Ghost Town Revives : Cambodia: Past Haunts New Society

Eight years ago, this once-beautiful French colonial capital was a ghost town, all but two of its broad boulevards barricaded with iron sheeting, its villas empty, its only occupants the Khmer Rouge and a few thousand civilians dragooned to serve the tyrannical regime.

Pol Pot and his twisted Communist ideology ruled here then, after a peasant revolution that left no room for others. The urban classes were driven to the countryside in a massive upheaval that saw hundreds of thousands die of starvation or disease on communal farms and vast work projects.

So-called educated Cambodians--often simply those who wore eyeglasses or spoke a foreign language--were executed as dangerous influences. At least a million Cambodians died under Pol Pot’s disastrous experiment.

Tortured and Killed

At Tuol Sleng, an elementary school here that was converted into a torture chamber, confessions of spying were squeezed from innocent men whose wives and children were confined with them for good measure. Those who survived the torture were taken outside the city and killed.

A handful of prisoners who showed artistic talent were set to another task. Pol Pot, who cloaked himself in mystery, who was so shadowy that many did not believe there was such a man, was apparently about to start a cult of personality. Busts of Pol Pot were being turned out, to be distributed around the country, and the new government has put them on display at Tuol Sleng, which is now a museum to the horrors of those days.

Today Phnom Penh is rising from the prostration of the Khmer Rouge period, still on its knees but inching upward.

Trees, Parks Restored

Flowering trees, which Pol Pot had replaced with coconut palms in his determination to build an agriculture-based communal society, have been restored along some of the boulevards. Parks that had been taken over by weeds have been mowed, and flowers have been planted.

The new Vietnam-backed government is looking ahead, but the problems are enormous. And try as they may, the people cannot erase the past.

When Vietnamese troops drove the Khmer Rouge from the capital in January, 1979, the city dwellers who had been expelled to the countryside four years earlier began streaming back.

“It was a pitiful sight,” said Ngo Dien, the Vietnamese ambassador here, who came in with the troops in 1979. “They had nothing, just a few utensils and clothes which they carried on their heads.”

They took any empty apartment--first come, first served. Neary Neal, a Foreign Ministry aide, said, “I settled in a new place. Once I went back to see my family home, but it was too much; it touched me too deeply.”

Almost all of her family died under Pol Pot, she said, some by starvation, at least one by execution--”my sister, by injection.”

Sao Yon, 43, deputy director of the state tire factory here, was one of the few who stayed on under the Khmer Rouge. His skills were necessary to the military effort.

“We worked one shift here, from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.,” he recalled. “We were given two meals a day, two kilos of rice (about 4 1/2 pounds) for every 10 workers, plus some vegetables in the pot and maybe a small fish. That was in harvest season. In the dry season, we got rice gruel.”

Sao Yon estimates that there were about 10,000 people in Phnom Penh in those years, just the military and the civilian factory workers. Wives and children had been sent to the countryside, he said.

“Sometimes,” he said, “we saw the Chinese ambassador’s car.”

Food is Biggest Problem

Now his 450 men work three eight-hour shifts, Sao Yon said. “They understand hardship,” he noted. “They’re happy enough. They have a salary and rations, and they can grow vegetables at home.”

Food is Cambodia’s biggest problem, its greatest obsession.

“Pol Pot destroyed our country materially and technically,” said Yao Tiv, deputy minister of planning. “We inherited all the debris of destruction. We are not a developed country. We have to begin with the bare hand. In the next five years (the term of the current state plan), we have to solve by any means the problem of food.”

Here in the capital, where people have money, the food markets are full. On the banks of the Tonle Sap River, which flows from Cambodia’s bountiful great lake to join the Mekong River outside of Phnom Penh, cargo boats arrive from the provinces each dawn, their holds filled with vegetables, fruits and fish.

Agriculture Hampered

In some provinces, the situation is far worse. The continuing guerrilla war and a lack of irrigation have restricted agriculture. My Samedy, dean of the medical faculty at the University of Phnom Penh, said people in seven of the 19 provinces suffer to some degree from malnutrition.

Another immediate problem in Phnom Penh is jobs. An estimated 600,000 people live here now, almost one of every 10 Cambodians. A handful of factories produce textiles, auto tires, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals and lumber, but there is not enough work.

The streets are lined with traditional Asian shop-houses: a store downstairs and living quarters above. But many are shuttered or have few goods to offer. There are a few good restaurants, many small cafes for rice or noodle dishes, ubiquitous beauty shops and any number of bicycle repair operations.

Salaries are low, but apartments and utilities are free. And for those with connections, there is money to be made in the government-condoned free markets.

Foreign Jeans Smuggled

A pair of smuggled foreign jeans--Cambodian mills produce no denim--costs about 1,200 riel, about four months’ salary for a government worker, the equivalent of $40 at the official rate of exchange, $9 at the black market rate.

A free-market Sony tape recorder costs $150, and sellers want greenbacks only.

At the Monorom Hotel, where many Western visitors stay, a can of Heineken beer costs $1, less than in Bangkok. Cambodia produces no beer or liquor of its own, most of the former coming from Vietnam and the latter from the West.

Fighting along the Thai-Cambodian border has blocked the land route for foreign goods, but enterprising Thai and Cambodian smugglers have been bringing them in by sea, insiders say. According to one, Thai fishing boats set out with cargoes of stereos, jeans and motorbikes and make the swap offshore for cash and freshwater fish from Cambodian rivers and lakes.

“We neither open nor close that trade (smuggling),” said Yao Tiv of the Planning Ministry. “But if the law is broken, we will of course prosecute.” He did not disclose where the line is drawn.

An English-speaking pedicab driver said: “Pol Pot banned commerce of any kind. He banned currency. He blew up the national bank.” He pointed to a vacant lot, and said, “It was there. It was the most beautiful building in all Cambodia.”

Cars Were Destroyed

Pol Pot also destroyed the automobiles. In April, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge came to power in Phnom Penh, bringing down the government of Lon Nol, the initial joy over the end of war turned to panic as Pol Pot’s intentions for his revolutionary society became clear. The wealthy families of the capital piled into their cars and headed for safety.

According to Neary Neal, the Foreign Ministry aide, they did not get far down Highway 1, the road to Saigon, which was to fall to the Communists a week after Pol Pot took Phnom Penh. At a point about 10 miles out of the capital, “the rich were relieved of their cars by the Khmer Rouge, and the vehicles were destroyed on the spot,” she said.

The place is now an automobile graveyard. The local people use the hulks to shore up dikes.

Now there are cars in Phnom Penh again, not many but seemingly as many as or more than there are in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. Some are new, driven in from Vietnam by diplomats or aid workers. Some are pre-Pol Pot models, perhaps hidden during the years of horror here, and now lovingly restored.

Schools, banned under the Khmer Rouge, are the most obvious achievement of the new government, as with most traditional Communist regimes, which put a priority on the learning and propaganda value of the classroom.

2 Students Share Book

More than 4,000 students, age 6 to 15, attend Chatomuk School here, in morning and afternoon sessions. There are not enough textbooks--two students share each book--or qualified teachers, said the director, Ti Kay, 47, a lifelong educator. But he said the staff is making progress. It has been difficult because 75% of the country’s teachers were killed, according to the director’s estimate, under the Khmer Rouge.

During the Pol Pot years, when Ti Kay was sent to Prey Veang province to work in the fields, “the school was turned into a stockyard,” he said.

Students at the secondary level study mathematics, literature, physics, chemistry, geography and what Ti Kay called political morals--Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Vietnamese and Russian are offered as foreign languages. Students who want to learn French or English must take private lessons, a second source of income for many educated Cambodians.

In the school library, there are pictures of Lenin, Marx and Ho Chi Minh, but none of Cambodia’s current national leaders. Placed prominently above the picture of Lenin is a sculpted image of Brahma, the four-faced Hindu deity who holds a position of reverence in the Buddhism practiced in Burma, Thailand and Cambodia.

Temples Reopened

Buddhist temples, closed and damaged under the Khmer Rouge, have reopened, but religion is not promoted and the state uses buildings within the compounds for schools. The monks who survived Pol Pot have returned, but they are old men, and men under 50 are with few exceptions barred from being monks.

In Phnom Penh, the difficult task of rebuilding homes and lives occupies most of the people’s time. The wooden trim of the villas has rotted in the tropical climate, and black mold climbs the sides of the walls.

Now, in the hot season, the weather is oppressive. For government workers and some private merchants, work stops from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and people stretch out in hammocks, in the shade, for a midday siesta.

Street life stops again, under a curfew, from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. So far, security here has not been a problem in the guerrilla war, but young policemen in lime-green uniforms are at most intersections.

Memories of Khmer Rouge

Outside the Monorom Hotel, a policeman sat beside his Soviet-made rifle, his feet tucked into a pair of new black leather combat boots. His comrades wore rubber sandals, and he did not seem particularly eager to try out his new boots in the heat of the afternoon.

Just below the surface in any conversation with a citizen of Phnom Penh lies the memory of the Khmer Rouge years. It has been more than seven years since Pol Pot was driven from the capital, but reminders are constant.

At the palace where the former Cambodian monarch, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and his forebears lived, the reminder is calculated.

Along a shaded arcade stand four panels painted with caricatures of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, a Khmer Rouge colleague. On certain holidays, the people of Phnom Penh are invited to shoot at the panels with bows and arrows. Prizes are awarded for accuracy.