Escaping the Khmer Rouge

by Chileng Pa

“Sir, I didn’t run away from a Khmer Rouge jail, nothing like that. I’m not a criminal,” I replied. I was becoming uncomfortable. I had no way of knowing if I would receive another round of beatings and I wanted to avoid more torture at any cost. I focused all my attention on the officer and tried to ignore my pain and soreness. I breathed a sigh of relief when the officer spoke again, for he gave me the opportunity I needed.

  “Lam, if I agree to let you stay here in Vietnam, can you help me? Can you tell me anything about the Khmer Rouge guerrillas? Where they are headquartered? Have they sent troops against us? Are there minefields and other obstacles we need to avoid?”

  I knew nothing about the Khmer Rouge troops and their locations but I could certainly make up something to pacify the interrogation officer. I could give him enough information to avoid further torture because I had discovered so many tripwires, pitfalls, and mines during my journey to the border. I had no trouble telling him about the tricks used by the Khmer Rouge. In addition, I told him of places where the Khmer Rouge guerrillas planned to ambush the Vietnamese. I told him where he might find concealed stockpiles of ammunition and places where he could look for troops amassing along the border for an attack.

  The commander’s eyes grew wide as I told my lies to him. My years as an intelligence officer and as a mechanic for the Khmer Rouge now paid off. I had been authorized by the Khmer Rouge to travel through the villages of the district to fix engines and now it allowed me to describe Cambodian geography and Khmer Rouge patterns of activity. I had been in his position as an interrogator and I knew his tricks: asking me the same question in different ways to be certain I wasn’t lying to him. I was prepared for him. I also knew to keep the stories I told him simple, and I avoided tripping over the obstacles he placed in my way.

  Finally, he said, “Lam, how is it that you know all this?”

  “Because I have seen these things with my own eyes,” I replied. “In addition, sir, the Khmer Rouge sent me to various places to fix bicycles.”

  “Are you sure about all this?” he asked.

  And I replied in a confident tone, “As sure as I can be, sir.”

  I was escorted out of the building and back to my cage. The guard untied my hands and motioned me in. A few minutes later, he returned with a bucket of water and I prepared to get dowsed. Instead, he opened the cage door and set the full bucket inside, handing me a half coconut shell. As he closed the door and returned to his post I gulped the water eagerly, using some of it to wash my face and wounds. After dark, the guard brought an old blanket and a bowl of gruel, along with several pieces of dried fish. Again, I said to myself, “Stay strong. Don’t lose hope!”

  When I awoke the next morning, another escaped Cambodian was in the cage next to mine. He didn’t appear to have been beaten as I had been. I eyed him suspiciously, thinking, “Have they put a Vietnamese spy here to see if I was speaking the truth or is he a Khmer Rouge spy sent to find me?” Although I was careful not to reveal anything incriminating I was curious about him. “Hey, Bong!” I asked him. “Why are you locked up like me? What’s your name?”

  When he heard me speaking Cambodian, he hesitated. He must have been shocked to see my face, which was still swollen, and my mass of bruises and abrasions. I could tell that he was suspicious of me, also.

  “My name’s Duk,” he replied. “I’ve escaped from the Khmer Rouge. When I crossed the border, Vietnamese soldiers arrested me and threw me in here last night.” He waited for me to ask him something further but I remained silent. Finally, in a loud voice, he said, “How about you? What’s your name?”

  “Duk, please speak softly.” I shushed him. “We don’t want the guard to catch us chatting or we’ll both catch hell for it.”

  He took my rebuke with humility and apologized. He was about the same age as me, scared and hungry.

  “My name is Lam,” I whispered to him. “I also have escaped from the Khmer Rouge.”

  “How long have you been in this cage?” he asked.

  “About a week or so. Did you escape all by yourself?” I immediately asked. I wanted to ask the questions, not answer them.

