A Nation with a Short-sighted Leader

By Justin C. Sok
7th June 2013

 The CTN, owns and operates by the CPP, which has recently sensationalized and twisted reality to give us something we can sink our teeth into, something “inciting” and “scandalous.”  While a numskull on the CTN cable thinks that his superior is so innate genius, proposing to draft a “law to punish individuals or groups deny atrocities occurred during Khmer Rouge era,” the public, on the other hand, thinks otherwise.   Regardless of the facts, the clown on the CTN cable, continues to gibberish none stop.

I am asserting the following important piece: Dr. David Chandler, Professor and Historian, in his book, “Voices from S-21 – Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret prison”, page 2-6, summed up the political manipulation and propaganda ramification by the Vietnamese authorities, which deliberately attempted to organize Tuol Sleng Center as the so-called the “The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide Crime,” for the political purpose of deceiving the Cambodian people, and as well as, the international community:

Sensing the historical importance and the propaganda value of their discovery, the Vietnamese closed off the site, cleaned it up, and began, with Cambodian help, to examine its voluminous archive. 

A Cambodian survivor of S-21, Ung Pech, became the director of the museum when it opened in 1980.  He held the position for several years and traveled with Mai Lam to France, the USSR, and Eastern Europe in the early 1980s to visit museums and exhibits memorializing the Holocaust.  Although Mai Lam remained in Cambodia until 1988, working at Tuol Sleng much of the time, he concealed his “specialist-consultant” role from outsiders, creating the impression that the initiatives for the museum and its design had come from the Cambodian victims rather than from the Vietnamese—an impression that he was eager to correct in his interviews in the 1990’s.

In February or March 1979, Mai Lam, a Vietnamese colonel who was fluent in Khmer and had extensive experience in legal studies and museology, arrived in Phnom Penh.  He was given the task of organizing the documents found at S-21 into an archive and transforming the facility into what David Hawk has called “a museum of the Cambodian nightmare.”  The first aspect of Mai Lam’s work was more urgent than the second.  It was hoped that documents found at the prison could be introduced as evidence in the trials of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, DK’s minister of foreign affairs, on charges of genocide.  These took place in Phnom Penh in August 1979.  Although valuable information about S-21 was produced at the trials, none of the documents in the archive provided the smoking gun that the Vietnamese and PRK officials probably hoped to fine.  No document linking either Pol Pot or Ieng Sary directly with orders to eliminate people at S-21 has ever been discovered, although the lines of authority linking S-21 with the Party Center (mochhim pak) have been established beyond doubt.

Another important piece is from Nic Dunlop, an International Journalist.  In his book, “The Lost Executioner – A Journey to the Heart of the Killing Fields”, on page 184-185,  Nic Dunlop is offered valuable political and conspiratorial information relevant to the “genocide”, which implicated the Hanoi government showing their deliberately attempt to deceive Khmer people and the international community. 

There were plans to begin one, hence by Van Tay.  Cambodians had only known the leadership as the Organization and not who was behind it; most knew nothing beyond their cooperatives.  Ironically it was the Vietnamese, one of the sworn enemies of the Khmer Rouge, who personalized the regime.  Democratic Kampuchea became ‘the Pol Pot time’.

By drawing on the parallels with the Nazi death camps, the Tuol Sleng museum was organized as a deliberate attempt to distance the Vietnamese from their former allies the Khmer Rouge.  They wanted to vilify the Khmer Rouge and its leaders still further as part of a propaganda war to justify their invasion.  Visitors to the museum were encouraged to think of the Vietnamese as akin to the liberators of Europe’s concentration camps.

There was no text narrating progress from room to room.  Visitors viewed the museum through a series of images and objects.  The intention was to provoke outrage through a primarily sensory experience rather than to enlighten.  The Cold War was at its height and, for many in the West, Tuol Sleng was a propaganda tool for a regime that had seized power through an illegal invasion.

All museums are manipulations.  Apart from the map made of skulls created by the Vietnamese, the raw displays were graphic and chilling and, although inaccurate in form, were real in substance.  The atrocitious nature of the place itself was hard to contrive.  The fact that visitors were being manipulated and that the information on display was there to serve a political purpose seemed to pale in comparison when faced with such overwhelming viciousness.

The alleged accusation made by Hun Sen that, HE Kem Sokha, Vice President of CNRP had comments “denial of the atrocities during the Khmer Rouge era” was political motivated.  This alleged accusation was the desperate attempted to (1) derail the CNRP from fully participating in the upcoming election, and (2) divert the people’s attention from the truth.  The fact is, the whole world knew what had occurred during the Khmer Rouge era.  It would be a harebrained ideas for anyone and/or groups to profess that the “Khmer Rouge’s notorious S-21 prison had never occurred.”  HE Sam Rainsy, President of CNRP had recently said, “Hun Sen is playing a destructive game.”  And this game that Hun Sen is playing will be short-sighted for the future interest of Khmer nation.    

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are based solely by me and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or position of any political party.

*Public announcement: if you think that this piece is important for Khmer to know, please kindly translated into Khmer.

Justin C. Sok

All Khmer One Khmer

06/07/2013