CPP President Chea Sim’s celebratory Jan 7 speeches fell on virtually deaf ears Tuesday in Banteay Meanchey province’s Malai district, one of the last bastions of the Khmer Rouge and home to many of the regime’s former officials.
Thirty-six year-old Keo Ean, a former Khmer Rouge fighter who lost a leg to a land mine while battling the government’s soldiers, said he was not so impressed by the celebration, known as Victory Over Genocide Day.
“This is the first time we gathered to celebrate this day,” was his only comment.
For more than 20 years villagers in Malai, home to the Democratic National Union Movement—a push for self-sufficiency whose roots lie partially in the theories of former Democratic Kampuchea premier Khieu Samphan and other Khmer Rouge intellectuals, considered Jan 7 the day when Vietnam invaded Cambodia.
Former Khmer Rouge there say they continued more than a decade of fighting to evict the Vietnamese from their country.
About 2,700 former Khmer Rouge fighters attended Malai’s Jan 7 ceremony, where Chea Sim’s address was read by Malai district chief Chhim Bunny, himself a former rebel commander, and fireworks lighted up the sky.
Banteay Meanchey Governor Thach Khorn said Chea Sim’s words were meant to celebrate the current peace rather than invoke memories of Cambodia’s devastating history.
“We should not raise up the past. We should bury the past and unify under the spirit of national reconciliation,” he said.
The ex-fighters were each given a 50-kg bag of rice with some money and kramas, but Long Narin, a former official in the Khmer Rouge’s foreign ministry, downplayed the significance of the day. “For me, I don’t think there is an impact on us,” Long Narin said.