  He replied, “No, Lam. Five friends escaped with me. We were all drafted to go to the same worksite to dig a canal and levee. The damned guerrillas in charge treated us like animals. We decided we had to do something, so we cooked up a plan to run away. When we got about five hundred meters from the worksite, we took off running. We totally surprised the guerrillas who were marching us there. We all might have made it, except we didn’t know there was a village nearby where a group of guerrillas was quartered.”

  He went on with his story, shivering with the memory. “As we were running from the worksite, we were running toward the village. Suddenly, some Khmer Rouge soldiers emerged from the village and began chasing us and shooting at us. We changed direction but it was too late. We couldn’t outrun their bullets.”

  Duk paused. “It was awful, Lam. Two of us made it to some bushes where we hid and caught our breath but the other three were too slow. We could hear them screaming for us to help them but there was nothing we could do. We had no weapons. I feel so guilty for leaving them behind, Lam.”

  Again he paused. “It was horrible. The two of us left started running again. The next thing I knew, he was gone. When I looked around for him, I saw two guerrillas overtaking him. He wasn’t fast enough. They began shooting in my direction and I ran even faster. I ran until I no longer heard the guns firing.”

  “How far from the border were you?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “It took me two days to reach it. I was so afraid of being caught by the Khmer Rouge. At night, the mosquitoes nearly ate me alive. I would have continued walking through the night but I was too exhausted and I couldn’t see the path. I was afraid, also, that I’d fall into a pitfall or trip a wire and get blown up. In the daytime, I cut across rice fields to avoid landmines.”

  He sighed. “I didn’t know I was at the border until I came to a string of barbed wire in the weeds. I waited until dark to cross the border and then got lost. A Vietnamese patrol found me and knew I wasn’t one of their people. They brought me here to this cage and told me I’d have to be detained until my interrogation.”

  “Did they beat you?” I asked.

  “No, they just tied my wrists,” he said.

  “Do you have family? What about them?” I asked him.

  “They remained at the village when I was sent to the worksite. I don’t know what has happened to them. I’m very worried about them,” he said.

  I listened to Duk’s story with rapt attention as he continued to talk about other people he knew who had tried to escape to Vietnam. Those who were caught were sent back to their district and were tortured before being killed. In addition, their families were classified as Vietnamese sympathizers and sent from the Eastern Region to the Western Region where they were punished, forced to work, tortured, and eventually murdered.

  I wanted to believe everything Duk told me. He sounded sincere and honest. If he was telling me the truth, I felt sorry for his family for they would surely be slaughtered, as had thousands of families before them.

  The guards suddenly appeared and removed Duk from his cage. He wasn’t tied up or beaten but was escorted to the same building I’d been taken to for questioning.

  I never saw him again. He may well have been a Vietnamese spy but I would never know. If he was, I hadn’t told him anything the Vietnamese could hold against me.

  The next four days passed quickly. I was gradually given more freedom. First, I was taken from the cage and allowed to sleep in the barracks. Although I was grateful for this treatment, I was not convinced that I was free of further questioning and possible torture. I was Cambodian and, as such, the ancient enemy of the Vietnamese people who would always regard me that way. The Vietnamese were not fighting the Khmer Rouge to save Cambodia, they were fighting to save Vietnam.

  The troop commander finally came to tell me
he was relocating me to the refugee camp in Saigon. “You’re now free, Lam,” he said. I was very grateful to him and I thanked him, but I didn’t trust him. I was fearful that the destination for which I was headed was Cambodia, not Saigon. I couldn’t forget the conversation I had overheard near the outhouse when the guerrillas spoke of the agreement between Angkar and the Vietnamese government to return escapees to Cambodia.

  For the next few days, I was able to suppress my feelings of doubt. The soldiers in the compound treated me as a friend, not an enemy. Those who’d given me such a beating apologized to me, telling me they were only doing their job. I could have walked out of the compound at any time.

  After a few days, a small bus pulled into the compound, and a soldier told me to get ready. I boarded the bus with a few of the soldiers and, after making numerous stops to pick up refugees, the bus arrived at the Bon Teng Refugee Camp in Saigon. A Vietnamese official met the bus and directed us to a building for an orientation session.

