Cambodia: more than temples and Toul Sleng

In USA, there are some cities that are now forever defined by shootings at a high school. For many people, Cambodia is defined by its own tragedy of the Khmer Rouge. And that tragedy, like car crashes, draws people to see what happened. But imagine yourself to be from Columbine or to be in a car crash. Would you want the world to come and watch you?

The Missing Picture was recently nominated for an Oscar (best foreign language film), dealing with the director’s experience of the Khmer Rouge. It is a superb film but I felt uneasy asking my colleagues if they have seen it or heard about it because of its’ subject matter. I can understand why some Cambodians may just not want to talk about it.

There is a beer here that promotes being proud and drinking their beer and after years of war, it is understandable to find something that pride can be focussed upon. In Cambodia, pride is focussed on temples from the Angkor Empire when Angkor (ancient Cambodia) covered an area much larger than present day Cambodia. However, I think that sometimes the pride is not just for the temples but also for the Angkor Empire itself, the power it had and the area it covered.

Pride in the past can lead to a desire for a return to the past, which is not always possible. Indeed, it may not always be desirable as it can stoke past rivalry or enmity. It is important to find new things to be proud of.

Claire works for Amrita Performing Arts, which encourages classically trained dancers to explore the creation of a Cambodian form of contemporary dance.  Last week, they performed pieces choreographed by their own dancers to a hall packed with Cambodians and foreigners.

Traditional dance involves creating shapes such as these hands and feet. It is unbelievable how far they can bend fingers and hands. The shapes can be quite beautiful. This is an Amrita dancer in rehearsal.

A piece by two brothers explored their relationship growing up so close but realising that they might not stay so close forever. The final piece, Religion, mixed hip hop, contemporary and classical dance, and dancers, in a message (as I took it) that truth can appear in many guises and that each dancer (or person) finds a dance that is true for them. Each form can be celebrated.

Spontaneous applause, laughter and wonder erupted during the dances as the dancers showed grace, skill, emotion, athleticism, humour and understanding. Cambodia can remain proud of its traditional Apsara dancing but dance can evolve to become something new, created by contemporary Cambodians. You can see videos of their performances online. 

The athleticism shown by the dancers appears to be present in many Cambodians, which has always impressed me. It is hard not to be impressed watching small people leap skywards before powerfully spiking a volleyball down over the net. Similarly, I am in wonder when I see three people balanced on a bicycle cycling along a busy road – and even turning corners!

Athleticism and balance are to the fore in Phare PonleuSelpak, a Cambodian acrobatic circus. I have seen them many times now and each time there are moments when I laugh out loud in disbelief at what I am seeing. After one show during which males had performed gymnastic type acrobatics that I had thought possible only by Olympic gold medallists, I was gobsmacked to learn that they were aged 14 or 15.  Check out these films for extreme fire skipping and mesmerising juggling. 

Be it young dancers or acrobats, Cambodians do not just have to find pride in the past, they can also find it in the present.

Gordon

Us = Cambodia, Them = Vietnam

It happened when I was out with a Khmer friend for dinner. We were sitting at a street corner discussing the election and my friend was talking about how the Vietnamese controlled the Cambodian government. She had heard that they controlled the Lao government too. As she talked more, I realised that for Cambodians, the Vietnamese were "the other" who were feared.

We form social bonds by creating common identities, and one of the most powerful can be the sense of nation. This identity allows us to claim things for ourselves that we had nothing to do with. For instance, when Mo Farah won the Olympics, I was delighted because "we" had won a gold medal. It even allows us to claim things for ourselves that happened before we were born. "We", being James Watt and every Scottish or possibly British person since, invented the steam engine. We even feel proud of ourselves for this. Well done us. 

The identity of the "we" can be strengthened by not just defining who the "us" are, but also by defining "them", or "the other". We even sometimes give "them" names. In Cambodia, they have given the Vietnamese the name Yuon. The Cambodian opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, has consistently decried the influence of the Yuon in Cambodia during his speeches, which appears to energise his supporters and the public.

Despite various conversations with friends and reading about politics here, I only recently grasped the depth of hate for the Vietnamese that exists within the Cambodian psyche. We were watching a film that included interviews with the late King Father Sihanouk. After Cambodian-Vietnamese forces defeated the Khmer Rouge in 1979, freeing him from their arrest in the process, he sided with the Khmer Rouge against them. He helped persuade countries that the Khmer Rouge should keep Cambodia's seat at the UN, rather than the seat be given to the Vietnamese installed government. For him, there was no other option but to side with the Khmer Rouge even if they had killed some of his children.

Vietnamese sign: "Determined to firmly safeguard national sovereignty"

This intrigued me and made me begin to understand more what people were thinking during the civil war of the1980s, and also now. But I was still not prepared for what the King Father said next. He said that he would rather have died as a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge than his country be saved by the Vietnamese. 

