Vietnam: A Television History; Interview with David R. Hawk, 1983

The old lady did what with the human rights organizations hearing from Cambodia after 1975. What what were they doing. Well if you had actually the first reports of what what the Camaro Rouge were doing from the press who were still in Penn at the time of the evacuation. And then in late 75 in early 76 you started getting early read refugee stories coming from people who had escaped into Thailand. So you began to get stories of what was happening as to what was going on in Cambodia.

Regrettably in a way the stories were so unbelievable that they were not believed. And the the kind of impartial investigations and documentation that should have gone on did not. The international human rights organizations were actually slow in getting to what was a terrible terrible situation. What were some of the things. Well what they were reporting was basically a wholesale violation of virtually all the principles stablished in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the course of the evacuations the emptying of the cities what was the collectivization of Agriculture and the communal ization of eating and the turning the city people into peasants.

Virtually what they were describing was a country that was a situation where the whole country was a slave labor camp where the routine was incredibly harsh and where. Classes or groups of people that the Camaro Rouge deemed or suspected would be opponents of the revolution and were being were being massacred massacres started with the. Officials of the old regime. The officers and sometimes the officers family and sometimes lower ranking soldiers of the longwall forces. What they considered to be futile remnants. You had the dissolution of the Buddhist monk hood and the total suppression of religion you had in 1976 essentially what the Camero consider to be an intensification of the revolution were having eliminated as it

were the soldiers of the old regime in the civil servants of the old regime. They started. Going after the educated classes and the commercial classes people that they figured would stand in the way of a socialist socialist revolution that they were trying to make everybody out. There were many predict that there would be no reason why there were not similar actions. The result was almost the opposite. Yes. The well you know the it just wasn't imagined that such extreme measures would be taken as were taken by the Camaro Rouge it just wasn't an anticipated one.

In retrospect you can see from their behavior in the areas that they were under control before 1975 you can see what their policies were going to be. And in fact some of the Cambodians who were flocking to the cities to Naam pen before 1975 were not only escaping the Civil War or the U.S. bombing but were also fleeing from the repression in the Camaro Rouge areas but this wasn't paid sufficient regard. But it was just what just wasn't anticipated that such extreme and harsh measures would be taken as were taken by the Khmer Rouge. What was the American ideology what were they what they want. Well essentially the C'mere Rouge was a combination of Cambodian intellectuals who had been educated in Paris in highly

theoretical Marxist-Leninism who had returned to Southeast Asia and picked up on as it were. Extreme. Yeah. It's like six times six seconds. Seconds later do ask me a question and tell me where we were. Deep in the Camaro Rouge explaining what they were

doing in Marxist categories they say that it was a situation of dictatorship of the proletariat in the midst of class struggle. What they mean by that I presume. I presume or where where you can how you can get at that question is looking at their idiology the Camaro Rouge was a coalition of intellectuals who had been educated abroad and the poorest of the Cambodian peasantry. The leadership group of the Camaro Rouge had almost to a person been educated in France in a highly theoretical Marxist-Leninism had returned to Southeast Asia and picked up as it were the extreme aspects of Maoist ideology. The substitution of the Asian peasantry for the European proletariat as the maker of revolution ideas associated with the Great Leap Forward and the extreme

ideas of the Cultural Revolution and they sought to apply this kind of ideology on a social system a social structure that had been a traditional society that had been broken down essentially by the civil war that happened from 75 to us from 70 to 75 so they came. Traditional Cambodian society had been shattered had been destroyed by the Civil War. And on that on that situation the Khmer Rouge sought to make it. I suppose what was one of the most thorough going revolutions. In in history they was a peasant revolution. Everybody was going to become a peasant that's essentially why they evacuated the cities to make everybody into a peasant and increase rice production.

Was the theory of what would happen. And the eliminating the classes that had traditionally exploited the peasantry was in theory supposed to release the productive. The productivity of the peasantry. It of course didn't happen and agricultural productivity declined throughout the Camaro Rouge period and people went increasingly hungry. But that one of the things the Camero thought that they were trying to do. While some people believed it right away one of the troubles was that the early accounts were shrouded in political controversy. There was this theory that the early refugee accounts were exaggerated CIA propaganda to justify the bloodbath theory as it were. But as

more people kept coming out into Thailand and their testimonies reinforced the what the earlier refugees had been saying finally you had a body of evidence that couldn't be couldn't be denied. What circumstances. My first trip inside Cambodia occurred while I was working on a Cambodian refugee and famine relief programs. And I originally went in in regards to that work. In 1981 in 1982 I made a second trip to Cambodia as a freelance journalist in order to photograph the evidence that remained of what had happened under the Camaro Rouge. What is your summary of what did happen. Well one of the only people to make a reeducation camps are just the women.

