Confronting Cambodia’s darkness in former stronghold of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge

Standing next to cages that once housed political prisoners, former Khmer Rouge foot soldier Tho Lon gets a surprisingly sympathetic hearing from a clutch of students, despite his work for a regime that wiped out a quarter of Cambodia’s population.

“All my life I’ve been cheated by politicians,” he told them in Anlong Veng, a dirt poor town where Pol Pot and his henchmen are still venerated. “My heart is pained, but I pretend not to be hurt.”

That his complaints get an airing may jar with many Cambodians in a country still piecing together the horrors of the past. But his testimony is part of a pioneering reconciliation scheme introducing students to former fighters.

Until now, historians, officials and civil society groups helping Cambodia have struggled to decide on how to approach Anlong Veng, which lies on Cambodia’s remote northern border with Thailand.

It was here and among the surrounding Dangrek Mountains that Pol Pot and senior Khmer Rouge leaders lived on long after their murderous regime was toppled by Vietnam in 1979.

Hidden deep in the jungle they launched two decades of guerilla attacks that only ended with the rgeion’s final defeat in 1998. As the students listened intently, Tho Lon explained why he kept on fighting.