  A middle-aged man with whom I had become friendly on the bus, said to me, “Bong, in a little while, we can all lie down and rest.” All I could think of was how good it would feel to take a bath.

  12

  A New Life in Cambodia, Thailand, and America

  Cambodia’s fate was about to change. On December 3, 1978, Vietnam announced the formation of a coalition to invade Cambodia. Called the Khmer National United Front for National Salvation, the coalition included over a hundred and fifty thousand refugees who’d fled from Cambodia, and Khmer Rouge soldiers escaping purges by their superiors. Most had fled to Vietnam leaving their families behind, and they were tormented by their loss.

  In late December 1978, Vietnamese military officers ordered Cambodian recruits at the Long Anh refugee army camp in Saigon to assemble. As one of the recruits at the camp, I stood with five hundred of my countrymen as the commanding officer addressed us. After a few comments, he announced, “Recruits, prepare to return to Cambodia. It’s time for you to liberate your country from the claws of the red communists.”

  We each received a weapon. I was issued an AK-47. Months before, thinking I was a Khmer Rouge spy because I was carrying a Khmer Rouge AK-47, the Vietnamese had taken my rifle and beaten me severely. Now, the Vietnamese gave me an AK-47, and accepted me as a fellow comrade-in-arms.

  I’d spent more than six months in this army camp, training with other Cambodians. I knew no one there and never saw anyone in Vietnam that I knew, but was comforted by the dream of liberating Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge. Our instructors were Vietnamese and ethnic Khmer who lived in the delta area of southern Vietnam. As I trained, my thoughts were always on my lost family and on the revenge I would inflict on our tormentors, if I got the chance. I felt sad while living in Vietnam, but it was better than living in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

  At last the day of invasion arrived, and the commander gave the order to abandon camp. We were off to join up with recruits from many other camps as well as other Vietnamese forces to drive the Khmer Rouge from Cambodia.

  The war was a short one and the invasion easy. We left Saigon on January 1, 1979 and drove a few hours to Neak Luong where we spent the night by the dock. By January 5, 1980, our forces had taken Takeo, and on January 7, the Khmer Rouge leaders left Phnom Penh by train for the forests of northwestern Cambodia. I rode on an armored tank with five comrades, all Vietnamese soldiers. One drove, one manned the machine gun, and three rode on top with me, each of us holding our rifles as we made our way through Phnom Penh to Battambang. When we encountered Khmer Rouge, they ran away. The only shooting we did was into the air. What I remember of those days was the joy and excitement I felt in returning to my country and watching the Khmer Rouge run in fear. Many of them were young boys, evidence that the Khmer Rouge’s revolution was on its last legs. I was happy with my Vietnamese comrades, so glad to be going home.

  In days, there was a large body of well-trained and well-equipped men pushing through Cambodia in search of between thirty and forty thousand frightened Khmer Rouge. Each time a group of Khmer Rouge guerrillas was spotted, they turned and ran. The Khmer Rouge yothea fled to the jungles and the mountains and, although they would continue to wage a war of resistance, the hated Pol Pot regime was defeated. For many of the Cambodian refugee soldiers, the return to their homeland brought back horrible memories of the rape and slaughter of their families. For some of them, and for some Cambodians who’d never been able to escape, these memories fueled the fires of revenge. In one terrible example, people returning to their home village on January 4, 1979 encountered Khmer Rouge guerrillas who had strayed from their unit. The villagers slaughtered them with their hooked knives, the traditional Khmer method for exacting revenge.

  I was among many Cambodians eager to return to their homes to start new lives. I couldn’t wait to get to my former house to see what was left of our belongings. I was disappointed to find only ashes on the land where our house had stood. There was nothing to retrieve, not even the photographs and other family papers I’d buried before our evacuation. I was weary of dealing with the hardship and suffering that had become a way of life for us Cambodians, but my heart was also bursting with joy that the Khmer Rouge had been shoved out. I kept thinking, “Is this really happening? How did this happen so fast?”

