"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Showing posts with label S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Fields. Show all posts
Showing posts with label S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Fields. Show all posts
These disturbing trends have broken out into the real world with mobs demanding obedience by innocent bystanders trying to eat their dinner in Adams Morgan in Washington, DC. Where can Maoism lead in its most extreme form? It leads to the killing fields.
Where Maoists struggle sessions can end.
In the space of less than four years (1975 - 1979) in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot carried out a communist revolution, declared year zero, and within that time killed two million of their countrymen.
One of the executioners, who was finally brought to justice by an international court, has died. Before the revolution he had been a school teacher. Kaing Guek Eav, came to be known as Comrade Duch, who oversaw the killing of over 20,000 people at S-21, a former school officially turned into a prison camp, but that in reality was a death camp.
There is an important documentary of the same name that should be required viewing by Westerners that highlights how teenagers were used to carry out the slaughter following the former school teacher's orders.
Comrade Duch has died at age 77. He was serving a life sentence for his crimes against humanity. He finally answered for his crimes before an international tribunal in 2010.
If it can happen there then it can happen anywhere, especially if we fail to heed the lessons of history.
Kaing Guek Eav a.k.a. "Duch" tortured and murdered thousands
“We will burn the old grass and the new will grow.” - Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (1975 - 1979)
Communist Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of genocide
Earlier today in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge's former head of state Khieu Samphan, 87, and "Brother Number 2" Nuon Chea, 92, the two most senior living members of the Maoist group that seized control of Cambodia from April 17, 1975-January 7, 1979, were found guilty of genocide by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, killed two million Cambodians from overwork, starvation and mass executions over the course of three years and two months in power. They were also guilty of targeting ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minority groups.
What took place in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge was a communist revolution that followed through on its program to its logical conclusion while many in the West looked the other way, or worse normalized them.
The award is named after famed filmmaker Nestor Almendros who co-directed two important films about human rights in Cuba: Mauvaise conduite aka “Improper Conduct” (1984) about the persecution of gay people in Revolutionary Cuba and Nadie escuchaba(1987) aka "Nobody Listened"and both documentaries are available for viewing online.
"They must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses—instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated—the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction." - Karl Marx, 1850
Child victims of the communist Khmer Rouge regime genocide in Cambodia 1975-79
Communist China is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx and commissioned a statue of the German philosopher that is now on display in Marx's German home town. It should not be surprising that the Chinese regime would push for this because Karl Marx is the intellectual author of the communist revolution led by Mao Zedong. What is shocking is that democrats in Germany accepted the statue and that Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the EU Commission would attend an event there to honor the German communist and declare "Marx isn't responsible for all the atrocity his alleged heirs have to answer for."
Alleged heirs? Karl Marx advocated revolutionary terror, moral relativism, and an end justifies the means approach in a toxic mix that produced a century of mass murder and totalitarianism. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. understood this and rejected communism and the Marxist Leninist vision which is why the KGB targeted him with an active measures program.
Communist China honors Karl Marx, but does it truthfully look at its own history as other nations have? Have any other communist regimes or communist parties?
An apology without making amends is not enough but it is something. It is at least a recognition of past wrongs and the need to do better. The Australian government apologized in 2008 for the policies that did great harm to the Aboriginal people during the colonization of Australia.The U.S. House of Representatives issued a formal apology for slavery and Jim Crow in 2008. In 2010 the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate passed a resolution apologizing for
treatment of indigenous people in the U.S. and the President signed it.
The fact that the Putin regime has refused to apologize for the crimes of Soviet Russia in the Baltics s worrisome. Have any existing communist regimes apologized for past crimes? Have any communist parties recognized their past crimes? Instead of rewriting history perhaps recognize the past, apologize and make amends?
Perhaps communists could apologize for how communist regimes have treated children?
Communists advocate and carry out policies to end families and replace the role of parent with the communist state. This means that the extrajudicial killings of children in communism are acts of state filicide. Filicide is the act of killing one's own son or daughter. Across the world from Europe, to Asia, to
Africa, and the Americas there is a pattern that transcends race and
ethnicity but have one commonality: all are communist regimes and they
murder their own innocent children.
China could also consider their legacy in Cambodia, a regime they backed and that was Marxist-Leninist and Maoist.
Spanish poster for S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Enemies of the People
There are two documentary films that you must see to gain an
understanding of how a true and pure communist regime operates. They both focus on events in Cambodia following the rise to power of the communist regime there. One of them Enemies of the People was released in 2010. The other S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (French: S-21, la machine de mort Khmère rouge)
is available online and was released in 2003. Both are works of art
that transcend the confines of documentary film making to serve an
important role in truth telling and national reconciliation. Members of
the Khmer Rouge were placed on trial,
but the verdict on their ideological project is still the subject of
fierce dialogue and debate among communists of what took place between 1975 and 1979. Both these films can serve to not only
inform but provide context into understanding revolution.
The films compliment each other. Enemies of the People
offers the perspective of the revolutionary leadership, their
ideological vision, and how they applied it as government policy. While
the S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
documentary allows the viewer to see how that policy was implemented in
day by day accounts by the prison guards and surviving prisoners. Enemies of the People offers the perspective of the documentary's director Thet Sambath, a senior reporter for the Phnom Penh Post, and he is regarded as one of Cambodia’s best investigative journalists. On the other hand in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine the director, Rithy Panh, is a lifelong filmmaker and a survivor of the Khmer Rouge camps who lost his parents, sister, and many other relatives to the genocide.
Both films offer something I have never seen before in a documentary
the voice of the individuals who committed the atrocities. In Enemies of the People the party’s ideological leader, Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two – break a 30-year silence to give testimony never before heard or seen laying out what and why they did it, and in S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine
it is the guards themselves walking through S-21 prison with one of
their former captives describing in detail what was done there.
Instead of building new statues to the intellectual author of these horrors perhaps they should be torn down or placed in museums that provide the proper historical context. Meanwhile the European Union, whose countries gave birth to the two great totalitarian nightmares of the 20th century: Nazism and Communism, should reflect more deeply on what they seek to honor, to avoid repeating past mistakes.
Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. - Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967) To innovate is not to reform. - Edmund Burke (1796)
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