Back from hell

«We do not build our society following a precise model. The peasants and workers have made a very important contribution to the revolution and represent the largest group in the country. We want to build a society in which happiness, progress and equality reign. In which there are no exploiters and the exploited. In which everyone takes part in production and national defense. That is why I say that we do not conform to any established model to build a new society […]». Thus Pol Pot, the bloodthirsty “Brother No. 1,” described the Khmer Rouge’s political plan for Cambodia.

Exactly fifty years ago, on April 17, 1975, at the end of the civil war against the Lon Nol regime, one of the most terrible totalitarian dictatorships in human history began. Despite its short duration—in January 1979, the Khmer regime fell to another communist state, Vietnam—Pol Pot and his followers caused the direct and indirect deaths of more than two million people, over 20% of the Cambodian population at the time. Far from "happiness, progress, and equality," far from the elimination of all forms of exploitation, Pol Pot launched a dazzling plan for social transformation, beyond any previous model and distant from the Marxist and Leninist doctrines of the time. Through the first "four-year plan," the collectivization of all property, the elimination of hospitals, and the abolition of the liberal professions were promoted. Cambodians living in the cities were deported to work in the countryside on collective farms, primarily engaged in rice cultivation.

Families were dismembered and separated, with the various members redistributed into specific work groups. Teachers and intellectuals in particular were targeted and persecuted: many died from the arduous labor or in Khmer "re-education" camps. The worst tormentors were the young, recruited by the regime because they had not yet been corrupted by false and deviant ideologies. A terrible experiment in political engineering that aimed to transform an ideal into reality, but which became a nightmare that heavily influenced Cambodian history.

Claire Ly was one of the many victims of the Khmer Rouge. She spent practically the entire period of Pol Pot's rule in a forced labor camp. Her only crime was being born "middle class": a graduate, she became an important official in the Ministry of Education. Her salvation was being considered "primary labor force" therefore indispensable. Almost all her friends and relatives, including her husband, were killed. According to the mystifying interpretation of Buddhist karma, they deserved it as a result of their wicked actions. In an interview a few years ago, Claire Ly declared: "The Khmer Rouge explained to our peasants that those shot had gotten nothing but what they deserved. Therefore, they had committed evil acts. This is a way of glossing over what the Buddhist religion really says."

It was also an extreme cruelty to say that the victims were responsible for their fate. And this is found in all religions. This is the manipulation of the Khmer Rouge." This and other terrible memories were collected in the book Back from Hell. The shocking story of a woman who survived the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, Edizioni Paoline, 2006. After fleeing Cambodia in 1979, just after the end of the Khmer regime, Claire Ly converted to Christianity and began a long journey of reconciliation and forgiveness, starting from the compassion that unites both the Christian and Buddhist traditions.

NP May '25

Renato Bonomo