Spectre of Pol Pot lingers in Cambodia
News this week that Cambodians have been praying at the cremation site of genocidal former ruler Pol Pot hangs like a loose thread from history.
Ten years after he died of a suspected heart attack in a tiny jungle redoubt near the Thai border, the irony is chilling. Pol Pot and his clique of ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge counted Buddhist monks and other followers of 'superstition' as some of their first targets as they attempted to wind Cambodian society back to Year Zero after they seized Phnom Penh in April 1975.
They didn't stop at religion as they pushed a twisted ideology to the extent of its internal logic. Doctors, teachers, accountants - anyone with glasses - were shot or had their skulls smashed as the victorious Khmer Rouge emptied the capital and other cities to start a catastrophic agrarian revolution. Within four years, it collapsed into mass starvation, and ended in an invasion and occupation by Cambodia's hated Vietnamese neighbours. The Khmer Rouge was responsible for an estimated 1.7 million Cambodian deaths.
Images this week showing people praying, burning incense and making offerings at Pol Pot's cremation site in Anlong Veng indicate the resilience of traditional spiritualism, despite grotesque abuses. It also highlights the peculiar, lingering mystique even the most feared leaders can have.
Pol Pot's image was orchestrated to prey on the imagination through a combination of intense secrecy, fear and manipulation. After the takeover, he was known as 'Brother No1', his movement just 'the Organisation'. 'The Angkar [organisation] is a pineapple' was one particularly creepy slogan on signs above communal messes and work camps, preying on the peasants' suspicions of the many 'eyes' in an unpeeled pineapple.
According to an Associated Press report marking the anniversary of his death this week, villagers are drawn to the cremation mound to seek luck, happiness and protection from malaria. Others pray for his soul, hoping he won't be allowed to butcher any more people in the afterlife.