Tag Archives: Cambodia

I hear with my little ear: Podcasts 16-23 June 2025

Posted on July 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

In the Shadows of Utopia Season 2 Episode 8 Rolling Thunder in Vietnam, Clouds over Cambodia Time Period Covered 1964 – 1967. Despite LBJ’s doubts about the wisdom of escalating the war in Vietnam, it seemed to be set in stone by 1964. The Vietnam War was really the resumption of an earlier war. The Vietnam Workers Party resolved to mobilize large numbers of North Vietnamese and NLF fighters quickly in order to win a victory before the US got involved. In August 1964 the Tonkin Gulf episode was an over-reaction, but LBJ used it to justify his stance on the war and he was rewarded with an increase in popularity. Meanwhile, the Cambodian communists in Vietnam were becoming increasingly resentful, wanting to start an armed struggle back home, but discouraged by the Vietnamese because they were friendly with Sihanouk. Pol Pot found himself feeling sidelined. He visited China on the eve of the Cultural Revolution as a friend of revolution, and he liked the idea of continuous revolution, especially drawing on the rural peasantry, as put forward in the Little Red Book. But although he received the support of Chinese officials, China also did not want to encourage armed struggle as they too were friendly with Sihanouk. In 1966 Pol Pot returned to Vietnam, then on to Cambodia, but his progress home was hampered by heavy bombing. The Cambodian Communists conducted a study session in 1966 where they decided to change their name from the Cambodian Workers Party (which matched the Vietnamese Workers Party) to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and moved their office to avoid the surveillance of the Vietnamese. Pol Pot was determined to prepare for armed struggle in the rural areas. But things were changing in South East Asia as the 1965-6 aborted Communist coup in Indonesia led to heavy repression. In Cambodia, Sihanouk was losing his magic, with the stagnant economy, disaffected youth, internal repression and border skirmishes as Thailand and the US pursued the Viet Cong into Cambodia. Conservatives were becoming disillusioned with Sikanouk’s ‘both ways’ approach that saw him rejecting the west and maintaining a relationship with North Vietnam and China. The left never like Sihanouk anyway. There was increasing resentment at Sihanouk’s involvement in film-making and acting- apparently they were bad films, focussing on the elite. In 1966 there was another election but this time Sihanouk didn’t select the candidates, leading to a new assembly that was not completely in his control. Lon Nol was chosen as Prime Minister as he was still loyal to Sihanouk and popular with the army and Buddhists. Sihanouk went off to France, but things changed in his absence.

The Human Subject (BBC) The Farmers and the Goat Testicle Transplants. In 1916 a farmer walked into a
Dr John R. Brinkley’s surgery in the small town of Milford, Kansas, complaining of a ‘flat tyre’ (i.e. erectile dysfunction). The doctor suggested a transplant of goat’s testicles as the solution to his problem and Brinkley’s career as a xenotransplant surgeon took off. He had his own radio show, where he spruiked patent medicine, and unsuccessfully ran for government, claiming that the election was ‘stolen’ (sound familiar?) He was engaged in multiple court cases, and ended up losing his licence to practice and was called a quack. Interesting.

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I hear with my little ear: Podcasts 16-23 May 2025

Posted on June 15, 2025 | Leave a comment

In the Shadows of Utopia Season 2 Episode 7 A Khmer Rouge Ideology and Sihanouk’s Dark Side returns us to Cambodia after our little foray into Vietnam for three episodes. Covering the period 1963 to 1965, we start with the Cambodia communists in very different roles. Some, like Khieu Samphan who had been educated in Paris, were incorporated into Sihanouk’s government, which although including some anti-Sihanouk figures like Samphan, in reality acted as the pro-Sihanouk party. Others, like the Cambodian-born and bred Nuon Chea continued to act in the shadows, creating a spider’s web of decentralized communist links. Then there was Pol Pot, who left Cambodia for the border regions of Vietnam, where they found themselves being treated as junior partners by the Vietnamese communists.

Although Khmer Rouge ideology wanted to get rid of Buddhism, it also incorporated Buddhist grammar and principles like renunciation and detachment to give Cambodian (Kampuchean) communism a different nature to Confucian-influenced communism.

