execution of their entire family. April 17, 1975, marked the start of Year Zero, the attempt by the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot to "reset" the nation and fashion it into a new Communist society by mercilessly purging wide swaths of Cambodian culture, traditions and people. Today, survivors and people with connections to Cambodia reflect on the impact of the Khmer Rouge's nearly four-year rule — particularly how the drive to prosecute Pol Pot and his top leaders helped pave the way for the International Criminal Court. It also is a reminder of how justice remains elusive today. Promises turned into catastrophe By the mid-1970s, Cambodia was deeply destabilized, according to Craig Etcheson, who has extensively studied, documented and written about the Khmer Rouge organization. Embroiled in the neighbouring Vietnam War — Cambodians terrorized in particular by earlier U.S. bombing raids targeting Viet Cong bases and supply lines on their soil — the country had also suffered a half-decade dictatorship under military commander-turned-politician Lon Nol. The Khmer Rouge sold the beleaguered people on its vision of change: "a new kind of Communist party that wasn't going to make the same mistakes [previous Communist parties] had made," Etcheson said. Instead, catastrophe ensued. Cities were largely abandoned, their residents forced into rural labour crews to radically recreate Cambodia as a classless, communal, agrarian society. The regime shuttered schools, abolished money, land ownership and traditional family structures, banned religion and destroyed temples and artworks. Targets for persecution and execution were widespread: ethnic and religious minorities, artists, professionals like doctors, lawyers, teachers, and anyone remotely deemed intellectual, including people who wore glasses or were able to speak a foreign language. "They destroyed Cambodian culture right down to the roots. They destroyed the country's economy and all of its institutions. Laid waste to a lot of the land itself," said Etcheson, who later served as a chief of investigations for the office of the prosecution at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a Cambodian and international tribunal established in 2001 to seek justice for the Khmer Rouge's atrocities. The regime was ousted in early 1979 but the suffering continued. As Cambodians worked to rebuild the ravaged nation in the 1980s and 1990s, remaining Khmer Rouge members continued to oppose the Vietnamese-backed government that followed it. Canada's role in international justice The 1990s was a period that saw the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and brutal violence from conflicts in the Balkans and in Rwanda. Alongside those events, however, was a new collegiality in the foreign policy landscape — and an impetus to build an international tribunal for adjudicating war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, recalls Lloyd Axworthy, who was Canada's foreign affairs minister from 1996 to 2000. Against that backdrop, the U.S. approached Canada in 1997 with a proposition: a "snatch-and-grab mission for Pol Pot" ahead of figuring out "a proper judicial process" for the Khmer Rouge leader, Etcheson said. Canada was tapped as a potential partner due to its law allowing for the extradition and/or prosecution of those accused abroad of war crimes or crimes against humanity. After extensive legal analysis, Canada declined, Axworthy said. "At the time, caution was the watchword," Axworthy said. But another factor was Canada's failed case against Imre Finta, he added. The Second World War-era, Hungarian police captain resettled in Canada after having been convicted at home for helping to send thousands of Jews to concentration camps. "The whole idea of bringing [Pol Pot] to justice fell through, and I regret that … but learned from it," Axworthy said. "And I think that's what gave us even more impetus to get involved in the development of the International Criminal Court." By the following year, Pol Pot had died of natural causes at a Thai-Cambodian border camp, and the Rome Statute — which established the International Criminal Court — was adopted by member nations around the globe. Axworthy describes the court as an important first step in "establishing a stronger rule of law and around that principle of personal, individual accountability" — versus state accountability — for the most serious international crimes. It was hoped that it might even deter future atrocities, he said. If the court had already been established, Pol Pot could have been apprehended and "brought to a place like The Hague," Axworthy mused. "The court actually gives us the vehicle that we didn't have." Around the same time, Cambodia's leadership — with United Nations assistance — had started moving ahead on what would be a years-long process of trying senior-level members of the Khmer Rouge. Retired Ottawa police superintendent Isobel Granger already had other international peacekeeping missions and investigations under her belt when, in 2015, the then-staff sergeant was assigned to Cambodia. There, she interviewed survivors, collected physical evidence that was still emerging decades later and mapped crime sites to build the strongest case possible against surviving leaders who had given the orders. She was frequently the first person many survivors had ever opened up to about that era. One woman reluctantly shared a long-buried story of being inconsolable at being left behind because there was no room on a truck. She later learned she'd escaped a trip to the killing fields. Granger recalled another conversation that left a man in his 50s curled up like a small boy, consumed by his memories. Granger, who has also travelled to Rwanda and stood before burial sites in Kigali, said it's important for people to come to terms with what survivors of genocide have experienced. "The veneer of civilization is very thin," she said. "People should actually, if they can, go to those places to see what can happen when we don't see each other as human beings." Justice 'a rather elusive notion' After the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia was led for decades by Hun Sen, a one-time Khmer Rouge commander who later defected. He continues to head the country's senate, though his son took over as prime minister in 2023. In some ways, Hun Sen allowed international investigators surprising access over the years, said Etcheson, but having pacified and reintegrated Khmer Rouge members into Cambodian society, he also hampered efforts at prosecuting beyond a handful of the movement's top brass. The ECCC eventually convicted three officials before the tribunal concluded in 2022. Justice, noted Etcheson, "is a rather elusive notion." "The entire [judicial] process was something of a large-scale, socio-political experiment to find out how much justice we could get in Cambodia. And we found out: some. Not as much as many people wanted." 'How do you find justice?' Back in Gatineau, Bokhara Bun echoed Granger's sentiments that people need to remember the atrocities perpetuated in his homeland. During the four years of the Khmer Rouge reign, an estimated 1.5 million to two million people — a quarter or more of Cambodia's population at the time — were executed or died from starvation, malnutrition or illness. "You were learning day by day to survive and you're constantly in the fear of being called to be executed," Bun said. "If you hear your name, [you're] already dead." He remembers stumbling into a ditch hidden under a densely boughed mango tree that was filled with bodies. The youngster had been tasked with herding cattle and one pulled him into it. Fearful of being discovered at the ghastly site, he immediately clambered out, pulling the cow with him to go find water where he could wash away the gore. "That killing [of] another human without remorse.… That's the thing that [I'm] afraid of the most: that this story can come back again," he said. Cambodia became "the worst hell on Earth," he said.
