Forgetting and Forgiving

This post begins with a news report from London (via Sunday Herald):

In the past few months, a new “craze” has bowled through London, like no craze as we formerly knew it.  ... This new wheeze, though, is a 21st-Century stormer: it’s called ‘Happy Slapping’. It’s a teenage boy’s sport, it involves technology and it goes like this: boy is excited about having a videophone the price of a second-hand car, boy sees 100 per cent oblivious stranger in a public place (usually much older, male or female), slaps them across the face, videos the horrified reaction and sends it to all his chums, instantaneously becoming the coolest wag alive, and girls want to hang on his every word. ... They’ve contemplated its origins – “from Europe”, apparently – where the sport involves beating up after-hours drunks, filming the event and resulting road-kill and awaiting their peer-judged “score”’.

What if you were one of those slapped in the face?  Would you forget?  Would you forgive?  That depends on what you are made of.

I will do nothing like the deep meditation of forgetting and forgiving in Alain Resnais' Nuit et Brouillard.  My exposure to that film was during my impressionable teenage years and I will never be able to forget, though it was never up to me as a non-Jew to forgive.  And I will also say nothing about whether the Chinese should forget or forgive the Japanese for what occurred during the Sino-Japanese War.

What I would like to do is to use a completely different example to show how forgetting and forgiving is very much a cultural thing.  I am only asking people not to impose their own cultural norms to tell others what they must or must not forget and/or forgive.  I assert that an outsider is not privileged to make that decision.

The principal character in this case is the individual known as Brother Duch.  He was an academic named Kang Keck Ieu before he was placed in charge of the S-21 prison under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia during 1975-1978.  You can read about my personal visit to S-21 (aka Tuol Sleng) at this previous post: Cambodia Travel Notes - Part 2 (Tuol Sleng).  As I said, I could have gone to Thailand or Sabah beach resorts instead, but I decided to challenge my own humanity.

The summary statistics for S-21 are:

The number of prisoners by year was as follows:

These figures, totaling 10,499 do not include an estimated 2,000 children.  There are only seven known survivors as the rest were executed at the killing fields (see this previous post Cambodia Travel Notes - Part 3 (Choeung Ek)).

I am going to quote extensively from the book titled Facing Death In Cambodia by Peter Maguire.  First, Maguire was able to interview one of the S-21 survivors, a sculptor named Im Chan.  Chan was arrested with his wife and sent to Tuol Sleng.  Chan's wife was sent to another room and he heard her screams: "'What have I done wrong?  What mistake have I made?  Have pity, I haven't got anyone else, I only live with my husband.'  I didn't hear any more of her."  As for Chan himself, he was tortured for twenty-six days, sometimes three times a day, and asked the same questions over and over: "Do you work for the CIA?" and "Do you work for the KGB?"  Im Chan was slated to be executed, but Brother Duch spared him because he could carve effigies of "Big Brother Number One" Pol Pot.  Chan managed to escape when the Vietnamese came.

About forty minutes into the interview, I tried to get the carver to talk more specifically about the individuals who ran S-21.  I asked him about the infamous Brother Duch.  Again, he seemed irritated, and his response surprised me: "I have a bad memory of Mr. Duch.  I do not want to slander Mr. Duch, I just want to tell the international community that I do not want the Khmer Rouge to come back because I have very bad memories about that."  Im Chan was a reluctant witness, especially compared with survivors I had interviewed.  When he spoke of Brother Duch, he inverted the Nuremberg defense, arguing that the S-21 commandant "only issued the orders" -- implying that because Duch was not a torturer, he was above the law.  Chan made it clear that he believed a vindictive settlement would be a mistake.

Besides the larger geopolitical problems posed by war crimes accountability, there were also important cultural considerations.  Cambodia is a Buddhist country where retribution comes in different forms.  The Buddha did not teach "an eye for an eye"; he, like Im Chan, transcended the simple desire for revenge.  Put simply Buddhists believe that one must break the cycle of vengeance in order to survive.  When I inquired as to the whereabouts of the interrogators and torturers, Chan replied, "Some of them have come back, and I would not like to meet them because I would really like to kill them.  I would like to see them punished."  Then he paused and reconsidered.  "But truly I cannot do like that because I am a Buddhist -- no revenge."  The carver said that he was very angry and would like to say something to Pol Pot, "but I would not know what to say.  The words would be difficult to find to express my anger."

After Im Chan returned to Phnom Penh in 1979, foreign journalists interviewed him and the other survivors.  For a few months he worked at Tuol Sleng Museum, but the strain grew too great, so he quit.  "The prison still makes me feel very bad.  When I see it every day, I remember my ordeal," Chan explained.  I asked the carver if he thought the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide was an important memorial for the Cambodian people.  Did it keep the memory of their national tragedy alive?  Chan's answer shocked me: "I do not want to have a museum like this.  For the people who lived through the Khmer Rouge it is all right, but for the young generation it is bad because they will want revenge and again it will be Khmer against Khmer.  I do not want a museum that keeps anger and bad memories alive -- Khmers will be against Khmers."