Meanwhile, Sihanouk was gradually moving away from the United States, culminating in nationalisation of the banks and import/export channels, and refusing US aid. He signed an agreement with North Vietnam to allow arms through the port at Sihanoukville, and eventually in 1965 he severed ties with the United States completely.

Half Life (BBC) Episode 1: Daughter of Radium Writer Joe Dunthorne had grown up on stories of his family’s dramatic escape from Germany in 1936 to England. He had listened to his grandmother’s stories about her father, scientist Siegfried, whose early experiments in using radium in commercial domestic products as a whitening agent led to his grandmother brushing her teeth with radioactive toothpaste. However, when Joe decided to actually sit down and read his great-grandfather’s memoirs, which at 2000 pages had daunted most of the family, he found near the end of the document a confession from his great-grandfather had he had been involved in research that led to the chemical weapons and agents used by the Nazis.

In Episode 2 The Quiet Town by the River Joe travels to Oranienburg, a city that was heavily bombed by the Allies in WW2 because it was the centre of chemical weapons, poisonous gas and uranium research. His great-grandfather worked in the Auergesellschaft factory. The bombing turned Oranienburg into a moonscape, but the soil still contains chemicals and unexploded ordnance.

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I hear with my little ear: Podcasts 1-7 November 2024

Posted on November 26, 2024 | 1 comment

Shadows of Utopia Episode 11: Khmer Issarak/ Pot Pot in Paris I This episode covers the period 1945 – 1950. Just like an abusive partner promising to reform after a stint in jail, after the Japanese capitulation the French government returned, promising to be better. They had plans for a Colonial Federation of the states under their control (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia). This triggered the French/Vietnam war, which was a matter of prestige for the French, and a matter of nationalism for the Vietnamese who had claimed their own independence during the war. As far as Cambodia was concerned, in 1946 there was a Cambodian/French modus vivendi which returned to Cambodia the territory in the west that had gone to Thailand, and provided a new constitution (albeit under French oversight). The King and the National Assembly would be voted by universal male suffrage, and three political parties, each led by Princes, emerged. Although Than had been sidelined, the Democratic Party became the heir of the early Khmer nationalists, and won 50 out of 67 seats at the first election. Outside of official channels Khmer Isserak became more prominent. In 1946 they seized Siem Reap in a guerilla action that united monks, criminals, warlords, and Thai-influenced communists, as well as freedom fighters and independence supporters. But when the Prince heading the Democratic Party died, the democrats fractured. Meanwhile, in October 1949 the future Pol Pot, Saloth Sar, arrived in Paris after gaining a scholarship to a trade school to study radio technology, possibly through his royal connections. The Communist Party was strong in France at this time. He went to work in Yugoslavia as part of a labour force during his holidays (shades of what was to come in Cambodia), and was introduced to communist ideology and Marxist-inspired politics in Paris through a group of students including Ieng Sary, Thioun Mumm, Keng Vannsak.

The Rest is History Custer’s Last Stand: The Charge of the 7th Cavalry (Part 6) Again, from their website: “The U.S. was cast into a spiralling panic following the economic depression of 1873, and waves of paramilitary violence swept through the south as the debates surrounding Reconstruction swirled on. Amidst this uncertainty, the government, under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant and his chief advisors, began drawing up a cold blooded plan to strike into the heart of Montana and settle the issue of the Plains Indians once and for all. Meanwhile, the drumbeats of war were sounding amongst the newly united Lakota and Cheyenne themselves, spearheaded by their war chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, as the pressures of white settlers and the railroads increased. Their numbers swelled in the wake of a failed winter campaign lead by General Crook, as swarms of refugees accumulated into Sitting Bull’s village – the largest assembly of Lakota ever seen on the Plains. The stage seemed set for a mighty reckoning in the summer of 1876, as the Federal government geared up for another assault. Much to his delight George Custer, spared from the brink of disaster by his reckless impetuosity, was recruited to the 7th Cavalry marching on one of the armies closing in on the Lakota encampment near the Little Bighorn River…the Battle of the Rosebud that followed would see a six hour struggle of monumental violence.

