A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Pages of History No. 97: Democratic Kampuchea, the Highest Stage of Communism... (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Fifty years ago, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, an anniversary that 
marked the beginning of a mass crime committed in abysmal silence. Since 
then, 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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