The Master of Confessions

by Thierry Cruvellier

  CHAPTER 25

  TA MOK’S ABODE IN ANLONG VENG IS ALREADY BEING COMMERCIALLY EXPLOITED. Foreigners pay $2 a visit and 500 riels (about 12 cents) to use the toilets. According to the province’s director of tourism, around a thousand Cambodians a month visited in 2007, along with fifty to a hundred Thais and twenty or so other foreigners, mostly Japanese. Out on the beautiful peninsula, in the garage where cars were once parked, two big cages resembling giant fish traps draw the interest of a group of Cambodian tourists. They are prisoner cages, someone explains a little too eagerly. Farther on, among the mango trees, lies the ruined chassis of a truck. With its hood propped open, it looks like some sort of a giant, yawning toad. It was once the mobile broadcasting truck used by the Khmer Rouge’s television propaganda service.

  The main house, though entirely emptied of its furnishings, has been pretty well-maintained. On the ground floor are murals painted in the early 1990s, illustrating the Khmer kingdom’s former splendor—something that remains a source of pride for a patriotism with few sources from which to draw inspiration: there’s the temple at Angkor Wat, of course, celebrated even by the Khmer Rouge, who, despite their determination to erase all traces of counterrevolutionary culture, placed an outline of the temple in the center of their flag; and there’s the temple at Preah Vihear, a spectacular ruin perched atop a cliff in the Dangreks, which to this day continues to cost Cambodian and Thai soldiers their lives, ludicrously sacrificed on the altar of patriotic madness as both nations claim ownership of it. To sit on Preah Vihear’s rocky outcrop as dawn’s red glow turns to silver is to witness the majestic morning of the world as it was before man, and as it remains despite him.

  On one of the walls of Ta Mok’s house, next to some paintings of the famous temples, there’s a large map of the kingdom. Nhem En produced it in 1993 on behalf of general command, which is where it remained until it was brought here. The room gives onto a large terrace with a magnificent view of the lake. Four Cambodians are talking quietly on the terrace. Ta Mok lived in paradise, they say, admiring the landscape. All four have come for a wedding. They’re delighted to be able to combine the wedding with two lifelong dreams.

  “I always wanted to see Angkor Wat and Anlong Veng. I’m so happy my dream has come true,” one of them tells me.

  He says he’ll pay a visit to Pol Pot’s tomb after the wedding. Though disinclined to talk, the four tell me that they had all been about ten years old when the Khmer Rouge seized power, and that for the next five years they had belonged to mobile child units. One cautiously tells me that Ta Mok is now considered a criminal and Hun Sen a hero, but that in his opinion, there should be statues of all the leaders. His friends nod in agreement. All the leaders were fighters, they say.

  SEVERAL MONTHS BEFORE THE VERDICT, I attended a Khmer Rouge victims’ meeting in the south of the country, where I heard a number of odd suggestions about how best to commemorate Duch’s crime. A young member of one of Cambodia’s biggest human rights groups suggested that three statues of Duch should be raised at S-21: one of him seated in the horseshoe-shaped dock; one of him saying sorry; and the third of him being tortured. The well-intentioned young man went on to say that, on the day of the verdict, Duch should kneel before the ninety civil parties. Later, at the end of the trial, a Cambodian lawyer representing some of the victims also felt that a statue of Duch should be built at S-21, this time depicting him in his revolutionary uniform, that is to say, his criminal uniform, he wisely qualified.

  Meanwhile in Anlong Veng, Nhem En also wants to build statues of Ta Mok, Pol Pot, and all the top Khmer Rouge leaders.

  “We could inscribe them with ‘good leader’ or ‘bad leader,’” he says.

  “What would you write on Ta Mok’s?” I ask. Nhem En and the four wedding guests laugh heartily.

  “I can’t give a definite answer,” says one of them. “Most people say he was bad, but I’m not convinced.”

  “I would say ‘bad,’ because he lost the war,” says Nhem En.

  “And what about Pol Pot?”

  One of the men tells me that he would put down “bad” for the same reason that Nhem En had given: Pol Pot lost the war. Then, as the conversation continues, everyone feels more comfortable and becomes more expansive.

  “We should write ‘bad’ because millions of people perished and the country was destroyed,” adds the same man.