Autocracy in America. Bear in mind that I was listening to all this before the American election, when I was still cautiously hopeful that Harris would win. Or more to the point, Trump winning was just too frightening to contemplate- especially after listening to this podcast. It features historian Anne Applebaum (who I have a lot of time for- see my review of Twilight of Democracy here) and Peter Pomerantsev. It’s produced by The Atlantic. Episode 1 Start with a Lie argues that the lie is the litmus test of loyalty – and haven’t we seen plenty of those coming from Donald Trump’s mouth? Evidence is irrelevant, and truth becomes a subset of power. They speak with Steven Richter, the county recorder in Maricopa county who was accused by Trump and his acolytes of ridiculous vote tampering in 2020 (e.g. shredding the Republican votes, feeding them to chickens and then burning the chickens) but the sheer absurdity of the lie is part of the test. They speak of belief in the lie as being part of belonging, rather than an intellectual choice. Episode 2 Capture the Courts In an authoritarian state, the public has no real access to justice. This episode features Renée DiResta, a scholar who researches online information campaigns. After putting out a report ‘The Long Fuse’, she struggled to counter false accusations leveled against her after a series of courts accepted them without investigation. They then go on to discuss Justice Cannon’s ruling on presidential immunity, and the distinction between rule BY law and rule OF law.

The Money (ABC) Yet another pre-election podcast. Oh to be able to return to that still-hopeful time! This episode was As America goes to the polls, the economy is doing well, but people aren’t feeling it. There were three speakers, but I was most interested in the last one, who I think is Christopher Rugaber. Who ever it was, they spent a day at the King of Prussia shopping mall in Pennsylvania. He made four observations. First, that people are quick to blame the government when things go wrong, but when they get a new job or a raise etc. they attribute it to their own individual effort. Second, that despite years of predicting the demise of the department store, they are actually booming with the car parks filled with workers’ cars long before the stores open. This is the flip side of deficit spending: that people DO actually spend the money they are given. Third, after paying $10.00 for an ice-cream that would have cost $7.00 last year, he realized that this is what people remember- not tax reductions, not extra childcare payments, not reduction in inflation, but the $10.00 ice-cream. Finally, that people (like himself) continued to buy brands like Levi, no matter how much they put up the price. They would complain about the price-rise but it was not enough to make them change brands. Interesting.

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‘Under the Naga Tail’ by Mae Bunseng Taing with James Taing

Posted on October 26, 2024 | Leave a comment
2023, 352 p.

I was in Cambodia, and I wanted to read something Cambodian, but most of the fiction involved the Khmer Rouge period written by people who have escaped to Western countries. This book falls into this category too, although it is slightly different in that the narrator, Mae Bunseng Taing, is of Chinese ethnicity, living in Cambodia. I was interested to know what difference that would make. Unusually, all of Mae’s siblings survived, which is not true of many Cambodian families.

Mae was a teenager and living a fairly affluent life with his entrepreneurial family when the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh. As with other stories I have read, there was the utter bewilderment as Phnom Penh was completely emptied of people, urged (forced) to leave on the pretext that the Americans would bomb the city. He and his family were forced into the provinces to undertake agricultural work- a far cry from their trading activities in Phnom Penh previously. The family was split up as siblings were sent to different agricultural projects and communities, while his elderly and ill father was left behind in a village. They had secreted away some jewellery, so they were not completely penniless, but under the surveillance of soldiers and ‘Angkar’ operatives, they were only safe if they could merge in amongst other people. The book gives a good glimpse into the ideology that the Khmer Rouge were imposing on their countrymen, who were reduced to a form of slavery.

He finally decided to escape into the jungle, and survived several heart-stopping confrontations. With the defeat of the Khmer Rouge, he decided to cross back over into Thailand and look for his family amongst the refugee camps there. But there had been a change in Thai government policy, and now refugees were being returned to Cambodia, taken into the jungle, and left to find their own way through the explosive-laced jungles at Preah Vihear. It was an inhumane form of mine-clearing, using desperate refugees who were left screaming alone in the jungles, limbs missing, after standing on mines. Mae was, in many ways, in more danger now than he had been under the Khmer Rouge.

This, then, was a second form of Killing Fields. I found myself feeling ashamed at the kindness and the prejudice and indifference that these refugees faced, all too aware that our refugee policy some fifty years later has elements of both. The story was written down by Mae’s son James, who makes an unheralded and abrupt appearance during the narrative, and clearly Mae found his way to a Western country to start a new life.

