Fifty years ago, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, an anniversary that
marked the beginning of a mass crime committed in abysmal silence. Sincethen, the history of Democratic Kampuchea has become better known. Even
though the archives have not yet been fully exploited, testimonies have
shed light on the reality of a mass massacre in which between 1.7 and
2.3 million people disappeared. A few works provide a better
understanding of the regime, the nature of its atrocities, the silence
surrounding it, and the difficult process of constructing a memory of
crimes against humanity. Soth Polin's novel was first published in 1980.
This literary and political bombshell is now reissued, enhanced with
remarkable illustrations by Séra. The cold, raw violence perfectly
describes pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. The book is composed of two parts,
written at different times. The first, written in Khmer in 1967, the
second, written in French, was published ten years later. It is the
story of a disillusioned man who no longer believes in anything,
ultimately more nihilistic than an anarchist. Misanthropic,
misogynistic, and self-destructive, he collects adventures and mocks
everything. Death impulses are omnipresent, like harbingers of the
impending catastrophe; destruction seems to prevail, but Soth Polin
doesn't transform it into a political argument. He applies it only to
himself. The second part is simply despairing: the author, now a taxi
driver in exile in Paris, knocks down a young woman and plunges into a
long soliloquy on the political situation in Cambodia, in which he
points to the inexorable triumph of the Khmer Rouge and the complicity
of the Western world, as if there were nothing to hope for. Silence is
at the center of Richard Rechtman's book. It is the initial silence of
the victims. The first version of Richard Rechtman's work was published
in 2013. It has now been expanded with a substantial preface by
historian Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, a specialist in the First World War
who has since expanded his field of study to include the genocide in
Rwanda. He introduces the author, a psychiatrist and anthropologist who
speaks Khmer and did not write his memoirs so as not to appropriate the
words of others. Richard Rechtman magnificently recreates the long work
he conducted during his analysis sessions, often with victims and
sometimes with executioners. A first-person account in which he reveals
both the process of dehumanization and, above all, explains the
resistance of survivors. After the surprise of April 17, 1975, when
Angkar soldiers emptied Phnom Penh of its population and the latter was
forced into forced labor. A young woman describes the ordeal she
endured, the process of dehumanization: the near-slavery to which they
were reduced, the obligation to live among corpses, the training
courses, the nasal-sounding microphones repeating the regime's slogans.
It was about transforming living beings into dead people and reducing
their corpses to waste. This is where resistance takes shape. He
describes in absolutely magnificent pages the physical, but above all
intellectual, even spiritual, resistance of the inhabitants. The bodies
seem to be nothing more than emaciated husks; the important thing is to
overcome constraint, violence, death through the spirit. The regime can
kill people, it cannot penetrate the depths of their spirit. The hold
was lifted when the regime fell after the Vietnamese invasion of 1979.
The survivors symbolically burned their karma, before experiencing exile.
Similar scenes are found in the book by Rithy Panh and Christophe
Bataille. They offer the definitive edition of The Elimination, based in
part on Rithy Panh's film about Duch, the master of the forges of hell.
The book is at the intersection of the victims' testimony and an attempt
to understand the executioner's personality. They analyze the complex
relationship Panh had with the head of S21 prison. In a contrasting
perspective, he evokes his own past under communist rule and Duch's
attitude, his justifications, and his silences surrounding his role as
torturer. He contrasts his enslavement with Duch's attitude, comparing
him to other torturers in other totalitarian regimes. Where Duch was
nothing but a cold machine, Rithy Panh reveals all his humanity. He even
hopes to be freed after his trial, despite the coldness of the activist
who ultimately recanted nothing.
Anne-Laure Porée delved into some previously unpublished material: notes
from the training sessions Duch provided to the guards at Tuol Seng Prison.
The book helps to reconstruct the logic of secret police training.
Regardless of totalitarianism, executioners generally seek to dehumanize
their victims, practicing torture, humiliation, insults, and secrecy.
These common characteristics exist with other totalitarian regimes, such
as secrecy. In communism, it is accompanied by a specific process. The
men in black, like the Chekists, belong to an elite-a position that can
nevertheless be called into question at any time if the officer fails to
fulfill his duties. They are the apex of the pyramid, the sword and
shield of the regime, the front line of the fight. In interrogations,
the autobiography of the accused plays a central role. Likewise,
politics remains central; interrogating the alleged culprit has a
meaning. It is about demonstrating the superiority of the Party and
purifying society to retain only the best revolutionaries. Reading the
guidelines and instructions, these methods are the same as those
developed by the NKVD in the USSR or the Guoanbu in China, as an
amplified continuation of a system that reached its peak within an
immense continuum initiated in 1917, of which Angkar was the apogee.
Richard Rechtman
Les Vivantes. Phnom Penh 1975
CNRS éditions 2025, 150 p. EUR11
Soth Polin
L'anarchiste
La Table ronde 2025, 248 p. EUR26
Rithy Panh and Christophe Bataille
L'elimination
Grasset 2025, 272 p. EUR22
Anne-Laure Porée
La langue de l'Angkar
La Découverte 2025, 256 p. EUR20
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8484
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