  Until this moment, he claimed not to know very much about the Khmer Rouge era; now, he gives a detailed list of the crimes committed under the regime. After this unexpected indictment, I again ask: “So, then, was Ta Mok good or bad?”

  “I would say bad,” he answers.

  ON THE STRAIGHT ROAD leading from Anlong Veng to the Dangrek Mountains and the Thai border sits the Sra Chhouk pagoda and its impressive but unmarked mausoleum. It is the final resting place of Ta Mok. If the importance of former members of the Angkar can be measured by the size and upkeep of their tombs, then Ta Mok is hands-down the most powerful dead member of the Khmer Rouge, one of the few leaders not to have attended university. His grave stands as a sort of testament to his peasant superiority over the Revolution’s professors.

  Along one side of the property runs a long, incomplete wall made of concrete sections of equal size, each one with an inscription in Khmer. Each inscription, I’m told, indicates a donation. A pleasant, artificial pond ringed with eucalyptus demarcates the other side of the property. When I first visited in 2007, there was a platform of some six by ten meters rising about fifty centimeters off the ground, partly walled in by little columns made of faux mother-of-pearl and blanketed in flowers. A fine wooden roof covered this impeccably maintained kiosk. Rising from the middle of that square slab beneath it was a big, gray, rectangular cement tomb, about two meters across, with a slightly rounded top. No name or epitaph was engraved on it. The local authorities had permitted Ta Mok’s house to be identified, but not his grave.

  When I return three years later, the structure has been entirely redone. The simple wooden roof sheltering the tomb has been replaced with a real mausoleum of bricks and mortar. It looks a bit like an elephant, according to my motorcycle driver.

  At a point where the path leading to the sepulcher intersects with another, one of Ta Mok’s four daughters keeps a small shop. Inside, a handsome portrait of her father hangs on the wall.

  “Whether he was a good man or a bad man, a father is a father,” she says calmly.

  She tells me that she spent the previous two years having the tomb rebuilt at a cost of $16,000. For the moment, she’s too broke to finish the renovation, she says. But later there’ll be a painting of the dead man, with his name beneath.

  “Would you like to contribute?” she asks with a smile.

  NEXT TO A LONG, narrow path nearby stands a humble wooden house on stilts. It’s so small it’s easy to miss. In front of the house, about a meter from the path, there’s a low rise covered in pansies and shrubbery. There’s no sign here, no guard, no one selling tickets. But since 2006, the provincial authorities have been protecting a plot of fifteen hundred square meters around this house, and have forbidden anyone from living there. Beneath that clump of earth lie the ashes of a dozen people: Son Sen, the dreaded minister of defense and founder of S-21, and his family, all of them murdered in 1997 at Pol Pot’s orders, after he came to the conclusion that his faithful accomplice was, in fact, an agent of Hanoi. Son Sen and his family comprised the last “line” to be erased by Brother Number One. Of all the now-dead mass murderers who blighted the Cambodian people, Son Sen is by far the most neglected.

  Leaving behind Ta Mok’s opulent mausoleum and Son Sen’s anonymous burial plot, the road leads straight toward the rocky ridge of the Dangreks, up an escarpment and to a small border post in the Choam-sa Ngam pass, fifteen minutes’ drive from Anlong Veng. In the middle of an uneven rise, the road splits around what used to be an imposing statue, one that has become a site for offerings. Some say that the Khmer Rouge carved it to celebrate their
victory over the Vietnamese, and it’s been largely destroyed since. All that remain are a pair of legs and part of the torso of a revolutionary cadre. Tourists are encouraged to take photos of themselves resting their heads atop the decapitated bust. A dozen or so little shrines, called spirit houses, now surround the outcropping. The local population has transformed what was once a monument to the glory of the Revolution’s soldiers into a sort of oracle, where women offer fruit and light incense. One of the amputated sculptures is draped in colorful fabrics. The locals have turned it into a god of fertility.

  The atmosphere at Choam-sa Ngam is typical of border crossings, with its assorted traffic carrying everything from traditional market goods to the most corrupt forms of commerce.