There is a film by James Taing that you can see on You Tube here. (If you can stand the incongruent ads)

My rating: 7/10

Sourced from: purchased e-book

Read because: I was in Cambodia at the time.

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I hear with my little ear: Podcasts 16-30 September 2024

Posted on October 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

In the Shadows of Utopia I was in Cambodia for most of this time, so I immersed myself in Lachlan Peters’ In the Shadows of Utopia podcasts. I didn’t really listen to much else. These episodes are LONG (over two hours) and very detailed. Episode 7 The French Protectorate ( I really wish he’d keep his naming conventions regular: it’s also called Khmer Nationalist and French Rule) deals with the years 1880 – 1938. At first, the French treated Indo-China in a fairly hands-off way but in 1885 the French Government insisted on a new treaty which abolished slavery and tried to disrupt the patronage networks that governed Khmer society. However, after rebellions, these reforms were not carried out, although French interests became uppermost. World War I had little effect in Cambodia, especially compared with Vietnam and the rural ‘old people’ lifestyle remained largely unchanged. In fact, when May Ebihara undertook her ethnographic study of a Khmer village in 1959-1960, published as Svay: A Khmer Village in Cambodia, her research was the first and only study of traditional Khmer life. The nuclear family was the basic unit, there was little mobility and a distrust of strangers. From the 1930s on, Phnom Penh began growing and we had the stirrings of an urban nationalism, spurred by the Buddhist Institute, the introduction of secondary education and the first newspapers.

Episode 8: An Introduction to Communism Part I goes right back to Marx and Engels, starting with Engels and his investigation into the condition of the working class (even though his family were capitalists). Engels and Marx saw all history and activity about the economic struggle, and capitalism would be the second last stage before the final, inevitable clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. At first there was great excitement over the 1848 revolutions that gripped Europe, but they were not led by the working-class, but by liberals and nationalists. Marx blamed the petit-bourgeoisie, and he had to wait until the 1871 Paris Commune as perhaps a better, if short-lived, example of Revolution. Meanwhile, we had the rise of a united Germany as a sign of things to come, but in the end it was backward Russia where first revolution took place. If you’re a bit foggy about Marx and Engels, this is a good place to start.

Background Briefing . Kidnapping the Gods Part II. This is the second and final part of this Background Briefing episode. This episode takes us to the involvement of several ‘art collectors’ including Douglas Snelling, who became an unofficial Australian consul to Cambodia and managed to ‘collect’ many artefacts that he sold in New York. Then we have Alex Biancardi in NSW, whose Egyptian father was also a collector. The Art Gallery of NSW offered to store his huge collection at no cost (probably with the expectation that they might access some of it). He may have been in contact with the notorious ‘collector’ Douglas Latchford. The episode shows the messy links between looters, ‘collectors’ and galleries and museums.

The Rest is History Custer vs Crazy Horse: Horse-Lords of the Plain (Episode 3) The lifestyle of the Native American had changed immeasurably. In 1492, when Columbus arrived, it was thought that there were 3-4 million (and maybe as many as 8-9 million) Native Americans. By 1796 this number had halved. No tribes were on their ancestral lands: they had all been shifted around. In effect, it was a clash between emigrants. The Lakota had been shifted to the plains from their ancestral lands and were a warlike people. There are no photos of Crazy Horse (which was the name he took from his father). He was a medicine man i.e. he had a spirit animal, and had visions. He was a careful fighter- unlike Custer.

The Rest is Politics (US edition) with Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci is one of my regular listens, but I don’t record it because it’s usually too topical, and their commentary will be overtaken by other things. But they have recently had a four part series (only three have been released so far). on How Trump Won the White House. It starts with him winning the Republican nomination after years of bragging about (threatening) to run for President, when no-one took him seriously. The second episode (Did Obama create Trump?) looks at Obama’s ridiculing of Trump at the Press dinner, and speculate about whether this goaded him into finally running for president. The third episode (Collusion Collapse and Chaos) traces through the crazy 2016 election campaign, and the way that the momentum shifted between the Access Hollywood tapes and the accusations of Russian collusion that threatened Trump’s campaign to the ‘basket of deplorables’ and FBI Clinton emails that brought Hilary’s campaign undone. I guess I’m waiting for the last episode.