Well there was a there was essentially a three tiered structure of murder by government in Cambodia under the Camero Rouge at the top of the pyramid so to speak was a prison execution extermination system where people who were presumed to be opponents enemies of the regime traitors to the revolution were individually executed. Places like Toul slang or what was s 20 was called S 21 has now been renamed Toul slang where 15000 people were individually executed and only seven survived. From that that was at the hub or at the center of a prison execution system that existed at the regional and district levels as well and resulted in the deaths of scores of thousands of people who were singled out individually in the middle as it were you

have people who were killed. Groups classes. Who were massacred or purged and then massacred. Groups that were considered to be opponents of the regime former army officers former government officials ethnic minority groups that resisted forced assimilation party Qadri that is Camaro Rouge who were in areas that resisted and were late in implementing the extreme policies that were being ordered from Penn. What happened in those cases the center as it were would send out troops and Qadri take over those areas and execute the Qadri that were not implementing the extreme policies and then implemented the extreme policies. So you have that middle area of a lot of death. Bye bye massacre.

You had us. You have essentially the middle area of people. The best Cambodia scholars provisionally estimate that probably half a million people 500000 were massacred were executed because they were in the wrong group as it were. And then you have at the bottom or at the base of this pyramid a much larger group of people who died by a combination of. Exhaustion from forced marches and slave labor induced starvation because following the collectivization of agriculture productivity declined with the communal ization of living and eating the ration given to people diminished so people were exhausted they were. Becoming hungry and they became susceptible to disease and the Camaro Rouge had sought to

prohibit western medicine they had killed many doctors and health professionals because they were educated abroad or were part of the educated classes. Other doctors and health professionals didn't reveal themselves for fear of execution so you had the reemergence of traditional diseases tuberculosis beri beri to which scientific medicine has has been able to cure. The so the. Again the most able Cambodian scholars provisionally think that half a million to 2 million people died of this combination. So you have in essentially three and a half years of rule. You have essentially in three and a half years of Camaro Rouge rule somewhere between one and a half and two and a half million out of seven million people dying through a combination of

execution induced starvation exhaustion and disease. What are they like. Most. Well it varies obviously from individual to individual. Many people were initially reluctant to say what had happened to them. They did memories they did not want to revive. Once people started talking in many cases they wanted then to tell their stories and they wanted to get. They wanted their stories to be known as it were and they were glad that that foreigners the press would listen to what had happened to them. At first you did it particularly in 1991 when memories and the

trauma was so fresh. Even talking to people in the refugee camps or inside Cambodia was it was painful people would cry as they recounted the deaths of their relatives and their friends. It was very it was even painful to listen to their stories and to see the pain that it caused people even to remember and to tell although after people would tell you this they would thank you for listening to their stories in many instances. Stop a little. Pix 45 coming up. It's late 97 this march. Well as as you know as you may know prior to 19 17 Penn was a city of about 500000 during the war by 1975 it had

swollen to somewhere over two million people. And as you know when the Khmer Rouge came in they evacuated not only not Penn but all of the provincial cities as well. And what it happened. The city had forced marches into the countryside and the areas to which the city people were sent proved unable to accommodate them. And you had during the Throughout the three years of Camaro Rouge rule essentially a series of forced marches forced migrations as area after area to which these people the city people were sent were unable to accommodate them. And these marches continued to kill off the old the very young and the sick. How would you describe the current political situation in the world. How. Effective. To get it. Well let me start with the second part of that. The.