  There’s a track running alongside and slightly below the main road. Next to the track, a short, narrow plank leads across the gutter to a field. Dirty water and detritus stagnate beneath this makeshift bridge. Head fifty meters down the sandy track beyond it and you’ll see the sheet-metal shelter over Pol Pot’s ashes. The house where the tyrant spent his final days, ill and watched over by Ta Mok’s men, used to stand next to the path, but there’s nothing left of it now. It was burned to the ground. Only a concrete slab remains, its cracks colonized by tall, cottony grass. Under a tuft of green, you can make out a fragment of an enamel toilet basin. I have a friend accompanying me, an American who specializes in museums and memorials for mass crimes. He amuses himself imagining this ceramic fragment becoming an artifact in an exhibition in New York or in the museum that Nhem En, who is following us down the path, dreams of opening.

  “Pol Pot’s pot,” he says with a smile.

  A gentle breeze adds to the serene atmosphere. I take a moment to enjoy my friend’s Dadaist humor. Then, feeling discomfort and curiosity, I approach the despot’s dismal grave.

  A row of upturned bottles form a perimeter around the rectangular, ash-covered mound. A flimsy, broken wooden fence surrounds the small, rusted, corrugated iron shelter that stands a meter off the ground above the ashes, in which I can see a bit of tire, an empty bottle, and a brick. There’s a packet of incense sticks and a little wooden elephant in front of the tomb. One thing is clear: there’s very little upkeep. But the site has been duly registered by the government. A blue sign posted by the ministry of tourism tells visitors, in an English as broken as the French on the panels at S-21, to keep the place tidy:

  PLEASE HELP TO PRESERVE THIS HISTORICAL SITE. POL POT’S WAS CREMATED HERE. HELP TO MAINTAIN PROPERLY. KEEP IT CLEAN.

  That was in 2007. When I go back three years later, a row of red stakes has been planted along the trench. A brand-new sign marks the site. Nhem En has obviously pilfered the toilet fragment for his museum, or to sell to the highest bidder. Lovely pink and white flowers have bloomed in front of the mound, and a remarkable wooden spirit house, a sort of fine Khmer villa on stilts, protected on one side by a statue of an elephant, stands on a plinth. My Cambodian guides tell me that some Thais installed it after they won the lottery by betting on a number drawn from Pol Pot’s biography. The appeal of legends lies in their perpetuation.

  ON A DIRT ROAD in Choam-sa Ngam, lined with shops catering to tourists and travelers, there is a vacant lot strewn with wild grass and plastic bags. Fifteen or so gray wooden posts about three meters high rise from the lot. Now marked as a tourist site, it was here that Pol Pot’s open-air trial took place before a small committee assembled by Ta Mok in 1997. From here, the road continues along a strip of forest on the Dangrek ridge line. In some places, it’s no wider than a hundred meters between the cliff and the official border with Thailand. The path turns sandy, the sand white and fine. Not much farther on, we reach Uncle Roun’s guesthouse. A rocky promontory directly overhanging the void gives a spectacular view of the great plain of Cambodia. This stunning belvedere seems like it was carved from the rock by man; the atmosphere is a little like that of some abandoned quarry. At sunrise, the lake of Anlong Veng gleams like a pool of molten metal. This was the Khmer Rouge’s last central command post.

  Lieutenant-colonel Roun joined the government’s army in 1968, the year the guerrilla movement began its armed struggle and the year Duch was thrown in jail. Roun was sixteen years old at the time. He survived Pol Pot’s four years in power by hiding his identity. When the Democratic Kampuchea regime fell, he rejoined the ranks of the government army. Following Ta Mok’s arrest, he was sent here to guard the border. Dozens of soldiers, along with their families, settled on this ridge. In 2001, Ta Roun opened a guesthouse on this stunning spot. It has six rooms in which to host a few tourists as well as a number of regular locals who appreciate its location, a romantic hideaway perfect for carrying on affairs.

  Out in the vegetation surrounding this pleasant guesthouse stands Ta Mok’s radio antenna, as well as the house in which Pol Pot’s men supposedly assassinated Son Sen. It’s a small, one-room building. The walls are topped with wire mesh. My motorcycle driver tells me how, three years earlier, he had driven a Frenchman of about fifty here. Once they reached the spot, the foreigner took a can of black spray-paint out of his bag and sprayed enormous graffiti on top of the many messages that already covered the inside of the building. He wrote, among other things, the declarative SHAME ON TA MOK, the grandiloquent TA MOK, HISTORY’S MURDERER, and the more evocative TA MOK IS A COCKSUCKER. It seems that sometimes my countrymen travel far in order to express themselves.