Emperors of Rome Episode CCXXVI – The Reputation of Catiline (The Catiline Conspiracy VII) At first, Catiline was seen as a by-word for ‘conspiracy’ but over time writers have softened their view of him, often reflecting the political events of the time. In Medieval times, he was re-cast as a Robin Hood type figure, and the Renaissance had a more sympathetic view of him. He was picked up in French Literature, with Voltaire and Alexandre Dumas wrote plays about him, as did Ibsen. The recent, widely panned film Megalopolis uses the names of the protagonists of the Catiline Conspiracy in a film set in an imagined modern United States. I haven’t seen it

Conversations (ABC) My brother’s death- writing the story of a family’s grief and loss. At the Ivanhoe Reading Circle, we always start our meetings with people talking about books they have read recently. A couple of people mentioned Gideon Haigh’s new book My Brother Jaz, a small volume that was written in a frenzy of writing after years of avoiding writing about the death of his brother. The book is less than one hundred pages, and the people reporting on it said that you could get as much from listening to this ‘Conversations’ interview as you would from reading the book. It was very good, although a little distant and rehearsed, which is understandable having written about it.

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I hear with my little ear: Podcasts 8-15 September 2024

Posted on October 6, 2024 | Leave a comment

Dan Snow’s History Hit The Warsaw Uprising. It’s the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, which I have always had confused in my mind with the Warsaw Ghetto. This episode features Clare Mulley, the author of Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elzbieta Zawacka. To be honest, I’d never heard of Agent Zo. She was born in German-occupied Poland, and was 11 years old at the end of WWI. Once WWII began, she was involved in active service with the Polish Home Army from the start, a resistance force of 400,000 to 500,000 people. The Polish government and army escaped and set up a government-in-exile, and never conceded defeat. From 1942 she used her German language skills and appearance to bring information into Berlin, and in 1943 was sent to Britain with microfilm. She brought parachutists back to Poland to join the uprising, which started on 1 August with an outbreak of brutal street fighting. Hitler was furious and ordered that every Pole be shot. Meanwhile, with Stalin advancing from the east (he had changed sides by now), the Russian government stepped back and let the battle continue, as it was in their interests for the Polish nationalists to be wiped out. The Warsaw Uprising continued for two months, and Warsaw was completely destroyed. Agent Zo was arrested and imprisoned in 1951, long after WW2 had finished. She died in 2009.

In the Shadows of Utopia Becoming Cambodia Pt 2: Cambodia after Angkor This episode deals with the increasing European influence in Cambodia, and the shift from a subsistence economy to a trade economy. Longvec (or Lovec) was the capital for 50 years until it was conquered by the Thai. A multitude of foreign traders moved into the area, including Portuguese and Spanish traders who were competing with each other. The first phase of trading involved the extraction of gold and silver (and the spreading of religion in return), but the second phase involved Dutch trading for goods, rather than mere extraction. In 1594 the Thais threatened again so the King looked to the Spanish in the Phillipines for support. By the time his envoy returned, the Siamese had invaded and the King fled. When the Thais were distracted by conflict with Burma, the King took Lovec back again. The Spanish envoys decided to support the King in exile, and were promised that they were free to spread Christianity. By the time the envoys arrived in Laos to liberate the King, he was already dead, so they brought his son back again, only for the son and the envoys to be killed. Meanwhile Pierre De Behaine, a French missionary stationed in Vietnam where there was north/south tribal conflict, went back to Spain and organized the Treaty of Versailles – no,not that one- this one was in 1787 between the French King Louis XVI and the Vietnamese lord Nguyễn Ánh, the future Emperor Gia Long. Not a good time to be ratifying treaties, and when the French government fell through with its promises of aid, Pierre brought mercenaries and modern warfare methods. In 1801 Nguyễn proclaimed himself emperor of North and South Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese and Thai governments both kept fighting to-and-fro over Cambodia. There was 40 years of Vietnam influence, then the Thais installed a pro-Thai King who gave away land around Angkor to a warlord, which was strongly resented. In the 1820s there was a new Vietnamese emperor who very anti-Catholic.