Essentially in following the Vietnamese invasion there was a famine which followed a situation of declining agricultural production over a number of years and the you had essentially Cambodian streaming back into Nahm Penne starving and ill and Cambodians also streaming into Thailand also starving and very ill. And that's where the two places where the can the situation the Cambodians could be seen by the outside world and the international community did respond to the famine crisis that followed the genocide as it were and the famine problem has been solved by and large people have. Most people have enough to eat although there are areas well

let's just back down. Well the worst of the famine crisis is clearly over. Cambodia is not self-sufficient yet in rice production. But but the famine crisis as we knew it in 1970 nine thousand nine hundred eighty eight 1981 has been resolved. The international community continues to provide humanitarian aid and relief to the Cambodians that are situated on the Thai Cambodia border. Unfortunately in my own opinion the relief operation inside the country has been substantially closed down. In my in my in my own opinion that's because there has been an unrealistic line drawn between humanitarian famine relief

and what could be considered a reconstruction or rehabilitation which the international community is unwilling to do and in my opinion the line that is drawn between famine relief and rehabilitation and reconstruction is not a realistic one that doesn't doesn't fit the realities of how life is like in Cambodia. Nonetheless the international community by which I mean primarily western Europe the United States and Japan has seen fit to and it's its aid to its relief program inside the country. You gave a nice example of an instance of what would be allowed and what would be in the fishing area retail. Well so some examples were kind of rough examples of what I mean by an unrealistic goal line between famine relief and

rehabilitation or economic development. You can ship in fishnets as it were. So people can catch fish. But rebuilding a fishing net factory in side Cambodia would be considered economic development. Or you can send in rice and rice seed. But the machinery needed to rebuild the irrigation system is considered economic development where in my opinion in reality it is what is necessary to get Cambodia self-sufficient in rice which is I believe the responsibility of the international community. And until that until that has occurred I don't believe that the that the famine situation has really been adequately resolved. And I think the international community should get Cambodia back to a situation of

self-sufficiency and food. Would you tell me how you got to the prison records you later regret. Well the the central security prison that is the extermination camp that was at the top of this nationwide system of execution and extermination prisons is in pen when the Vietnamese invaded they did so. Yeah. At the top of the prison execution extermination system that existed throughout Cambodia. There was s 21 central security prison or what is known commonly as tool slang in pen the place where 15000 people were executed and only seven survived

when the. Vietnamese invaded they did so so quickly that essentially the Camero Rouge jailers and prison officials ran off and fled for their lives and left behind scores of thousands of pages of documentation that had been utilized at this prison execution center. This wasn't known about before 1979 before the Camero Rouge were ousted and it's very surprising that you would have an illiterate peasant country a bureaucracy of death that was that efficient and that developed literally a nation Auschwitz as it were. But you had the Camero Rouge prison officials took photographs of individuals upon entry there are record individual entry records for everybody who came through there that would list people's professions their

place of origin. The reason they were arrested people were individually photographed. People were forced to confess to being traitors to the revolution. And naming their conspirators as it were often this took the crude form of being accused of being either a CIA agent or a KGB agent is actually how it was expressed but these people were forced to confess they either if they were illiterate dictated confessions or if they could write they hand wrote Confessions in some of the margins of the confessions you can see note about torture that were written by the prison officials to indicate a means they undertook to get people to confess to their misdeeds and so you have these confessions and you have the type written confer summaries of confessions that were made by the prison

officials to send on to party higher ups. And you have photographs of individuals taken after they were dead or nearly dead. That could also be sent on to part higher party higher ups to show that these traitors to the revolution had been killed and they were not being harbored so you have this extraordinary documentation of murder and torture. From which in fact the Cambodian speaking scholars can reconstruct part of quite a bit of the internal history of the regime in action and of the political pathology of the regime that is to say you can take the entry schedules and the execution schedules and look at the kinds of people who are essentially washing through. As the Camaro Rouge sought sucess successive scapegoats as to who was sabotaging the revolution as the

revolution failed to work they kept looking about for who is sabotaging it now because they figured that they had eliminated the enemies to the revolution but still things weren't working so they sought scapegoats. And you can you can trace this as a as this as it were by looking at the successive occupations and situations of people who were being booked and exterminated and by looking at the questions and answers in the confessions. So it's an extraordinary a set of document documentation that people didn't know exist. But there it is. It's income air. You have you have part of it it's being organized as best the archivists can do at Toul slang. When I was there in 1981 you had piles on the floor of a file folders full of photographs full of negatives. With these confessions and slowly they were trying to organize it to make archives of it but it's an extraordinary.

So of record keeping your heart in him and what kind of person does we draw from. Maybe we should listen. To them.