CAMBODIA, 17 April 1975 A new chapter in human suffering is about to be written. This time, the victim is a little known country of less than ten million people. After more than four years of civil war fanned by the wider American conflict in neighbouring Vietnam and Laos, a radical group of Cambodian ultra-revolutionaries known as the Khmer Rouge are now in control of the once peaceful Kingdom.
The last act came with the fall of the capital Phnom Penh. I had been working in Cambodia as a young photo-reporter. As a result, I was able to document the events in those fleeting hours and moments. The following pages retrace what happened on April 17 from the photographs that I was able to smuggle out of the country. Thirty Five years on, a new country is emerging. But this nation is born out of the tragic events of that day, which are engraved on every Cambodian mind. 3
THE FALL OF PHNOM PENH
Roland Neveu
A S I A H O R I ZO N S B O O K S
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T
he story of the fall of Phnom Penh unfolded 35 years ago. So why is this book being published after all this time? From a personal point of view, the answers are straight forward enough. My first book ‘Cambodia: The Years of Turmoil’ focused on my work in Cambodia in the period from 1973 to early 2000. When it first came out several years ago, I noticed that most people who saw or read it were far more interested in the story of the fall of Phnom Penh than any of the other events that I covered including the refugee crisis of 1979. For anyone familiar with Cambodia’s horrific past or indeed anyone who survived the years of darkness at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, the 17 of April 1975 was the day when the nightmare started. It marked in people’s minds the date when the country began its descent into hell. It's a day which symbolizes ignominy for the Cambodian people of all backgrounds. Knowing this, I had planned to follow up with a book that would focus more precisely on 17 April 1975, the day that the Khmer Rouge finally entered Phnom Penh after almost five years of a bitter war. But a number of the original negatives had been lost somewhere between the offices of Gamma Photo agency in Paris and Gamma-Liaison in New York, which made the task considerably more difficult. It was only in the late 1990s when Gamma-Liaison was bought out by 15
Getty Images, that I discovered that many of my supposedly lost films had been shuttling to and fro across the Atlantic between different offices. Now most of my photographs have been returned, enabling me to complete this book. And of course with all my images in hand the memories came flooding back. The advent of the Khmer Rouge tribunal provides a timely opportunity to discuss Cambodia's recent past in which up to two million people died and to reflect on how this could have happened. As a photographer, it is also good to show a little of Phnom Penh’s heritage as the city is changing rapidly with the influx of new money and brash new buildings. On a personal note, what amazes me most about that day is how few films I shot. For years, I didn't give the pictures a second glance. But now they enable me to recall the events as I lived through them. I should add that after reading the superb book “The Gate” by François Bizot, I felt that I should also do my bit to review the past. As a young photographer, I was on my second trip to Cambodia and had spent three months in the country before the fall of Phnom Penh. Nevertheless, I too was a witness to events whose significance none of us could have imagined at the time. With little money in my pocket, few films and absolutely no chance of getting my hands on any more, it was a challenge simply to get by. When the US evacuation took place, I was never for a moment tempted to jump 16
aboard a chopper, although I was invited to do so. I wanted to see the end of the conflict. Somehow influenced by the many leftist intellectuals of the period, I was not particularly worried by the ultra nationalistic vision of the Khmer Rouge. Nor did we, the majority of the foreign press, show real concern for the few reports of displaced villages and local purges going on in the liberated zones. Although living in Phnom Penh was cheap for most foreigners, it became more and more difficult to move around and to obtain food. Inflation for basic commodities such as gas, rice and bread was astronomical. I was on a budget of two US dollars a day when Pochentong Airport closed down. But I still had my return ticket to Paris. From a purely selfish point of view, I can say that the fall of Phnom Penh came as a relief to me. Inside the French Embassy compound, I didn't have to worry anymore about food as there was simply nothing to eat. Everybody was in the same situation. All that really mattered at that time was the story. And this maybe is why my films were so precious to me and why in the end I managed to get them out of Cambodia even though we were searched by the Khmer Rouge at the embassy. Those photographs certainly helped to launch my photo-journalist career. After receiving them a few weeks later, the Gamma photo agency distributed them around the world. Subsequently, I covered conflicts in Lebanon, 17
Afghanistan, the Philippines and Central America and other parts of the planet. Following the fall of Phnom Penh, I continued to monitor the story in Cambodia with brief forays along the border with Thailand. But I never imagined then that the events of 1975 would turn out to be the Asian Holocaust of our time. This became obvious to me during a perilous three week sojourn (August-September 1979) in the forests of Western Cambodia with an armed ragtag group that went on to be known as the Sihanoukiste guerrillas of KPNLF. Ever since it has remained an important story for me and almost 40 years later, I regularly trail my camera there in search of new perspectives. Š Roland Neveu (2008)
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Soldiers on the frontline after airstrikes have ravaged the landscape.