The man who became King, achieved independence for his country, ruled as Prime Minister, saw sons and daughters die, returned as King to a unify a destroyed country, said that he loved his country so much that he would rather that the Khmer Rouge continued its destruction of Cambodia, than Cambodia be saved by Vietnam.  I don't think there could be a clearer sense of "us" and "them" than this.

It is this division that is evident in today's politics and is galvanising opposition to the Prime Minister,  who first became Prime Minister during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia in the 1980s. Cambodians cite history showing that Vietnam has previously tried to take over territory by movements of people first followed by formal occupation. Cambodians fear this now because of Vietnamese people in Cambodia whilst believing that the people of Vietnam today are closely linked to the people of Vietnam hundreds of years ago; just like I believe that I am linked to a guy who invented the steam engine in 1765.

Hoi An, Viet Nam: These girls sell little lanterns that float on the river.  Who can resist buying one? Depends on what you think about child labour I guess.

Feeding this fear is the real loss of some territory to Vietnam, for instance the island of Phu Quoc, and large Vietnamese companies controlling industries such as rubber and timber. Sam Rainsy has called for immigration controls of Vietnamese people despite only being two years away from Cambodia and Vietnam becoming part of an ASEAN community. This community, like the EU, seeks to forge a new common identity, a new "we". And in this "we", people will be free to live and work in any of the ASEAN countries they wish to.

The driving motive of European integration was (and still is for some) that nations will have more security because countries i.e. France and Germany, are less likely to go to war with each other. Nations are protected not by strengthening separate identities but by retaining them whilst promoting a second common "we" identity. Some would say that it's worked. Peace for Cambodia might come through this route rather than one emphasising difference.

Gordon

Surviving the Killing Fields

If you only ever read one blog post of ours, then read this one. It is one man’s story that represents a country’s history, and explains its present ails.

Dara is our language teacher. He was born in 1960 and his father was an officer in the Cambodian army when General Lon Nol was in power from 1970-1975. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge overthrew Lon Nol after a long civil war that claimed 500,000 lives.

Dara - our teacher and survivor of Khmer Rouge

Dara’s father, like most of the nation, welcomed the Khmer Rouge believing they would bring peace. As such, Dara’s parents called their newly born baby “Peace” but there would be no peace for decades.

For four years, the Khmer Rouge divided families, drove people from their homes and worked them to death in labour camps. People survived on a few grains of rice and whatever grass, tree bark and fruit they could find without guards seeing them. One of Dara’s brothers did not survive the starvation and his father who was separated was never seen again.

Dara was moved from his work camp to a prison where he was blindfolded and marched out into fields. He felt the grass beneath his feet and knew that he was entering ‘the killing fields’.  However, his walk continued so that instead of feeling a rifle pressed against his head, he felt stones under his feet and he was back in prison.

He was alive but knew he would be dead soon unless he escaped. So he jumped a barbed wire fence, dodged bullets and didn’t stop running until he found his way back to his mother.

There he was forced to work in camps and did so until Vietnam began their invasion to defeat the Khmer Rouge. Dara fought the Khmer Rouge for three months seeing three of his friends blown up by a mine just a few yards in front of him.

In less than the four years of Khmer Rouge rule, before they were overthrown in 1979, approximately 2million had died – more than a quarter of the entire population.

And still there was no peace as civil war continued throughout the 1980s between rival factions.

First, Dara lived in a camp near the Thai border where he walked 60km each way to take 15kg of food back to his mother and brothers. This was until the civil war forced Dara and his family to become refugees living in a refugee camp of 350,000 people just over the Thai border.

Even there Dara was not safe. There were three refugee camps and each one was controlled by one of the factions fighting in Cambodia. Under a pseudonym, he started a petition calling for neutral control of the refugee camps but, in 1990, his real name and photo were published by Western journalists covering the story.

Dara had to flee for his life. And the only place he could run to was back to Phnom Penh and the heart of the civil war. Family and friends would not hide him as refugees from the border were thought of as enemies by authorities. He turned himself in and after days of imprisonment and questioning he was let go.

For twenty years Dara’s life had been the war and death that engulfed Cambodia. He began working as a teacher in the 1990s and Cambodia began to find peace. But this was not quite peace as we know it – there were still tanks being blown up in cities, rockets and guns being fired, and too many people dying.

Looking at Dara and Cambodia today, you may never know their history. The pain and loss are not immediately apparent meaning their effects can be un-noticed.

Dara with us at a thank you lunch - happier times

But I am learning it affects everything. I once scolded myself for asking a man of my age what his parents did - it was highly likely they had died under the Khmer Rouge. But more importantly, it affects the rules of this society, how people behave and how they work. Death literally touched every family in this country and that will take a long time to heal.

Gordon