BANGKOK, 7 September 2003 — Cambodian government plans for a theme park, to be built in the frontier jungles where Khmer Rouge guerrillas held out until five years ago, complete with a reconstruction of the house where the former dictator, Pol Pot, died in bed at age 73, decades after his brutal regime killed nearly two million people, have upset relatives of the victims of his Killing Fields.
Some of Pol Pot’s cronies, including his cook and housekeeper, are to be hired as tour guides around 26 proposed Khmer Rouge historical sites, which will feature reconstructed offices and barracks. A brand new road will link the celebrated temples at Angkor Wat to a multimillion dollar museum and theatre complex at Anlong Veng, 122 km north, putting the grave of Pol Pot on the premier touirist circuit.
When the self-styled Brother No. 1 was cremated in April 1998, a hasty funeral pyre beside the village latrine was heaped with old tires and set ablaze. Now a rusty tin-roofed shelter marks the spot, just 500 meters across from the Thai border, and many Cambodians prefer that the fearsome old revolutionary should continue to lie in ignomy.
Youk Chhang, director of a center that collects evidence to be used against surviving Khmer Rouge leaders at proposed genocide tribunals, is incensed over plans to cash in on the nation’s recent bloodbath with a shiny new Khmer Rouge historical zone. “Why not pay attention to the 19,000 mass grave sites in this country? Why only pay attention to the murderers?” he demanded. “This is debasing the memory of all those people who were killed by the Khmer Rouge. It’s all about money.”
Such criticism has put Cambodian officials on the defensive. Similar complaints once were made against the Holocaust museum at Auschwitz, but tourist coaches did not arrive at extermination camps until war crimes trials were already under way. In Cambodia, such tribunals have been repeatedly postponed while diplomats debate on the nationality of the judges and remaining witnesses die of old age.
Moderate politicians are hesitant to reopen old wounds, while others press for amnesties to be revoked and for world leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to be tried for complicity in genocide.
Thong Kong, Cambodia’s secretary of state for tourism, maintains that this official project at Anlong Veng will prevent future generations from forgetting the misery and murder under the Khmer Rouge’s three-year reign of terror in the late 1970s. But, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, the locals may need to undergo a thorough re-education program first.
Ly Kim Heang, a Anlong Veng tourist official, told the daily that she would extoll the bravery of the Khmer Rouge leaders who fought off Vietnamese invaders. “We will talk about the history of the place, about the leaders and where they lived, but not about the killing,” added Madam Ly, the town’s schoolmistress.