  In Battambang Province, we chased the Khmer Rouge into the mountains, whenever possible retrieving villagers the communists had forced to travel along with them. The Vietnamese had dropped leaflets over Battambang so the people knew we were coming. Although the Khmer Rouge killed anyone they saw reading a leaflet or listening to the radio, Cambodians themselves realized things were changing. When they saw us, they were hysterical with joy. After several weeks, the Khmer Rouge had fled the province, and we were ordered back to Phnom Penh.

  For the first week after liberation day, the city of Phnom Penh was empty. No Khmer Rouge lingered. The Vietnamese turned their attention to creating order and had no more use for its Cambodian soldiers. By February 1979, the city of Phnom Penh was occupied mainly by Cambodian and Vietnamese officials and demobilized Cambodians who’d served with the Vietnamese. Initially, few civilians felt safe enough to come back to Phnom Penh but, soon, the families of some of the government officials came to live in the city. This was followed by a great influx of Vietnamese citizens.

  I took off my uniform and my career as a soldier was over. I obtained clothes from an abandoned house and, since my home was destroyed, I began looking for another. This was not difficult to do since more than half the population of Phnom Penh had been slaughtered and the rest were dispersed around the country, and many families had been entirely wiped out. While I searched, I discovered that many of the smaller markets were now overgrown garden fields.

  The only sound I heard was the buzzing of mosquitoes swarming through the abandoned buildings. Many of the homes, schools, and businesses I passed were left in ruins by the war, but there were also many intact houses. Those of us needing housing simply moved into the abandoned buildings. Discovering the former owners’ belongings scattered about, we made use of what we could and made quick work of cleaning up the debris. As I worked, I couldn’t stop thinking of those who were killed by the Pol Pot regime.

  During this time, there was virtually no economy in Cambodia. All the crop lands, rice paddies, and businesses had been destroyed during the Khmer Rouge regime and most of the workers killed. There were no marketplaces to purchase goods. There was no currency so rice, other foodstuffs, and goods were obtained through bartering. Officials, employees, and factory workers received no salaries but, instead, were paid in rice, oil, canned food, and other goods. Transportation within the city was extremely difficult. Most of the streets were ruined by artillery and rocket shells and many of the pock-marked roads were flooded. Most people traveled by foot or bicycle. Public transportation consisted of horse carts, bicycle-drawn carts, and a few pedicabs. A few of the government officials had motorcycles and cars.

  In the month
s after the Vietnamese liberation, I persuaded a friend to take me in his jeep back to the Eastern Region and to Prayap. We left in the morning from Phnom Penh and drove in a matter of hours a distance that had taken my family and I—and countless other refugees—months to walk, and returned to Phnom Penh in the afternoon. We made this trip day after day, month after month, as I searched for family, hoping someone remained alive. And I hunted Khmer Rouge, looking for the individuals who’d killed my wife, taken my father-in-law, tortured my family, and tried to kill me. In Prayap, I found Uncle Ton, the old bicycle mechanic, alive and as well as one could be after what we’d all been through. There were a few other villagers there, but none I cared for, none I loved. My people were gone.

  After several months, a friend I’d met in the army named Nim and I began looking for jobs in Phnom Penh in the factories the Vietnamese were establishing. I found work in a company producing roofing materials, and Nim worked in the same factory as a nurse. I was soon promoted and given the job of paying the other employees, about fifty in number. The workers were paid in rice and other necessities.

  By the summer of 1979, most Cambodians were disappointed in this new government. Many were once again living in fear, not knowing when they would receive food to eat or clothes to wear. We resented the Vietnamese who had helped us take our country back from the dictatorial Pol Pot clique but were now taking full advantage of us, confiscating our resources, using our labor, ruling with brutality. Cambodia, in effect, had become a colony of Vietnam, a country whose resources the Vietnamese were taking for their own use, rather than to benefit Cambodians. The cruelty, enslavement, and slaughter of Cambodians continued daily, this time at the hands of the Vietnamese. By fall, Cambodians realized there was going to be a food shortage because not enough rice had been planted, and many began fleeing to refugee camps located along the border with Thailand.