  The road that leads through the Dangreks passes through a lush forest that opens onto ponds, glades, and delicate marshes dotted with bare trees. Six kilometers on, the road shrinks and becomes first a steep path, then a track passable only by motorcycle. It rises a little, then widens a bit before reaching Khieu Samphan’s “house.” Samphan was at one time president of Democratic Kampuchea. Now, amid the trees and bushes, there remains nothing but the foundation slab, collapsed brick and concrete walls, and, on the ground, bits of green sheet metal that were the roof. The ministry of tourism has brazenly marked this crumbling and remote site with one of its blue signs. Below the site lies a large pond, on the far shore of which the path continues to rise. The land forms a sort of natural terrace here, protected on one side by the pond and on the other by a steep cliff. At its highest point, right at the edge of the cliff, lie the ruins of Pol Pot’s final home, where he lived before his arrest.

  The house was built in 1993. My guide tells me that when he first came here in 2005, the main floor was still covered with fine tiles. Most of them have since disappeared or disintegrated. There are two openings tall enough to pass through in the concrete wall. With a few acrobatics, you can slip through these to reach the basement. Here, you’ll find two dingy rooms, both ten by three meters. Most of the house above has been demolished, with the exception of a raised terrace surrounded by a steel barrier and offering a superb view over the plains below. Several imposing cisterns of reinforced concrete have survived the destruction. A short distance beyond the house, a large water reservoir had been built so that water overflowed the precipice to prevent flooding. Three nonchalant young soldiers supposedly guarding the site are busy picking fruit from the trees. The ministry of tourism sign explains that it wants to “show Cambodia in all its glory.”

  NHEM EN AND THE JEWELER turned out to be right. Two years after our meeting, the road from Siem Reap to Anlong Veng was redone and is now one of the best in the country. It takes just an hour and a half to cover its 120 sinuous but perfectly paved kilometers. While the jeweler has pulled out of the museum project, Nhem En has stuck with it. Ten kilometers outside of town, where the road to Anlong Veng branches off the highway, stands a big sign indicating his museum some three kilometers away. Two portraits of Nhem En occupy the top left corner of the sign: one in his khaki Khmer Rouge uniform, and one in a suit and tie, which gives him the look of a local politician.

  Tenacious and obstinate, Nhem En has clearly worked out how to make his government position pay. He’s no longer deputy governor but instead a “district inspector.” H
e now owns a vast stretch of land, some fifty hectares of rice paddies and fields subject to the Cambodian climate’s vagaries. Under a ferocious sun, I find him busy planting multicolored flags at the entrance to his museum. He has a krama tied around his waist and a straw hat pulled down tight on his head. He tells me that the museum will be finished within two months. In the middle of a field baking in the blazing heat, his workers, both men and women, all of their bodies completely covered against the sun and all of them wearing kramas over their hats, have laid out the foundation of a building measuring twenty-five meters by seven. Nhem En hopes to draw a thousand visitors a month.

  “How much will the entrance ticket cost?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nhem En has had two magnificent baray (irrigation reservoirs) built nearby. Overflowing with enthusiasm, he insists on taking me and my two friends to see them in his car. Though they’re less than a hundred meters away, we drive around them. A tractor quickly flattens a track ahead of us while we follow. It’s the sort of comical, absurd scene that wouldn’t be out of place in a Charlie Chaplin film. With his high-pitched voice and machine-gun delivery, Nhem En tells us about the restaurant he envisages building alongside the guesthouse, where the bungalows will have names such as Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan.

  “Tourists will be able to choose which one they sleep in,” he says with a big smile and sunlight glinting in his eyes. “The first thing people want to see is Angkor Wat. The second thing is the Khmer Rouge.”

  Nhem En thinks he can do as well as the temples. He takes me by the arm and convinces me that, at the very least, he isn’t short of ideas. “We could exhume Ta Mok’s body and put it on display in the museum. People would pay $20 to see him. He would be behind a glass partition that would open electrically. We could raise him with a hoist. We could also display his wooden leg, if I can find it.”