Episode 6 The Dawn of French Indochina This episode deals with the years 1789 – 1887. He starts off this episode with an engaging story of two little village boys growing up under the French protectorate. It’s only after you’ve been listening for a while that you realize that he’s talking about the man who became Pol Pot, and suddenly the story doesn’t seem quite so engaging any more. In telling the story of how the French came to dominate French Indo-China, he draws on three longer themes. The first is the French Revolution, which embodied nationalism as a source of power. When Napoleon III wanted to regain the empire that had been lost after Waterloo, he seized on the persecution of French missionaries in the 1850s as a cause to justify colonialism. The second factor was the unification of Vietnam, which had previously been split between clans in north and south Vietnam. This strengthening of Vietnam meant that Cambodia was being tussled over between two stronger countries: Vietnam on one side and Thailand on the other. The Cambodian king, crowned under Thai influence, started to look for a third power that he could turn to. Finally, we had the French naturalist Henri Mouhot who toured Siam, Cambodia and Laos and saw the potential for growing cotton, to fill a possible market failure with the American Civil War, and a way of competing with Great Britain’s imperial power. He also uncovered Angkor Wat during his travels. France invaded Vietnam by the end of the 19th century, as an opportunity to access Chinese trade, under the excuse that they were protecting French Missionaries from mistreatment. But the French didn’t need to invade Cambodia; King Norodom welcomed its presence.

Background Briefing. Kidnapping the Gods Part 1. Over this week, I was in Phnom Penh and visited the Cambodian National Museum, where they had a display about looted artefacts that had recently been returned to Cambodia. This two-part Background Briefing program looks at the Australian collection of Khmer artefacts purchased, of all places, from David Jones department store in Sydney, which had a special section for fine arts. Although the director of the gallery, Robert Haines, seemed completely above-board, he sourced his artefacts through a Bangkok dealer called Peng Seng who also worked for Douglas Latchford, an infamous dealer in Khmer looted goods.

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‘The Genuine Chapters of Life’ by Neak Piseth

Posted on September 20, 2024 | Leave a comment
2016, 116 p.

I’m not sure how I stumbled on this e-book which you can access through academia.edu or through issu. In fact, I’m not really quite sure what it is: on one level it is a memoir of a young man growing up in rural poverty in the 1990s to attain his dream of high education at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. But at another level, particularly near the end, it seems to become a scholarship application document where he outlines his vision for changes that he would make to his society were he successful in studying overseas. It must have worked, because he received a scholarship to pursue his master’s degree in Non-Formal Education at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand in 2019, continuing on as a PhD candidate from 2022. He has been working as an English Lecturer and as a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the Royal University of Phnom Penh and has a number of publications under his belt.

His grandparents died under the Pol Pot regime and he was born to poor parents in 1994 with, at that stage, only one older sister. His father, an illiterate orphan, had inherited a one-hectare plantation in a village, and the family lived in a crumbling cottage while his father worked as a motor taxi driver in the city. In 1999 they received a contract to grow rubber trees on their plantation, but this necessitated moving to another dilapidated thatched, earth cottage closer to the trees. After the contract expired, they used the money they had earned to move back into the village where the author and his sister began attending school. They walked the three kilometres to school, and had to help after school looking after their three cows, while their parents worked in a small business, arriving home at midnight. In 2003 his mother had another daughter, who was often sick, and his father had to stop working to assist his mother at home. This meant that, in order to keep attending school, the author and his sister had to sell banana cakes after school to support the family. The family remained in poverty, especially after an accident on the rubber plantation resulted in his father’s blindness. Despite his father’s violence against his mother, the author deeply respects his father, and craves his approval.

He gives a fairly damning view of education in Cambodia. Teachers often took on private students as tutors in order to get additional money, which meant that they often did not teach the full curriculum at school, or charged for teaching and examination materials as a way of gaining extra students. The tutored students often received passing grades, to encourage their parents to continuing paying out for tutoring. Some students’ parents bribed the teachers, and many teachers arrived late.

