Towards Empathy

Towards Empathy: A Conversation with Vichet Chum Cathy J. Schlund-Vials (bio) and Vichet Chum (bio) Ma used to say because the Khmer Rouge invaded on the new year...we’ve learned to mourn and celebrate in the same breath. Vichet Chum, Bald Sisters Thirteen days before the American War in Vietnam (1959–1975) came to a dramatic close with the April 30, 1975 “Fall of Saigon,” the Khmer Rouge (a.k.a. “Red Cambodians”) marched triumphantly into Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. Dressed in black uniforms, draped in red checkered kramas, and armed with Chinese-issue AK-47s, the Khmer Rouge entered the Southeast Asian municipality atop Soviet army tanks, in battered military jeeps, and on rubber-sandaled foot. The April 17, 1975 arrival of Khmer Rouge troops tactically coincided with the nation’s New Year observances; incontrovertibly, their presence in the Cambodian urban hub signaled profound “in country” political shifts. Initially, the Khmer Rouge appeared to be harbingers of a much-anticipated peace: loudspeakers accompanied soldiers as they made their way through Phnom Penh’s major thoroughfares and marketplaces, blaring promises of armistice, assurances of reconciliation, and vociferous guarantees that US intervention in the region and concomitant civil war had come to an end. Yet, as the hours, days, weeks, and months that followed would appallingly make clear, the Khmer Rouge’s public pledges of peace were catastrophically disingenuous. Consumed with an overwhelming desire to enact a classless, agricultural revolution “by any means necessary,” the Khmer Rouge (a.k.a. Angkar, or “the organization”) systemically emptied Cambodia’s cities (often at gunpoint) and renamed the nation “Democratic Kampuchea.” Key to the regime’s revolutionary mission was forcibly turning the country back to “year zero,” which its leadership (particularly “Brother Number One” Saloth Sar—a.k.a. Pol Pot—and “Brother Number Two,” Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologue) emphatically characterized and absolutely imagined as a time before so-castigated Western influence. [End Page E-45] To that end, Angkar abruptly dismantled and violently deconstructed all facets of Cambodian economic, political, social, and cultural life. Formal education was outlawed, Western medicine (namely basic antibiotics such as penicillin) banned, and property ownership forbidden. Currency was eliminated, Theravada Buddhism (the nation’s majority religion) was proscribed; familial names (such as Mak and Pa) were prohibited and classless nomenclature (e.g., “comrade” and “cadre”) privileged; children were separated from parents; husbands and wives were forced to live and work apart. Cambodia’s national bank was destroyed; its state-supported library emptied and converted into a pigsty; Buddhist temples were raided and religious relics shattered; the country’s public history museum was similarly looted and its roof left to rot. Such offensives against Khmer tradition and the previous regime were by no means limited to economic institutions, knowledge repositories, and heritage sites. Rather, the Khmer Rouge also waged fatal assaults against those who embodied the past via profession, education, and affiliation. Lon Nol officials, officers, and soldiers were summarily executed, along with others deemed “enemies of the people,” including civil servants, university students, engineers, doctors, lawyers, monks, and teachers. As the Khmer Rouge continued its reign of terror, those slated for “smashing” (as per Angkar’s ominous terminology) were expanded to include the Cham (ethnic Cambodian Muslims), Khmer Khrom (ethnic Cambodians living in southern Vietnam), ex-patriots (who were fellow leftists), Khmer court musicians, classically trained royal dancers, and allegedly disloyal Khmer Rouge cadres. As large-scale dam projects faltered and rice crops failed, the nation descended into mass starvation and wide-ranging famine; those incapable of laboring in Cambodia’s rice fields (principally “new people” from the cities, the sick, the very young, and the elderly) were, as the following Khmer Rouge saying makes clear, distressingly disposable: “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.” Unquestionably, this disregard for human life was not limited to state-authorized dictate; instead, it was apparent immediately after the regime’s deposal. When the Vietnamese ostensibly “liberated” the country on January 7, 1979, an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians (roughly 21–25% of the extant population) had perished due to disease, starvation, forced labor, torture, and execution. For those outside

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