Talking about his memories was not easy for Im Chan, but he was very lucid as he described the pain that the recent past continued to cause him: "Every year during national celebration they invited me to the microphone to make a speech about the bad memories.  I did it every year for a while."  Again he paused; it was obvious that my questioning had taken him back to a troubling place.  His next line was nearly his last: "But every time I went [speak], I lost some of my life -- I shortened my life.  At the time I felt very bad that it was shortening my life.  I would like to forget all of this; I do not want to remember.  I would like to forget, so I never wrote my story.  Many journalists came to meet me, but I never wanted to meet them.  I only did it this time because of the museum director."

I turned off the tape recorder.  We thanked Mr. Chan and quietly left.

Of course, you must be interested as to how Brother Duch met the hand of God.  Here is Peter Maguire again:

One of the strangest episodes in the Khmer Rouge breakup was the emergence of S-21 prison commandant Brother Duch.  The former teacher who had overseen the systematic torture and executions of at least 14,000 people was living in Battambang and had become an evangelical Christian.  Baptized by American Pacific College missionaries in 1996, Duch now worked for an NGO called the American Refugee Committee.  British journalist Nic Dunlop had been fascinated by Duch and for many years carried Duch's picture whenever he traveled to Cambodia.  When Dunlop saw a familiar-looking buck-toothed, rabbit-eared man in a village near Samlot in 1999, he was almost certain it was the former Tuol Sleng commandant.  Duch introduced himself to Dunlop in English and said that he was a former schoolteacher from Phnom Penh named Hang Pin.  The Englishman returned to Bangkok and traveled back to Samlot a week later with American journalist Nate Thayer to help him verify the man's identity.

The reporters found "Hang Pin" in the same village, and when he began to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, Thayer cut the sermon short: "I believe that you also worked with the security services during the Khmer Rouge period?"  At first, "Hang Pin" tried to deny the charge, but he soon broke down: "It's God's will that you are here.  Now my future is in God's hands."  Unlike Pol Pot and the rest of the former Khmer Rouge leaders, Brother Duch admitted his guilt.  "My unique fault is that I did not serve God, I served men, I served communism.  I feel very sorry about the killings and the past.  I wanted to be a good communist."  When the journalist presented Duch with a memo he'd written, authorizing an interrogator to torture a prisoner to death, he apologized: "I am sorry.  The people who died were good people ... there were many who were innocent."  The former S-21 commandant admitted, "Whoever was arrested must die.  It was the rule of the party."  Duch said that he had had "great difficulty in my life, thinking that the people who died did nothing wrong."

One American Refugee Committee official was flabbergasted when Duch's identity was revealed to him before Dunlop and Thayer reported it in their respective newspapers in April 1999.  "We are in a state of shock frankly.  He was our best worker, highly respected in the community, clearly very intelligent and dedicated to helping the refugees."  Duch accepted his fate, admitted his guilt, and took responsibility for his actions: "I have done bad things before in my life.  Now it is time for les reprisals."  Duch's pastor, Christopher LaPel, remarked: "Duch is so brave to say 'I did wrong, I accept punishment.'  The Christian spirit has filled him to his heart.  Now, he is free from fear.  He is free -- not like Khieu Samphan or Nuon Chea, or other top leaders."  Many Cambodians were confused by this western religion that appeared to allow for an absolution of horrible transgressions.  A Cambodian working for another Christian NGO, fired for crashing a company car, observed: "That wall [into which I crashed] was fixed in one week.  I was broke and they fired me.  But Duch, he killed thousands and they forgive him.  I don't get it."

Do you get it?

Yesterday, an article appeared in the International Herald Tribune about China's involvement with the Khmer Rouge.  I should note that the United States was no better, as it too supported the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot:

(IHT)  Burying China's complicity in the killing fields.  By Jehangir S. Pocha.  May 3, 2005.

Outside this stark, but pastoral monument to the victims of Cambodia's gory Khmer Rouge years southwest of Phnom Penh, a group of young men played cards recently and listened to Chinese pop music.

Music from China seemed a bit incongruous, given that China, along with the United States and the Soviet Union, helped create Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Beijing, indeed, was the group's chief patron when it held power from 1975 through 1978 and killed more than 1.7 million people, a quarter of Cambodia's population, in its quest to create an agrarian Maoist utopia.

But China's role in this nation's grim experience now lies in the past - deep and more or less undisturbed, which is how both Beijing and many Cambodians prefer it.