Despite these difficulties, he was a very conscientious student, spending hours at night rote-memorizing his work. He really struggled to learn English- and indeed, this text is clearly written by a second-language learner- and he lacked confidence to speak in English, even when he knew the answers. By sheer hard work, and the good and well-earned fortune of a scholarship, he was able to attend Western International School in Phnom Penh. He lived in a small, dark room, continuing to rote-learn as much as he could. By the end of the book, his hard work is paying off, despite the discrimination against poor kids from the provinces.

I hadn’t expected to encounter Jane Austen and Bill Gate (i.e. Gates) in this book, but each chapter closes with an inspirational quote that he has gleaned as part of his studies. Beyond this, though, I’m really glad that I read this book while I’m here in Phnom Penh. I’ve found myself looking at the school children walking to their schools, and tuk-tuk drivers who are possibly working for their families in the provinces, with new eyes.

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‘First they killed my father: a daughter of Cambodia remembers’ by Loung Ung

Posted on January 3, 2024 | 3 comments
2001, 336 p.

As you might know, some months ago I travelled to Cambodia and am likely to repeat the trip a few times more over the next few years. First They Killed My Father is one of the books that tops the ‘Books You Must Read Before Travelling to Cambodia’ lists, but I felt rather reluctant to read it. In my mind Cambodia was defined by two things: Pol Pot and Angkor Wat, but I want it to be more than that. And yet, having now been there, the influence of both is inescapable. They don’t necessarily define Cambodia, but they have shaped it.

Loung Ung was five years old when the Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh. They were wealthy and of Chinese descent: her mother was ‘full Chinese’ and tall, with almond shaped eyes and a straight Western nose. Her father, part Chinese, part Cambodian, she describes as having “black curly hair, a wide nose, full lips and a round face” with “eyes shaped like a full moon.” Her father originally worked for the Cambodian Royal Secret Service under Prince Sihanouk, and then as a major in the military police under Lon Nol. We don’t actually learn what he did in either of these jobs, but it did afford them an upper-middle class lifestyle in Phnom Penh. She was raised to distance herself somewhat from Cambodia: in the mornings she studied French, in the afternoons Chinese and at night Khmer, and her parents spoke about Cambodian customs as being something “other”.

Not that any of this helped when the Khmer Rouge evacuated the city completely, under the pretense that the US was about to bomb the city, and that they could return in three days. Her mother soon realizes the reality, with her offering money notes to her daughter to use as toilet paper. The family is shifted from location to location, siblings are sent to jobs in different places, and her parents are acutely aware of hiding their middle class origins and pretend that they and their children are peasants. Her parents had reason to fear. I found that one of the most chilling sights in the Tuol Sleng Prison (Security Prison 21), which I visited, was the sight of children, arrested along with their parents, who were questioned and later killed. It was fear of being arrested as a family that led her parents to send their daughters away to fend for themselves. Yet somehow, miraculously, some (but not all) members of the family find their way back to each other when the madness comes to an end. With the family in tatters, she and her brother travel to Vietnam, then use a people smuggler to go to Thailand where they end up in the Lam Sing Refugee Camp, waiting to be taken in by another country. Did her brother’s conversion to Christianity help?- possibly, and she and her brother are granted residency in Vermont.

The book is written in the present tense, and it moves chronologically in a methodical way, with each chapter headed by a date. It purports to be a child’s-eye view, but of course it is being written by an adult. The book has been criticized in Cambodia for inaccuracies, her obliviousness to her privilege, implausibilities and the racism she displays against the ‘base people’ in emphasizing her Chinese origins. You can read several critiques at Kymer Institute – in fact, it’s well worth doing so. Certainly I noticed her disdain of peasants and Cambodians generally, but as for the rest of the criticism- I don’t know enough. I read it partially as a way of trying (unsuccessfully) to understand the Khmer Rouge and how and why they took power with so little apparent resistance. Exhaustion from war and exposure to unyielding and ideologically-driven violence have much to do with it, I suspect. Reading this book while in the country, I enjoyed the descriptions of Phnom Penh (albeit at fifty years remove) and gave context to my ambivalent visit to Tuol Sleng Prison. I’m still looking for books about Cambodia that, while not blithely ignoring the Khmer Rouge years, are not defined by them.

My rating: Hard to say – 7???

Read because: I was there. E-book.

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