Change is Not a Game

At the sound of a whistle, a Cambodian policeman clad in a sweat stained, light blue uniform and gripping a flashing baton in his hand races out into an intersection to abruptly stop traffic in all directions. The identity of the entourage coming down the perpendicular boulevard — with a police escort of at least three motorcycles and cars — is irrelevant. Maybe it’s an important Cambodian politician; perhaps a foreign dignitary. This week, after making a few inquiries, I was told they are mostly members of an international contingent in Phnom Penh for a UNESCO World Heritage conference.

This insufferable routine is repeated ad nauseum throughout the day and into the night as parties to the confab come and go. And indeed, I have seen similar scenes in other countries where the motorcade, moving at a pace slower than the Donner Party, was met with derisive honks and vulgar gestures, especially when political figures were the known targets. However, in Cambodia, a country where a higher social status accords one more privileges, most ordinary citizens accept that they must stop and make way for more important people. One might call it deferential indifference.

But for those important actors in a position of political power, there is no such indifference. There is only cold calculations for how to maintain the status quo.

One of the things that I find truly remarkable about this country every time I come back is that anyone over the age of 45 lived through one of the most terrifying events of the 20th century, and did so at an age where they could recall the horror.

Most of the older folks are reluctant to talk to a foreigner about the experience of living through the Khmer Rouge period and subsequent Vietnamese occupation. But every now and then, with some persistence and a Khmer friend to coax and translate, you’ll get lucky and will hear some amazing personal histories.

One such person is Poeng Kimphang, 51, who was only thirteen years old when the capital city of Phnom Penh was forcibly depopulated, the residents marched out at gun point to work in collectives in the countryside. Mr. Poeng, who now resides in the neighboring province of Kandal, shared nightmarish stories such as when he learned his childhood friend’s father had been beaten to death by the man’s own brother, the latter clubbing the former again and again over the head with a shovel on the orders of a Khmer Rouge military officer. “They often made members of the same family turn on one another,” said Mr. Poeng. “It was scary because I kept thinking that my family was next.”

Such stories are likely shared by nearly 2 million families, people who lost loved ones during the lunacy that enveloped Cambodia from 1975-1979. Most people were killed through starvation and forced labor.

But then there were those who were tortured. Some “people were cut open alive under the macabre guise of medical experiments designed to teach young Khmer Rouge medicine,” according to testimony at the Extraordinary Chambers for the Courts in Cambodia (ECCC), or Tribunals, in Cambodian parlance. Others were “kept alive just enough to provide blood for transfusions needed for wounded soldiers on the battlefield.” Most were slaughtered at the “killing fields,” where they were “killed en-masse usually with an ox-cart axel to the nape of the neck.”

So when I asked Mr. Poeng about more current political developments, he was understanably apathetic. “They say there might be [civil] war if the CPP (Cambodian People’s Party) loses. I don’t care who wins as long as my country is at peace.”

Such sentiment should probably be expected in any country with previous scars of conflict. And perhaps it is why Mr. Poeng’s generation and those in his low, social standing have other, more important priorities. “I have my family, I have my home, and I am [content] with that. I don’t care about our political leaders, I don’t care about their corruption, and I don’t care about not having so much money. I just want peace to stay in Cambodia.”

This opinion is exactly what Prime Minister Hun Sen is banking on when Cambodia holds its general election next month. Change is something to be met with dread, says Hun Sen. “Voting for the CPP means you are voting for yourself: Voting for peace, political stability and development for yourself,” he remarked, adding “change is not a game…after changing Lon Nol to the Pol Pot regime, the genocide occurred.”

Politics is certainly not a game here, a fact Cambodians can attest all too well to. And that is the type of rhetoric to be expected from an individual who has been in charge of the country for nearly three decades, a man who was a former Khmer Rouge military officer himself.

It’s a country where power, especially the political kind, is worth its weight in more than just an unobstructed path down the city’s main streets. It is quite literally a matter of life and death, war and peace.

Photo: Kuni Takahashi [Kuni Takahashi Photography]