Journalist seeking truth about Khmer Rouge 'fears for his life'
Award-winning film-maker Thet Sambath – whose 2009 documentary about the Khmer Rouge, Enemies of the People, was shortlisted for an Oscar – claims that uniformed soldiers and plainclothes "spies" working for the Cambodian government have repeatedly followed, harassed and chased him by car and motorbike, with the intention of "making [him] disappear". "They are concerned I will reveal their true crime [through the new film] and … [that] their reputation will be destroyed," Sambath said. "I know too much about what really happened. They want me dead."
Sambath, a senior reporter for the Phnom Penh Post, said the harassment started in May 2010 after news reports circulated internationally about Enemies of the People. Largely regarded as a political and historical watershed, it is the only Khmer Rouge documentary with testimony from the regime's no 2 and ideological leader, Nuon Chea, whom Sambath spent 10 years tracking down and interviewing.
In the film, Chea admits he and Pol Pot decided to "kill and destroy" party members they considered enemies of the people, while lower-ranking cadres demonstrate, in graphic detail, how they implemented orders to slit the throats and dump the bodies of those targeted. The film created a huge stir abroad and locally, winning the Sundance jury prize as well as some 30 other awards, and stimulating dialogue about a traditionally taboo subject in Cambodia itself. But Sambath's follow-up film poses a greater concern for the future of the nation, he says.
"The first film explained 'how' the Khmer Rouge did the killing, now this film looks at 'why'," says Sambath, 45, of the tentatively titled Suspicious Minds. "And the answer is not the same as what the Cambodian government has been telling the public for all these years. The real story is politically huge. It will make everyone in Cambodia come out and talk, and the government will have to explain why they lied."
Pol Pot has long been regarded as the mastermind behind the genocide that claimed nearly a third of Cambodia's population by 1979. Through interviews with regional and senior former leaders, Suspicious Minds, however, argues that it was caused by political infighting within the party, with attempted military coups and assassinations, and massacres in villages aimed at creating an unstable government and ousting Pol Pot from office.
"The reality is that the party was split beforehand and the split of the party caused the Killing Fields," says Rob Lemkin, an Oxford-based film-maker who co-directed Enemies of the People and is producing Suspicious Minds. In uncovering the truth about the brutal regime which, in its short reign from 1975-79, killed off 1.75 million people, Sambath says he has turned himself into the unwitting target of a government still manned by former soldiers. He says he has faced police checkpoints outside his house in Phnom Penh, intimidation from armed thugs and "car chases like in Hong Kong films" deep in the wilds of rural Cambodia, where he conducts most of his interviews... Read more:
