Now I am back from dinner, I can write about why I’m actually here in Cambodia.
We interviewed Him Huy today. I have a lot to say, and I don’t think most people want to hear it mostly because it takes a very humane view of a very inhumane genocide. So it’s more serious, but feel free to keep reading further down. I will make it loud and clear when my IR sociology sputter is over.
We interviewed Him Huy today. He was so enlightening. His home is very modest and unassuming because he is just like any other Cambodian. He wants away from a genocide that he wanted nothing to do with.
His shortened story: He was conscripted at age 15 into the Khmer Rouge where he was initially a soldier, he got sick many times with malaria and was in and out of hospitals most of 1974. Then Comrade Hor bonded with him and didn’t make him go back to the front lines. He was part of the KR that came into Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. He was part of this Division 703 that was taken into S-21 prison (the one I wrote about previously in the blog) where Hor was second in command to Duch. Everyone did what Duch said to do. Within the prison there was Duch’s Western Zone faction and Hor’s
Division 703 faction. In 1977, Duch started cleansing the party from within at the prison and many of Duch’s fellow prison guard cadres were interrogated, tortured and killed. Him Huy recalled throughout the interview that he lived in constant realization that he was next, that he daily believed he was going to be killed by Duch. To this day, he says he only lived because the Vietnamese came in and won the war. If the Vietnamese had lost, Huy would still have been part of the Khmer Rouge and knows he would have been killed by Duch. Him Huy did plan a revolt that never happened because Hor “got quiet” which meant that it would not happen. Him Huy’s job at S-21 prison was a prison guard where he was responsible for bringing the new arrivals at the prison into the room where they were processed. He was also supposed to make sure at night that none of the other guards were sleeping. He recalls hearing lots of screaming from prisoners, but he could not talk to anyone, even the guards in other units. There was a lot of secrecy in the prison and division so that he only ate with his unit and interacted with only other guards. He had no contact with the torture/interrogation units and thus had only vague inclinations as to what has happening in the prison. He was also the person responsible for writing the name of each prisoner at Choeung Ek as they were taken from the holding room to the killing fields, so he wrote down each name and numbered each person as they were sent to their deaths.
The interview was two and a half hours, I have over ten pages of written notes from it, so I am not going to transcribe all that plus a lot of it would entail a factual background of a conflict that I’m guessing none of my lovely avid readers have. And I mean I understand, I was in the same boat until the last couple months of reading books and then class and being here.
Here is where you can disagree with me:
Him Huy is a perpetrator by the plain and simple fact that he was in the Khmer Rouge, he was a guard, he was a head guard. He witnessed killings, he may have even partaken (even though he only recalls one specific time when he did kill someone.) But I don’t think he’s guilty. Of course we all have choices in life, and yes he had the choice to kill or not, but if one understands the culture of paranoia that encircled this entire regime, then he looks a lot more blameless, along with many of the other KR cadres. When Him Huy says he literally did not have a clue what was really happening in the prison, it is the truth. There were six men who literally ran the entire country and even a few of those top leaders were assassinated because Pol Pot was so paranoid. Duch ran S-21 prison, he was one of the six. Comrade Hor, who I spoke of earlier, was second in command at s-21. He was tortured and killed. When the top people are being killed, what are you supposed to do? Him Huy watched dozens of his unit be killed, he watched their families come in and be killed simply for being affiliated with a prisoner. Huy told us at the end that every day he wanted to put a bullet to his head but never did because his family would have been tortured and killed for his actions. Him Huy planned a revolt as he told us for a long time, the plan was intercepted by Duch’s faction. Many of the men involved with the plan were tortured and killed.
SO again, while Him Huy could have chosen not to partake, put yourself in his shoes. If he had chosen not to be a part of the Khmer Rouge (he frequently asked to be moved to the fornt lines because he understood that his life and his family’s life was in grave danger as long as he was guard, but he was always turned down), he would have been killed. And had he died, it is not that it would have prevented anyone else’s life from being taken. His death would have been entirely in vain, as all of the deaths were. He was unimportant to the Khmer Rouge, his life and death was of little consequence to the Khmer Rouge (a phrase which was actually told to everyone in the country. Your life is irrelevant and your death is of little consequence and forgotten).
I cannot hold Him Huy accountable for being human. I cant. I am sure he probably killed more than one person, but I mean its thirty years later. He has nine kids, why should he feel obligated to tell his own guilty conscience (if it is in fact guilty) to a bunch of white girls who are doing this for their own research—his guilt is between him and his God on his judgment day. I don’t think I have any room to sit here and say that I would have behaved any differently, and I don’t know that many of us have. While we would all like to say that we would have done something, the top of the regime went out of their way to literally make it impossible to disobey the party lines without being killed as a result. Not to mention, by the time KR fell in 1979, Him Huy was barely 22. He was my age. He thought he was going to be killed every day. Him Huy told us today that Duch kept offering to get him a wife, but he refused. Not because he didn’t want one. But because if he had a wife, that was one more person who could potentially be guilty. The more people you associate with, the more likely you are to be killed because of their alliances. It was a culture of isolation for survival. Heroism in any way resulted not only in your own death, but in torture and the consequential torture of your family and then their deaths. Would you have gone against it?
But these people are thirty THIRTY years removed from this conflict. 75% of their population is under the age of thirty. Meaning that only a quarter was even alive during this time. Justice cannot be had for this thirty years later. You cannot kill Him Huy because that is not going to make any one else feel better about what happened. It will instead anger his family, and anger the younger generations that are related to former KR people. It will make the young population resentful of international interference (AGAIN. That is what brought such an extreme group to power in the first place. This sounds like a GREAT IDEA.) at this stage, trying low ranking officials is useless. You cannot bring back the loved ones lost, but you can educate the young population to what happened. Have them talk to their parents, talk to former KR, let them tell their stories because they are victims too.
If you are still with me, I am going to Duch’s UN trial for the next three days. You can imagine how I feel going into this….
Anyway, its hot as… a lot of inappropriate things I will refrain from saying. TMI example: i’ve been sleeping in a light, cotton “Swim with Mike” tank top. I went to the front desk an hour ago, got scissors and cut off the bottom half of the shirt. I am sleeping with essentially an elastic-less sports bra and I am still sweating my face off right now. Our room is set at sixteen celcius but the humidity just seeps in everywhere. Its brutal. Note to self, third world countries on the equator during the summer and the typhoon season is a bloody mistake.
Hooray Lakers victory. I want this to be over in four games. But if it goes longer, then I can be home for game six and seven!!!! But I don’t think it will, and I would rather we just spanked Orlando and got it over with.
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