CAMBODIA: KHMER ROUGE ANNIVERSARY

(17 Apr 1995) English/Nat Twenty years ago today the communist Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia. Pol Pot was the mastermind of the peasant revolution that would unleash a campaign of genocide not witnessed since the gas chambers of Hitler. Today Cambodia is still finding the killing fields difficult to forget and painful to remember. Choeung Ek is just five miles (8 kilometres) outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. A monument stands in memory of the thousands marched to these fields never to return. Here you face the victims of Pol Pot’s victory. His communist revolution lasted less than four years yet shot, battered and starved over one million Cambodians to death. SOUNDBITE: : I lost my family in the Pol Pot regime and it makes me very angry to think about all the suffering and pain that he caused. SUPER CAPTION: Uy Visal Survivors like Uy Visal, educated and from the city, were branded ’April 17th People’. The party said ’to lose them was no loss, to keep them no gain’. For thousands it ended here. Forced to kneel by a ditch and await a blow to the head. The world came to know these graves as the Killing Fields. Having, himself, suffered the horror, the star of Hollywood’s Killing Fields movie now admits to a behind the scenes battle when making the film. SOUNDBITE: ’ I talked to the director and producer and said it was not real enough and they said ’no, this is a movie, if you make it worse then no one will want to see it! Too much suffering, people don’t want to see it. Too much blood, people don’t want to see it. SUPERCAPTION: Dr Haing Ngor, Played Dith Pran in The Killing Fields The mental scars of such brutality have gone untreated. The regime killed every psychiatrist in Cambodia. Only in recent months has a Norwegian charity set about training ten psychiatrists for the entire nation. SOUNDBITE: ’A question like ’how many children do you have? Will make them start crying because they will say ’I had nine but only three survived’, and this is twenty years on! So the scar is there but it hasn’t healed yet. SUPERCAPTION: Dr. Kirsti Oskarsson, Psychiatrist, Sihanouk Hospital Sitting in the hospital with his son, this man is finally being treated for psychosis. As a boy he witnessed his father’s execution. He desires revenge by killing. SOUNDBITE: Kill all Pol Pot! It’s my desire. They took my father and I saw them kill. SUPERCAPTION: (name not given) Mental patient Orphaned by the revolution Pich Sarall vowed he would never return to Cambodia having escaped to Thailand aged 14. But now as a US citizen Pich has returned with a mission. SOUNDBITE: ’ I want to know more about my parents death and the death of the Cambodian people’ SUPERCAPTION: Pich Sarall But without even a photo or the last location of his parents officials can only offer Pich a visit to Tuol Sleng, the notorious prison where the Khmer Rouge documented, tortured and executed thousands of people. Others have regretted finding evidence of loved ones in this place. The torture was all photographed. SOUNDBITE: ’I feel because my parents were amongst them. I’m afraid to go there. I will never visit Tuol Sleng because I am afraid it will affect me emotionally’. SUPERCAPTION: Pich Sarall Twenty years on the Khmer Rouge may have lost power but they continue to fight and terrorise. In hiding, Pol Pot remains free having unleashed genocide on his own people. Visitors here are left with many unanswered questions. SOUNDBITE: SUPERCAPTION: Udo Boeing, Tourist Find out more about AP Archive: Twitter: Facebook: ​​ Instagram: You can license this story through AP Archive: