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A new documentary depicts a top Khmer Rouge official’s confession for the first time on video. The film, titled “Enemies of the People,” provides new insight on the Killing Fields and Cambodia’s horrific genocide. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad attended the screening in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and has the story. Download MP3
Enemies of the People Movie Trailer from Rob Lemkin on Vimeo.
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MARCO WERMAN: On Monday, a tribunal in Cambodia is set to hand down its first verdict on a regime responsible for the deaths of nearly two million people. Most Cambodians are too young to remember the Khmer Rouge years in the 1970s. Some even doubt the atrocities happened. The tribunal is supposed to help set the record straight. So is a documentary that seeks answers from surviving members of the Khmer Rouge. Last night, the film had its Cambodian premiere in a small art center in Phnom Penh. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad reports.
MARY KAY MAGISTAD: Dozens of people, about half Cambodian and half Western, turned up for last night’s screening of Enemies of the People. They sat as the room darkened, and a voice came up.
THET SAMBATH: Some say that almost two million people died in the Killing Fields.
MAGISTAD: This is Thet Sambath, a 42-year-old Cambodian journalist, and one of the film’s co-directors. He’s spent much of the past 10 years talking to former Khmer Rouge.
SAMBATH: I want to know why they are killing during the Khmer Rouge, because many questions in my mind that still makes me doesn’t understand why many people were killed.
MAGISTAD: In his quest for answers, Thet Sambath interviewed former Khmer Rouge of all levels. Those who killed, and those who gave orders to kill. Rob Lemkin is the film’s other co-director.
ROB LEMKIN: Sambath, because of his 10 years, because of his way of talking to these people, because he’s come with this very open spirit, non-adversarial kind of demeanor and approach to them, he’s been able to unlock something.
MAGISTAD: Like, getting usually tight-lipped Khmer Rouge to talk. The man who was second in command during the Khmer Rouge reign was Nuon Chea.
KHMER SPEAKING
MAGISTAD: Here, in the film, Nuon Chea tells Thet Sambath, “Criminals needed to be destroyed. They were enemies of the people.” Thet Sambath replies, “Some people say they could have just been imprisoned.” Nuon Chea retorts, “That’s a matter of opinion.” Nuon Chea is now a frail old man, but when he makes statements like this in the film, there’s a steeliness in his gaze. It’s there, too, when he meets two former Khmer Rouge cadres, ones who actually slit people’s throats, and tells them they should be proud of what they did. The former executioners look uneasy as he speaks, and unconvinced. At other points in the film, both say they’re tortured by what they did.
KHMER SPEAKING
MAGISTAD: Here, they sit by the side of a village road, and point out the mass graves they dug, and filled, with people they killed. One of them, Suon, says, “My mind, my soul, my body, are spinning inside. All the things I did are spinning in my mind.” One of the people watching the film last night, journalist Ana Nov, says she felt for them.
ANA NOV: I feel very sorry for them, and they feel very guilty, too. Because you see, they killed the people. So they destroyed everything, but they feel very bad for themselves, too.
MAGISTAD: She didn’t feel the same sympathy for Nuon Chea, and said she’s glad he will soon stand trial.
NOV: He should be convicted, because he made the policy of killing people and destroy Cambodia.
MAGISTAD: Thet Sambath’s feelings for Nuon Chea are more complicated, after so many years of interviewing him in his village home.
SAMBATH: I still miss Brother Number Two. And he always pass information through his wife to me, always asking about my health and how I am working.
MAGISTAD: It’s like you’re kind of fond of him, you kind of like him.
SAMBATH: Actually, I like him, yes. In personality, yes.
MAGISTAD: That’s despite the fact that Nuon Chea helped lead the regime that killed Sambath’s father and brother and mother. Sambath kept all of that from Nuon Chea until just before Nuon Chea was detained. And then, he told him, on film.
KHMER SPEAKING
MAGISTAD: As the truth comes out, Nuon Chea nods, but his eyes shift. After a few moments, he tells Thet Sambath he’s sorry to hear of his loss.
KHMER SPEAKING
MAGISTAD: Thet Sambath says he believes Nuon Chea was truly sad, and this made Thet Sambath feel better. But Nuon Chea did not say he was sorry for the policies that led to those deaths, and to the deaths of so many others. And after all this, the question that first drove Thet Sambath on his quest still hangs in the air. A question that may never be adequately answered, not by Nuon Chea, not by the tribunal, not even by a film as compelling as this, the question, of why. For The World, I’m Mary Kay Magistad in Phnom Penh.
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