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Final Days P
hnom Penh – Early April 1975. The heat and chaos of the city seem to grow by the day. Crowds of refugees stream in from the countryside, clutching their worldly belongings in rice sacks and cardboard boxes, which they have carried barefoot for dozens of kilometres. The air of desperation is accentuated by the intermittent barrage of rockets. From the top floor of the Sukhalay Hotel I look out over the city towards Tuol Kork and the vast empty area beyond, searching for signs of the encroaching war. But little has changed – except that the city is virtually cut off from the outside world. Petrol to get around town is becoming increasingly scarce. Phnom Penh we know for certain is running out of time. But there are still moments when the inevitable collapse seems a long way off as if it could drag on for months to come. I had landed in Phnom Penh at the beginning of March 1975 on the Air Cambodge Caravelle from Bangkok after a 15 hour flight from Paris. It was a little more than one and a half years after my first trip to Cambodia. During that time, I had been obliged to return to France to complete military service. Now with short cropped hair and the level of fitness expected of an elite paratrooper, I felt like some sort of veteran. The town had already undergone a transformation in
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of the War my absence with bunkers and sandbags now enclosing most official buildings and shops. The Khmer Rouge frontlines were much closer to the dusty outskirts of the city than before. After settling into the Sukhalay Hotel and getting acquainted with the foreign press contingent, I slipped easily back into the daily routine of covering the front as well as the refugee camps, hospitals and the airlift of food and military supplies at the Airport. Shortly before the start of the annual monsoon, the fighting intensified as advanced units of the Khmer Rouge reached the outlying swamps around the city. Pochentong Airport which lay in the western part of town was under almost constant rocket attack. The explosions would leave plumes of smoke that only slowly dissipated over the surrounding paddies. At night we would huddle in the Khemara Restaurant next to the Sukhalay Hotel or around the swimming pool of the Phnom Hotel as the boom of heavy artillery broke in on the terrified city. Wild rumours began to circulate amongst the locals that a change of government was imminent. On 11 April, Lon Nol, the president of Cambodia fled the country with his loot. We began to smell the end. Then the last American diplomats and CIA operatives,
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A USAF airplane almost hit by rocket shells as it landed at Pochentong Airport.
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or what was left of them were evacuated. The message was loud and clear. The airlift supplying the bealeagued city was about to be cut. There would be no more Air America or Tiger Airways planes screeching onto the runway of Pochentong and unloading their precious cargoes of food and ammunition. The day after the US pull-out, which was a Sunday, thousands of people and soldiers on ox-carts and trucks poured into the city centre. Half starved and consumed by fear, they shuffled slowly through the streets of the capital, not knowing where they would go next. In the early afternoon, I drove out to Pochentong Airport and watched as the last Air Cambodge flight took off for Bangkok where the aircraft was subsequently impounded by the Thai Government. With every route out of the city blocked by advancing Khmer Rouge, the last chance to leave had evaporated. Just a few kilometers downstream from Phnom Penh, the Mekong River had already fallen into the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Boat loads of dead soldiers were being unloaded near the wrecked Japanese bridge. Later that day, shells hit the airbase ammunition depots and the airport zone was declared off limits by the Military Police. Authorities imposed a 24-hour curfew over the city, but amidst the chaos, nobody seemed to notice. By now, like most other freelance photographers, I was running low on money and film. A Khmer girl friend who had
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rented me her cousin’s motorcycle had fled to her family house with it and never returned. I couldn’t blame her as the last few days of rent wasn’t even paid. It was the end. Food was becoming increasingly scarce. Soon even the power supply went off for good. A strange feeling of quiet anarchy hung in the air. I confined myself to the centre of town and the area around Monivong Boulevard with occasional forays to Tuol Kork and Takmau. The Phnom Hotel remained open and was the last recourse for foreign reporters looking for cool drinks or meagre meals of bread, rice and cans of sardines. Outside, the mood had changed. Crowds of increasingly desperate people besieged the few gas stations and bakeries that were still open, battling over the remaining supplies. A cloud of black smoke hung ominously over the city from the oil depot on Route 5 which had been hit by rockets. Monday came and went amidst a flood of conflicting reports. All that we knew for certain was that the government army was crumbling and that a disgruntled T-10 pilot had dropped a bomb over the army headquarters in the middle of town. Phnom Penh was like a ripe fruit ready to fall and nothing could save it. The following day we awoke to relative calm. In the morning, the Red Cross designated the Phnom Hotel as an official safe haven. Hundreds of Khmers gathered outside the gates in the hope that they could take refuge, but many were turned back due to lack of water and space. For the journalists who had stayed on, there was a different set of
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problems. With the power supply off and the phone lines dead, filing stories had become a logistical nightmare. For us photographers, the situation was even more critical. It was now impossible to get our films out of Cambodia. I was not worried and being new to the news business I didn’t even realize that I was about to live through one of the major events of the decade.Phnom Penh.
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An airport worker killed by a shell is stretchered away. 29
Soldiers on the move along the Tonle Sap. 30
A child soldier stands on a rice sack while waiting to move to the frontline. 31
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Inside the hospital in Takmau, families live next to their wounded relatives.
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A soldier fires a rocket launcher from an armored carrier on the frontline. 35
People waiting on Monivong Boulevard; queuing for gas at a pe 36
trol station; the wounded in an overcrowded makeshift hospital. 37
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By the beginning of April 1975 it was increasingly da
angerous to board an airplane at Pochentong Airport.
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A Khmer girl in the market; a boy begs near the Central 40
market; sandbags protect shops against rocket shelling. 41
Friends and colleagues at work in the last days of the war: Franรงoise Demulder 42
(left); Al Rockoff (center); Tea Kim Heang ‘Moonface’ a Khmer freelancer (right). 43
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Arnaud Borrel and Ennio Iacobucci helping one
e of our Khmer friends to move his belongings.
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Rush hour on Monivong Boulevard.
It would be the last for many years.
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A downpour prior to the beginning of the rainy season as seen from my hotel room at the Sukhalay on Monivong Boulevard. 49
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T
he final blow came on Saturday 12 April 1975. At around eight o’clock in the morning, the US embassy began to evacuate its remaining personnel. A wave of Chinook and Sikorsky helicopters swooped down onto a school playground nearby the embassy across from the Chamcarmon Presidential Palace, airlifting the few hundred people to an aircraft carrier waiting in the Gulf of Thailand.
That same morning, a group of us photographers and journalists gathered for breakfast at the coffee-shop of the Phnom Hotel. We were discussing the departure of Lon Nol and speculating how much money and gold he could have carried with him to Hawaii. Then news broke about the American airlift and the wire service guys scrambled in all directions. In a sense it was like D-day in reverse. For foreigners like myself, it provided the final opportunity for a safe and free trip out of crumbling Cambodia and a large number of the remaining foreign correspondents took the flight out. For most Khmers, the reality was very different. Operation Eagle Pull was simply a nice acronym for letting down America’s supposed friends and allies. As word swept the city that the last Americans were leaving, a few people rushed out onto the streets near the embassy, whilst a crowd assembled outside the school fence (this place has since become the Russian Embassy.) From here, they watched the helicopters landing and taking off. Several government officials also showed up, asking to be flown out of the doomed city, in the hope that they would get 52
a better life in another country. Among the foreign reporters joining the evacuation, some were hoping to get a last flight to Saigon, which was poised to fall to the advancing communist forces of North Vietnam within days. It was only a short walk from the embassy to the landing zone. Along the way, we took pictures of a US Marine security unit. They taunted us for not getting on the choppers, saying that we would all be killed when the communists seized Phnom Penh. After the last wave of helicopters had vanished from the horizon, everything went quiet. There was a brief lull in the fighting. Those of us who had remained behind suddenly felt small and vulnerable. That night, I sat with a couple of friends at the Sukhalay Hotel. We were tired out by the events of the day and the stifling humidity that drained every single ounce of energy from our bodies. Over a dwindling supply of whisky, we tentatively discussed whether we would be able to work under the Khmer Rouge who now held our fate in their hands. Would they allow us to move around freely and report what was going on or would we be imprisoned or worse still executed. Would they confiscate our cameras or just our films and would they expel all of us? There were no ready answers. Hours later and with few clear ideas, I stumbled back to my room.
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Officials gather their belonging at the US
S Embassy on the day of the evacuation.
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Operation Eagle Pull: A helicopter takes off with 56
h evacuees whilst soldiers protect the perimeter. 57
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A crowd assembles outside the school grounds use
ed as a landing zone by the American helicopters.
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The city has turned into a vast camp site with people from all the villages around carrying whatever belongings they can take with them. 60
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View of the Royal Palace from a burnt out vi
llage on the opposite bank of the Tonle Sap.
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A fire base set up outside the unfinished Cam
bodiana Hotel as a last perimeter of defense.
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Pochentong Airport is the only way out of the
e encircled capital in the last days of the war.
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Monks go about their normal business, una
ware that soon all religions will be banned.
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Some of the last casualties of the war ; a field ho 70
ospital ; bodies lined up on the banks of the river. 71
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Bodies of soldiers brought back to town, near the Japanese B
Bridge, after a bitter fight near the city, a futile last sacrifice.
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A final exodus as the last few planes leave P
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ochentong Airport for Saigon or Bangkok.
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After Pochentong Airport falls into Khmer Rouge hands, an armoured unit is
I
t was a Wednesday, the third day of the traditional Khmer New Year. But there were no celebrations in the Cambodian capital. A 24 hour curfew had been imposed as intense fighting erupted around the airbase of Pochentong. People were fleeing in all directions looking for shelter wherever they could find it. The city crawled with refugees. The staff at the Sukhalay Hotel, where I was staying had vanished by the time that I got up that morning and the usual street corner place where I drank coffee nearby was also closed. The cyclo drivers and money changers had also gone. That day, even the pretty girls serving at the Khemara coffeeshop didn’t show up for work. The army had repositioned several tanks and personnel carriers on the main boulevards around the city. We could smell the huge plume of smoke rising up from the oil depot on Route 5, which was burning for the second consecutive day. I dropped by the French Embassy in the morning and was told that we were welcome to stay there for security reasons. Then I walked over towards Vat Phnom and stopped by the Phnom Hotel, which was not far away. It was noticeably quiet there, as many of the staff had not come to work, but the reporters who were still staying there returned from their morning’s forays around the city with reports of only sporadic fighting and shelling. No one had managed to get through to the airport or beyond to Monivong Bridge, so there was still much that we did not know. The city was choking under the burden of almost two millions people. Although it had been declared a safe zone by
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the Red Cross, the hotel had no electricity and barely any water. Short of supplies, it could accommodate only a handful of people around the pool garden area. The day passed without any real sign of when the Khmer Rouge who were now well entrenched in the suburbs of Phnom Penh would advance into the city centre or how it would happen. By late afternoon, we could hear small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades being fired at close range near the French Embassy around the TV antenna of Tuol Kork and the main power station. A steady stream of people poured into the roundabout between the embassy and the Japanese Bridge. In a few hours Monivong Boulevard was jammed as people retreated from the slums in the northern part of the city and the Tuol Kork area. There was no more shouting or signs of panic; just a steady mass of humanity moving along the tree lined avenue. They were trying to escape the nearby fighting and probably expected a last ditch battle between the hardened Khmer Rouge units spearheading the taking of the city and the remnants of the government units defending it. We could see a lot of soldiers amongst the waves of fleeing civilians. They were probably not keen to put up a fight. The army was completely demoralized and a new government put together just a day earlier was already calling for a ceasefire and a bloodless surrender. On the Wednesday evening, I stayed with a group of
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French residents in the vicinity of the French Embassy. Later that same night, we went searching nearby houses hoping to retrieve some cans of sardines or patÊ, but there was nothing – not even bread as the supply of flour had run out in the city several days earlier. We could hear sporadic fighting on the edge of town with sudden bursts of gunfire followed by long and unnerving silences. Around midnight, we agreed to move to the embassy compound. Despite the late hour, nobody was sleeping. A small group of French diplomats and journalists huddled together in the consular section of the embassy now transformed into a bunker, discussing the latest events in quiet whispers. Some people talked of a possible cease-fire, others of the possibility of a new government or even an open city where we would all be free to come and go. Holed up in the embassy compound with little reliable information to go on, anything sounded possible. I finally got some rest in the spacious hall that had once been used to entertain visiting diplomats and local dignitaries. Using my camera bag as a pillow, I stretched out on the wooden floor. But it was to be a short night’s sleep.
