Using this time of self-isolation at home I thought I would spend some time writing up some of the inspirational and interesting stories told to me by fascinating characters I have met over my decades in Asia. Some of these stories are covered in my three life story books on South East Asia and India and some have been told to me by elderly Myanmar citizens for my Myanmar Oral History Podcast.
Today’s story involves Cambodia. I first visited Cambodia in the early 1990s, not long after Vietnam withdrew its troops from the country. My older friends will remember that Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 to bring to an end the murderous four-year reign of the Khmer Rouge during which nearly a quarter of the population – that’s around 1.5 million people – died from execution, disease, starvation and overwork. With Vietnam’s withdrawal the country was in a political vacuum and, to bring stability, the United Nations established UNTAC (UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia) in late 1991. Its key tasks were to disarm the warring factions, repatriate refugees and prepare for elections which were held in 1993 and following which UNTAC was dismantled.
Thus, at the time I interviewed businessmen and women for my book on South East Asia in the early to mid 1990s, all were at the early stages of building their businesses. If I look at where they are now, most have had extraordinary financial success but, for some, this success has been tinged with scandal and disputes. For this short vignette I want to focus on their early lives and a very unusual experience I had with one of them.
Even now it is not possible to meet Cambodians who were not affected by the Khmer Rouge in some horrible way. All of the people I interviewed were directly affected and miraculously lived through the four years of slaughter. One, for example, told me how he was forced to work in the fields from 3AM until midnight and that they were always so hungry that they resorted to eating grass roots and bark. On one occasion, this person told me that he caught and ate one of what had been his family’s chickens before the takeover. But, so far as the Khmer Rouge were concerned, everything was owned by the State and he was put in jail for a week. “Every day the guards would start beating prisoners at 5pm and many did not make it through the night. I was lucky as I was not put in jail until later in the evening when they had finished their beatings. And fortunately, the head of the local farmers’ association, knew I was a hard worker and protected me until I was released.” Another of those I interviewed also worked long hours in the fields and told me how he nearly lost his life in 1979 just after the Vietnamese invaded and were starting to push the Khmer Rouge into the jungle. “I was so hungry that I tried to steal a cow for milking. A Khmer Rouge soldier saw what I was trying to do and started shooting above my head to scare me away. But I was so hungry I did not care if I lived or died. The soldier came up to me and put a gun to my head and was about to pull the trigger. I yelled out to him ‘kill me and you waste a bullet’. The soldier hesitated for a second and asked me could I see any Vietnamese soldiers behind him. I told him that there were. He then said quietly to me that if I had some rice, he would let me live. Fortunately, I did and survived.”
Both these two men made their initial fortunes by smuggling goods from Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand into Vietnam. Vietnam was under a trade embargo from the US and many other nations for 20 years from the time of the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese in 1975 until President Clinton lifted the embargo in 1995. Cambodia with his long border with Vietnam was the perfect intermediary. The Cambodian smugglers would usually meet Thai traders out at sea and swap goods like cigarettes (particularly the brand ‘555’ which became a de facto currency in that era), electronics and even larger items like motorbike; essentially, they smuggled whatever was in demand in Vietnam. Some of the Thai traders were not much better than pirates; they would do a few trades with the Cambodian smugglers until the value became sizeable at which point, they would kill the Cambodians, take their money and keep the goods. One day my subject was due to lead a smuggling party on his small boat but, one of his colleagues told him that he had had an argument with his wife and wanted to take his place. All on that trip were killed. On another occasion his wife was on the boat and they ran aground in Thai waters where she was arrested as a refugee and sent to a camp. It took him four months to find her. He arranged for some men to bring his boat back to Cambodia. It was attacked by pirates and everyone on board was killed, except one man who managed to jump off the boat and swim to shore. Apparently, the pirates could not find anything on the boat and just left it floating out at sea. In fact, there was a large amount of cash and gold bars well-hidden on the boat and my subject was able to find the boat and recover the cash.
My story now turns to the strange experience my then teenage son, Nick and I had with the husband and wife smugglers mentioned above. Nick had sat in on the interview I had conducted on their life story. When we finished, they invited us to join them for lunch. We went out of their office and were approaching their large armour-plated Mercedes which they had purchased from the UTAC officials after they exited the country. They suggested Nick sit in the front beside their driver and I sit in the back seat with them. After we all got in the car, Nick turned around to me and gave me the strangest look which I could not decipher. He then turned around and off we went to lunch. After lunch when we returned to the car, I guess because they realised it would be less squashed in the back seat with Nick rather than me, I was directed to the front seat. As I went to put my feet down on the floor, I suddenly realised why Nick had given me that look. Lying across the floor was an AK-47 machine gun and I then looked at the driver and realised he was no ordinary driver but a soldier they had hired from the army to protect them. This was at a time when kidnappings of the wealthy were rife. Nick no doubt thought we were about to be taken to the “killing fields” and executed. I am happy to say Nick has never given me that look again.
Peter Church blog 