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 مسؤلى حقول الموت فى كمبوديا بين 1975 - 1979. حان وقت الحساب!!!
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INDEPTH: KILLING FIELDS
After the Killing Fields
CBC News Online | November 5, 2003
Reporter: Stephen Puddicombe | CBC Radio Dispatches
Depending on who you talk to, between 1½ million and two million people were killed, starved or worked to death during the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge.
Kong Doung was a Khmer Rouge back then. His revolutionary name was Brother Number 17.
"When I look back to that, it was my dark time, my very dark days. No love, no religion, only duty to my leader and country."
During the 1970s he was the voice of the Khmer Rouge in the camps and on the radio – the model for the guy who, more than 20 years ago, spewed out party slogans over loudspeakers, as seen in the movie The Killing Fields.
"But then my change to accept God, I look so very different," he says. "We have more confidence in our life. We put those dark times behind us."
It's not an easy thing to do. Where Doung lives, almost everyone is related to a former leader or soldier of the Khmer Rouge.
Pailin is a mountainous region on the Thai border. It's home to 40,000 people, lush with greenery and polluted with land mines from 20 years of civil war.
But a strange thing has happened in Pailin over the past several years. More than a dozen Christian churches from various denominations have sprung up.
A growing number of former Khmer Rouge followers have become devout Christians, renouncing their past and dedicating themselves to God and Jesus.
"So we knew in our hearts no people come to arrest us because we believe God in our hearts," he says.
It's not so simple for some Cambodians, young men like Sokhalay, born during the Khmer Rouge era. His mother and father were forced together in one of the camps for the sole purpose of having a child.
Sokhalay lives very much in the present. Walking through a night market in Phnom Penh, he savours the smell of grilled meat from the snack vendors, the strains of music in the distance.
Sokhalay is also a devout Christian.
He agrees that Christianity teaches forgiveness, but he says crimes like those committed by the Khmer Rouge cannot be erased just because all of a sudden you believe in God.
"I think they know themselves that they have done very bad things in their lives," Sokhalay says, "so becoming a Christian is like helping themselves to release from all these mistakes they made, but according to the law they should be responsible for what they did because millions of people in their time died and were killed and tortured by them so they should be responsible for this....if they are willing to accept or confess for their debt and they go to court, that's a good thing."
There are plans for a war-crimes tribunal in Cambodia. The details of the tribunal are still being worked out. But there will be at least five judges, three from Cambodia and two international. There has been no decision on who will be tried or when the trials will start. So far only two former Khmer Rouge leaders are in jail.
Kek Galibreau believes responsibility under the law is central to this issue. She works as a human rights activist in an office overlooking a busy street in Phnom Penh She believes the international tribunal is important in ways that go beyond the specific crimes it will judge.
"If this tribunal goes well, credible, provides justice to people, we can take this example to tell the new generation 'you see, we fight against impunity. They did very bad things 20 years ago but still they can be brought to justice.' It's symbolic," she says.
Kong Doung understands the symbolism of the tribunal. He knows that his conversion to Christianity strikes some people as a way of avoiding responsibility for his past.
But Brother Number 17 says God saved his life, and he's repaying the debt. He says he's not looking for a way out, or an excuse for what the Khmer Rouge did.
"If God desires, he will punish me for my Khmer Rouge days, but so far God is merciful with me...from that time I have to pray with my heart I accept God in my heart in everything I am doing. God will know and now I am broadcasting Jesus, about Bible books to help the population understand everything about God.…God protects those who serve and I am his servant."
The reality, though, is that Cambodia is a Buddhist country. That religion is in evidence everywhere.
People stop along the highway to pray to Buddha, dozens of people chant in front of the little gold sparkling shrines. The air is thick with the smoke from incense.
Steven Park is in his 40s, a practising Buddhist who takes his religion seriously.
In the 1970s he was forced to fight with the Khmer Rouge. One day he was caught stealing food. He was arrested, beaten, tortured, wrapped in a fishnet and thrown into a river to drown.
He saw friends and family members butchered by the Khmer Rouge.
Yet his religious beliefs sustain him.
"Even though we are not monks, Buddha teach us how to be compassionate, love not hate, and be patient. I know the hardship of the people, even I myself, we have all gone through it. I was tortured myself so these people are not very different from me, the image of the feelings are about the same."
He pauses for a moment to look at some kids playing football in huge puddles during a quick slashing rainstorm that lasts only minutes.
He realizes that it's difficult for most people to get their minds around his attitude. Having been tortured, seen family and friends killed, yet forgiving the people responsible.
"Many Khmer Rouge themselves were on the field to fight with the enemy. When they get home their parents was took away to be killed. What is the reality, they are also part of the victim. That's why I mentioned to you about Brother 17. It's very good that he found his own way to believe in religion to make him feel better," Park says.
"I think that if they believe in God, God will help all of them. What things they did in the last time, in the fields, in the prison, if they make good God will help them and if they make no good during that time God cannot help them. So anything by lies will not be helped by God."
For some Cambodians, no amount of Christian atonement, or Buddhist forgiveness, or even justice at the hands of a tribunal, can ever be enough.
Many of Sokon's family members were killed during the Khmer Rouge regime.
Sokon is 50 now, a part-time radio reporter and a practising Buddhist, normally a smiling, outgoing man.
During the summer election campaign he sat down to dinner with several former Khmer Rouge leaders. He was unusually quiet that evening, barely touching his food, rarely looking up.
"I am a Buddhist, I am devout, but sitting there at the table with former Khmer Rouge leaders laughing and joking as if nothing happened… I cannot forgive them for what they did. I cannot forgive."
International human rights officials believe the war-crimes tribunal can be a catharsis for people like Sokon, and help Cambodians come to terms with what happened.
Tuol sleng, or Office 21, in the capital, Phnom Penh, was a notorious prison during the Khmer Rouge's time in power.
It's now a museum of the Khmer Rouge genocide, a grey two-storey building, kept largely intact. Barbed wire covers many of its windows. Twenty-one thousand people were tortured and killed here under Khmer Rouge rule. Only seven prisoners survived, including Vann Nath.
"I show you blood stains on the floor," he says "Those victims they killed by cutting the throat before they run away from here. You can see the pictures about torture in the prison. You can see all these paintings were painted by Mr. Vann Nath."
He doesn't know why he was arrested and brought to the prison, but he was tortured, forced to sleep on concrete with hundreds of other prisoners.
Vann Nath's life was spared after guards found out he could paint. His job for the next year was to paint portraits of Brother Number 1, Pol Pot.
During his year in Office 21 Vann Nath saw acts of cruelty he says no person should see. Years after he was set free, he used those memories to paint the gruesome history of this prison.
Vann Nath is also a devout Buddhist. But his religious beliefs have not watered down his desire to see the Khmer Rouge leaders brought to justice.
"For me, the victims, we cannot forget this, because we have nightmares. That is up to them if they want to forget, it is their right, but we cannot forget it because the dream is haunting us," he says. "I am a good Buddhist but religion itself does not prevent someone from living up to their responsibilities, neither me nor the Khmer Rouge."
"You know from day and night we have to pray God to wake up in the morning and thanks God that you give us another day for to live. At nighttime, oh thanks God, you get me another night to sleep. Please give us a peaceful sleep. But it's never. You sleep with dreams, bad dream."
Steven Park believes all Cambodia suffered under the Khmer Rouge. Many who committed acts of brutality were also victims of equal cruelty. How can you pass sentence on a bloodbath?
He's not sure if anything can help the victims of those crimes erase the memories and give his people a night of peaceful sleep at last.
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Khalid Kodi
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست