Reemerging From the Year Zero The Phoenix of Asia’s Rise from the Ashes
By Mike Snow
As the promenade along Phnom Penh’s Tonle Sap River comes alive with food vendors, exercise enthusiasts, and bird sellers, a young man and his girlfriend enter a mini pagoda to present joss sticks and lotus flowers before an electronic, purple-tinted image of the Buddha. After paying homage, the merit seekers buy a pair of sparrows from a bird seller, cup them between their hands then, in reverence to the Buddhist cycle of life, thrust them upward toward distant skyscrapers.
These sleek new buildings where the birds appear headed are only a mile or two from the promenade, though in sense a world away. They are crown jewels of a constellation of bridges, roads, railroads, maritime channels, airports, and ministry buildings that are reshaping Phnom Penh and other cities in this rapidly evolving south east Asian nation. Like the legendary Phoenix, they symbolize its rise from the ashes of a turbulent past.
Cambodia’s building boom has been turbocharged by China’s trillion dollar “Belt and Road” initiative, a modern version of the Han Dynasty’s (206 BCE–220) 4000-mile Silk Road that broadened the exchange of goods, culture and ideas between China, Persia and the Roman Empire. Begun in 2013, the makeover has brought in more more than $4 billion so far, with the aim of transforming the country from what the Cambodia Daily describes as an agrarian backwater whipsawed by war and upheaval into a modern, skill-driven nation.
Critics warn that Chinese involvement in Cambodia stands to enrich autocrats at the expense of those low in the pecking order while extending China’s sphere of influence. Others argue that this this is the best option for rebuilding the country in the wake of the tectonic turbulence of the 1970s that tore the it apart.
The berserk blood letting of that era has slowly given way to what in recent years has become frenzied refashioning of the country’s major population centers. Gone are back- in-the-day, quaint comparisons to Phnom Penh as the “Paris or Pearl of the Orient.” Instead, visitors today will find a nation that has lurched from yin to yang into what has become a schizophrenic blend of both old and new, a modern day tale of two cities struggling mightily to break free from the worst of times into what those ponying up yuans and dollars are betting will become the best of times.
The new Phnom Penh differs radically from the grim, refugeebloated asphalt jungle of 1975, “the year zero,” when Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge cadres seized power, executed government and military officials and forced everyone else to the countryside at gunpoint. By the time North Vietnamese forces drove out the extremists in January 1979, they had succeeded not just in wiping out all vestiges of western influence, but also as much as 20% of Cambodia’s entire population.
Victims included 14,000 men, women and children dispatched by paranoid cadres to S-21, or Tuol Sleng, a former Phnom Penh High School to be photographed and tortured into confessing their alleged ties to the CIA and KGB. After interrogations were completed they were trucked nine miles away to Cheung Ek 9 to be beaten to death with axes, hammers, and hoes as revolutionary songs blared from loud speakers to drown out their screams. One of the mass graves at these killing fields was reserved for mothers who had been raped and hacked to death and their babies, who died after being swung by the ankles against the Chankiri “killing tree.” Today, teeth and bone fragments of victims remain embedded in the killing tree. They also push up alongside a wooden pathway rife with singing birds that leads to a Buddhist stupa containing more than 8,000 human skulls. Of the original 14,000 prisoners, only seven survived.
It’s hard to process the totality of such brutality, or how a generally gentle, humble, likable people in a generally well-liked country could have been complicit. Or fathom how a loosely aligned band of revolutionaries, communists, and thieves managed between 1948 and 1970 to mutate into one of history’s most notorious killing machines.
The book “Sideshow” by William Shawcross blames Richard Nixon’s 1970 order to obliterate the North Vietnamese supply line running through Cambodia’s “Parrot’s Beak” into Vietnam. In the U.S. “secret war,” more bombs rained down indiscriminately on the country’s eastern half than in all of World War II combined. Enraged by the destruction of their homes and livelihoods, apolitical peasants and farmers joined the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge en masse to fight in the name of their beloved God king, Norodom Sihanouk. As head-of-state, Sihanouk persecuted the insurgents prior to his 1970 ouster but because of mutually shared fervor for Cambodian national sovereignty became their titular leader in exile. The surge of new recruits swelled Khmer Rouge ranks but also Pol Pot’s paranoia, sparking both a logistical nightmare and brutal purges of the Sihanoukists.
In 1979, after Vietnamese forces drove out the Khmer Rouge from what the rebels had renamed“Democratic Kampuchea,” the U.S. switched sides. This, together with continued backing from Beijing, conferred legitimacy on Cambodia’s “government in exile” and enabled Pol Pot to retain the country’s seat at the United Nations. It also emboldened his cadres to stage attacks and plant landmines from their sanctuary in Anlong Veng in the country’s far north. The fighting gradually yielded to international pressure for economic growth and justice. But in the decade following Pol Pot’s 1998 death from natural causes, few remaining Red Khmer leaders were tried for war crimes and fewer wound up in prison. The Cambodian government’s failure to cope with the fallout from decades of conflict and killing prevented closure, jacked up mental illness rates and stunted economic progress.
As time passed and memories dimmed, grief gave way to growth. One beneficiary was tourism. Thanks largely to the pull of Angkor Wat and the proliferation of Chinese casinos around Sihanoukville, the industry expanded at an annual rate of 4.6% in 2019, accounting for 32.7% of the country’s GDP. Pre-covid, the resurgence of tourism, agriculture and textiles floated most boats and even enabled Cambodians high in the food chain to shop at AEON, an upscale mega mall in the new section of Phnom Penh where smart TVs sport price tags as high as $8,000. But in the wake of the pandemic, tourism nosedived by 80%, and the open wounds of those struggling to bring their lives back into balance festered once again.
Cambodian travelers themselves partly made up for the tourism downturn but could not fill the void left by big spending barangs from both the West and, increasingly, China. By 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the industry had all but collapsed, costing 15% of those who worked in it their jobs.
Some translators and tour operators took to driving tuk tuks, mini taxis which in Phnom Penh and other touristy Khmer cities ebb and flow in a cacophonous parade that never seems to stop even well into the night. Another measure of the downturn is the growing number of beggars who routinely solicit people-watching westerners at ubiquitous, old city mom and pop eateries.
At the annual ASEAN Tourism Forum in Sihanoukville in January, Cambodian and other ATF officials presented strategies for reversing the covid collapse. But Park Narann, the country’s Deputy Director of Overseas Tourism, predicted that 2019’s peak numbers might not be seen again until 2027.
The return of the tourists is undercut by misperceptions that the pandemic massively threatens the country (it doesn’t), the Khmer Rouge still stage attacks (they don’t) and landmines left over from civil war continue to blow up people (they do). However, the 68,000 deaths attributed to mines since the rebels rose to power in 1975, “the year zero,” occurred in mostly remote areas where mine-sniffing rats lead teams of detection experts. The rodents can case an area in 30 minutes compared to four days required by human handlers. Prior to his recent death at age eight, Magawa, a giant pouched “hero” rodent from Tanzania, won a gold medal for detecting more than 100 landmines and other explosives.
Those unconcerned about traveling during a pandemic have been rewarded with elbow room and cost savings. The deserted Chinese-built resorts and casinos along the white sandy beaches near Sihanoukville go for deep discounts to anyone who asks. My stay at the five-star Empress Angkor in Siem Reap cost just $60 per night, down from the $200 charged pre-pandemic. Even the fabled Angkor Wat has been on sale, with visitors paying $37 for a two day pass instead of only one day. Another bargain is Siem Reap’s Phare Circus, whose young performers, within view of some of the world’s grandest temples, use painting, graphic design, animation, theater, music, acrobatics, dance and other forms of trauma art to share their personal stories of darkness and death in hopes of inspiring others do the same so that the country itself can get closure and mentally move on.
Built between 1112-52 by 300,000 laborers and 6,000 thousand elephants over 35 years, Angkor Wat is the world’s largest religious monument. At its peak, the temple complex was home to more than a million people, dwarfing Paris, then with just 30,000 inhabitants, before being swallowed up by jungle growth for 750 years. Visitors to this bucket list destination these days find themselves free of Disneyland-size tourist dog packs, more prone in the relative solitude to ponder how a civilization that soared to such prominence in the middle ages managed during the 1970s to sink to such depths.
In search of an answer, I taxied to Anlong Veng, the home turf of Pol Pot. But instead of guns and bullets, those who show up in this dusty, frontier town these days are greeted by a large tourist information sign and the statue of a dove gifted by Hun Sen, Cambodia’a prime minister since 1985. As the only western visitor that day, I had reservations about trusting an ex Khmer Rouge jungle fighter who had traded in his AK-47 for a barber’s razor, concerns that turned out to be ill founded.
Another former cadre gave me a tour of the home of Ta Mok, the one-legged former senior Khmer Rouge commander, army head and nature lover who died in custody in 2006. A small black cage in which “the butcher” kept prisoners remains parked on his lawn beside an outdoor mural of Angkor Wat. While perusing them, I encountered another former loyalist, Sam Rouen. After selling me a ticket to the exhibition, he recounted with starry eyes glorious battles in which he had fought against the U.S. backed forces of Lon Nol. We did not understand each other for the most part, but I caught his non apologetic drift, and, playing to his biases, diplomatically inquired as to whether Pol Pot “was a good man?”
“No,” he barked, pounding his fist for emphasis. “Pol Pot was a great man!”
Not far away, in the shadow of the Sangam Resort and Casino along the Thai border, protected by a metal awning, is Pol Pot’s final resting place. Today locals leave offerings and pray at the gravesite of the man many locals still refer to fondly as “Brother Number One.”
Cambodia today in many ways remains a country united in peace but divided in perspective. Ex Khmer Rouge officials who are part of the current government fear that confronting the country’s painful past could draw attention to themselves. Hun Sen, a KR battalion commander before defecting to Vietnam in 1977, has been accused of short circuiting war crimes tribunals, which many believe have been necessary for the country to properly heal.
The official failure to confront the ghosts of the past helps explain why 40% of all Cambodians suffer from mental illness, according to the The Netherlands-based Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO). To help victims gain closure,TPO and like minded non government organizations (NGOs) sponsor educational programs and field trips to commemorative sites. Older Cambodians tend to welcome such initiatives. But the general failure of Khmer millennials to confront the collateral damage g from the “year zero” prevents them from coming to terms with the past and embracing the future.
One exception has been the Phare Circus, comprised mostly of young performers from broken homes whose acrobatic feats and other forms of athletic artistry and story telling invariably wow visitors to the great temples of Angkor Wat and not infrequently bring them to tears. But the main beneficiary of this internationally acclaimed troupe are the survivors - friends and family members and Cambodian brothers and sisters throughout the country - who despite the passage of time now spanning generations remain too traumatized to talk about the horrific cruelty inflicted on them by the Khmer Rouge. To help bring their lives back into balance, the troupe in March 2021broke the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest sustained circus performance, a 24 hour, oneminute feat of raw courage and determination that squarely confronted the horror stemming from the year zero and, in so doing, enabled those who have suffered in silence ever since to finally reclaim the great legacy of Angkor.
Meanwhile on the banks of the Tonle Sap River in view of towering skyscrapers, merit seekers release sparrows to honor the Buddhist cycle of life and insure that Cambodia’s rise from the ashes finally come full circle.
