Sar Patchata (right) and Sy Vicheka hold ceremonial items during their wedding ceremony. Heng Chivoan
To a passing stranger, the distant sound of music may have hinted at just another celebration in a typically busy wedding season fast drawing to a close.
But this was no ordinary wedding. The biggest crowd that some villagers could ever recall seeing in Banteay Meanchey’s Malai district was gathered yesterday to witness the wedding of a woman whose genealogy will forever remain notorious across the country and, indeed, the world.
Pol Pot’s daughter, Sar Patchata, was getting married.
Rows of luxury cars lined a field in Malai commune’s Kbal Spean village, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold. Assembled inside the wedding party were officials from as far away as Phnom Penh. Alongside them were former Khmer Rouge soldiers who had travelled a much shorter distance to attend and whose friendships with each other went back decades.
“It’s a good opportunity,” said Ros Ka, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who spent years fighting with forces loyal to Pol Pot and who was enjoying the chance to see some of his former comrades for the first time in years. “We can meet with the seniors after we have lived apart for years. You don’t know how delighted we are.”
Not everyone could make it to this reunion, he added, because they simply couldn’t afford the journey.
Patchata, 26, is the only daughter of Pol Pot, the former Khmer Rouge leader responsible for an estimated 1.7 million deaths during Democratic Kampuchea’s brutal agrarian-based dictatorship of 1975 to 1979.
Patchata’s mother, Mea Son, married Pol Pot – whose real name was Saloth Sar – in the mid 1980s after he fled Phnom Penh and was waging bloody war from the Cambodian-Thai border.
Following Pol Pot’s death in 1998 while under house arrest, Son, then 40, told the Postthat the brutal dictator had treated her and his only daughter, then known as Mea Sith, well right until the end.
“He was a good husband to me; we met in 1985,” she said. “I am very sad that he has died and I do not know what the future may bring.”
The future was equally uncertain for Patchata. Photos at the time showed a young girl’s grief as she stood beside her mother and her father’s jailer, staring through a long black fringe. Yesterday, that same face – which bears a resemblance to her father’s – beamed as the cameras captured her at every turn.
Family and friends sit in a circle around Sar Patchata (right) and Sy Vicheka during their wedding in Banteay Meanchey’s Malai district yesterday. Heng Chivoan
Tep Khunnal, a former Malai district governor, adviser to Pol Pot and member of the Khmer Rouge delegation to the UN in the 1980s, married Patchata’s mother after the dictator’s death, and brought them to live in the district.
“Khunnal has raised her since she was 10 after Pol Pot died,” said Chen Nat, one of Khunnal’s colleagues.
After earning a master’s degree in English literature in Malaysia, where she met her Cambodian husband-to-be Sy Vicheka, Patchata returned to her home three years before the wedding, Nat said.
“She said she will not go to live or work anywhere else now and will stay here to run her uncle and aunt’s rice mill.”
Suong Sikoeun, a former spokesman and high-ranking official in the Ministry of Information and Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the Democratic Kampuchea era, said those who attended the wedding yesterday remained part of a strong community.
“It’s not a meeting of politics,” he said. “It is a show of friendship … [Pol Pot’s] daughter is not mired in politics. We love and respect each other as one and help one another.”
The celebrations had all the pomp expected of a Cambodian wedding. Just after dawn, couples with trays of fruit formed a procession that slowly made its way to the bride’s house.
Wedding guest Meas Chey spoke of her connection with the bride. Just days after Patchata was born, Chey gave birth to a child in the same camp hospital as Pol Pot’s wife.
“I don’t know her very well anymore,” she said. “When she finished high school, she went to study in Phnom Penh. But I know she is … very different from her father.”
By the afternoon, friends and relatives were offering the married couple thousands of dollars in cash and gifts – Son offered her daughter a gold necklace – as the couple prepared for a new life together.
7 comments:
She has to come out and apologize for 2 million deads for her father. Otherwise, she must pay for the blood of her father.
may his soul [ polpot] rot in hell for eternity... and his ex [wife ] and daughter as well....instead atoning for his sins they still act as if he was an innocent man ...and to those who believe that he is a good person/hero may the souls of the dead curse you and your descendants for eternity as well.
Polpot has done very very bad thing in the pass and many families have suffered greatly from this , including my families. Please leave her alone, pass is pass she has done nothing to us.
18 March 2014 3:00 am. Ah chkae. She is 2 million time smarter than you. What you need to do is apologise to her. Unlike your boss AH kwak and his family, they killed Khmer and rob the people everyday and allowing Youn to encroach into Khmer.
Can you compare Pol Pot to Ah Kwak?
She has nothing to do with the killing of innocent during her father was in power,why are you putting the sins of her father upon her? If your father kills people,are you responsible for your father action? She was a child then, has nothing to do with that atrocity.Oh,come on dude! Stop your insanity now,she is/was INNOCENT,judge her father not her.May god bless you both has and and wife.My family one of the victim during that regime too,but I didn't blame her.
She was born after her father was in power, so she never enjoyed the privilege life under her father's rule. Unlike Hun Sen's children who were born before their father came to power and now have enjoyed the fruit of his father's rule and corruption. Pol Pot's daughter is pure, she is not tainted by Pol Pot's sins, so we must leave her alone. Considering that she was born in the jungle and probably can't read and write till she was 13 years old when her father died and when she was re-integrated into the society in 1998, it's a great achievement on her part to have earned a master's degree in English literature. So we should congratulate her instead of condemning her for her father's sins.
If she were in the realm of power like her father, what would she do. Can't compare when she was not there.
But anyway, she looks innnocent and may best wish to new couples.
Many people in the world, esp Cambodia with PhDs, MDs, and other university degrees acts behave very bad, arrogant, stupitiy, weird, law breaker, and murder and you name the rest....
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