"The Chinese are O.K.; they are our friends now," said Var Sareth, 21. "We can learn from them; we can work with them."  Var Sareth and his companions work as guides at the Cheung Ek monument, which is on the site of a Khmer Rouge labor camp 15 kilometers, or 9 miles from the capital, and is filled with the skulls of 8,000 people who perished there.  Though they diligently tell tourists about the shrine and how tall its dome is, they refrain, even when pressed, from talking about China's role in the events that led to Cambodia's killing fields.  Pan Samnang, 24, who sells postcards and other memorabilia to tourists, said that he could not dislike China because "all the businesses started by people in my family" recently have been bankrolled by Chinese money.

Indeed, China has emerged as a major supporter of Cambodia, after an ambitious $2.8 billion UN peacekeeping operation meant to help Cambodia get back on its feet ended in November 1993. Beijing has pumped nearly $300 million in aid into Cambodia since then, and last year, Chinese businesses invested $217 million in Cambodian industries like timber, textiles, and food processing, making China the largest foreign investor in Cambodia, according to the Center for the Development of Cambodia, in Phnom Penh.  That would have been "unbelievable" a decade ago, said Var Sareth. Back then, emotions over China's support of the Khmer Rouge were still raw.

China saw the Khmer Rouge "as a zealous national movement toppling a regime propped up by the U.S. and gave it very close support," said Sophie Richardson, who recently completed a dissertation at the University of Virginia, on Chinese-Cambodian relations. Beijing, which did not want the Soviet Union expanding into its backyard, supplied the Khmer Rouge with arms, food, material, training, technicians and, most important, international political support.

"Without China, the Khmer Rouge might never have become what it did," Richardson said.

When Pol Pot seized Phnom Penh in 1975, the city was emptied of people. They were sent to work in what became Cambodia's killing fields.  

"My husband died in fields, and my two boys were poisoned while working in a children's work team," said Mam Sophon, 58, a midwife at Angkor Chey Referral Hospital in Kampot province, about 130 kilometers, or 80 miles, southwest of Phnom Penh.  "My daughter was forced to carry rice all day and finally collapsed. They said blood came out from her mouth, and buttocks from overwork."

Richardson said, "The Chinese knew a lot, if not all, of what was going on, but they were not joking when they said 'domestic affairs are domestic affairs.' No matter how awful the Khmer Rouge regime got, the Chinese said they did not think it was their place to intervene."

China's non-interference policy largely continues to this day. China opposed UN economic sanctions against Sudan, where it has oil interests.  "Business is business," Zhou Wenzhong said last year when he was China's deputy foreign minister. "The situation in the Sudan is an internal affair."

The implications of China's position on the Khmer Rouge are set aside by many young Cambodians born after the Khmer Rouge years, who compose about half the country's population.  "To repair my life I need this," said Var Sareth, holding up the two crumpled U.S. dollar bills his previous client had handed him after a 30-minute tour. "China is China. We are small. To go forward we must look forward, not keep looking back."

Yet in families scarred by Cambodia's brutal civil war, which intensified when the United States began covertly bombing the country as part of its Vietnam campaign, the promise of money can be an inadequate balm.  "No one has paid for my loss," said Mam Sophon, as tears welled at the memory. "We will remember these bad things forever" if there is no public explanation of how and why all this happened.

Like many people in Cambodia, Mam Sophon is careful to clarify that her Buddhist beliefs direct her to seek only truth, not vengeance, from those who directly and indirectly tormented her life and nation. While this exchange of absolution for honesty has been partly satisfied by disclosures about Washington's role in supporting the Khmer Rouge, and Cambodia's own impending trial of senior Khmer Rouge leaders before a tribunal backed by the United Nations, China has remained mostly silent about its role in the violence that ravaged this idyllic country.

"China does not have to take responsibility for the Khmer Rouge's domestic policy and has no responsibility to explain what China did at that time," said Professor Zhang Xi Zhen of the Asian Studies Department at Peking University, in Beijing. "Our leaders, from Zhou Enlai to advisers in Phnom Penh, tried to persuade them to change these kind of policies. They just didn't listen."

China, as well as the United States, Britain, Singapore,and Thailand, continued supporting the Khmer Rouge even after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 and put an end to the devastation Pol Pot's regime had unleashed. 

"To help the Khmer Rouge, China even launched the border war against Vietnam" in 1979, Zhang said. "It might seem hard to understand today, but don't forget that at that time Vietnam was very close to the Soviet Union and together they wanted to control South-East Asia. That would have been a grave threat to China."  Zhang said the combination of China's own revolutionary zeal and its ambitions to become a great power might have blinded it in Cambodia.

While China did not commit the Khmer Rouge crimes, its reluctance to discuss its support may seem to run counter to the recent admonishing of Japan by Premier Wen Jiabao of China, who said nations must "face up to history" if they want to be full and normal members of the global community. But despite the inconsistency, Beijing is not likely to budge, said Jin Linbo, director of Asia Pacific Studies at the China Institute of Foreign Studies in Beijing.  "I don't think Chinese leaders are ready to reflect fully on China's actions and history," Jin said.