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April 16. In the rush to leave, families get separated leaving children to fend for themselves. 81
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Flowering trees line Monivong Boulevard, a last centre of resistance for the gov
vernment forces. In the distance, you can see smoke from a burning oil depot.
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Monivong Boulevard, near the Japanese Bridge whe
re soldiers retreat from the northern parts of the city.
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The Phnom Hotel (Royal Hotel), taken over by the Red Cross as the city is poised to fall. 86
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Worried soldiers and their families retreat past the French Emba
assy with their few belongings. The crowd grows until nightfall.
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As the sun sets on April 16, people crowd the
streets looking for a place to spend the night.
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On the evening of April 16, a retreating soldie
er glances at the gates of the French Embassy.
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Hopeful that the place will remain safe, famil
ies are moving into the Phnom (Royal) hotel.
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The park near the French Embassy, where
a last attempt is made to protect the city.
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Seen from the French Embassy gate, very early in the morn
ning, the last rush of people move up Monivong Boulevard.
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A
17 Apr
little after four o’clock in the morning, heavy fighting erupted around the main power station and a communications tower which lay a short distance northwest of the French Embassy. As mortar rounds fell nearby, I leapt to my feet and quickly found my way to the Chancery building where several other French residents and embassy personnel had taken refuge. The concrete building protected by rows of sandbags was definitely a safer location while fighting raged. Explosions from rocket propelled grenades and mortar rounds eventually gave way to small arms. Since the firing was coming closer, it was obvious that advancing Khmer Rouge units were cleaning up the area in front of them. The battle lasted until well after daybreak. There was little return of fire, which suggested to us that there was almost no resistance to the advancing guerrillas on this side of the city. Groups of soldiers and civilians together with a few armoured vehicles and jeeps slowly made their way back towards the city centre. After running to the gate of the embassy I pulled myself along the outside wall and took a dozen pictures while bullets zipped overhead. Remembering a government soldier running with an old M1 rifle in one hand and a guitar in the other, I decided that it was not a good day to die for a lost cause. The street emptied out and I returned
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ril 1975 to the relative safety of the embassy compound. The firing eventually died down completely. The morning brought sunshine, but a cloud of silence hung heavily over the city. The crossroads opposite the French compound, where only minutes earlier the last soldiers were seen racing down Monivong towards the city centre, was now deserted. I found myself stranded inside the embassy grounds together with a few other French reporters. At around 8 am, from behind the gate of the French embassy, we glimpsed a small group of heavily armed Khmer Rouge guerrillas walking cautiously across the large roundabout towards Monivong Boulevard. I had seen the badly decomposed or disfigured corpses of Khmer Rouge soldiers on several occasions on the frontline, but this was the first time I had seen one alive in the flesh. Most of the foreign reporters in Phnom Penh at the time were in the same position. We had no idea whether to go out through the gate into the street with our cameras and face a very uncertain welcome or to remain inside our sanctuary. At first nobody moved. Then just across the boulevard, a few young children holding hastily made white flags above their heads walked out of a side street to meet the approaching soldiers. The ice was broken. The children started cheer-
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This scene takes place directly opposite the French Embassy sometime after the s
shooting had stopped. My first image of the Khmer Rouge, unexpectedly smiling.
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ing. It seemed like a good time to make a move and so I led a handful of reporters through the gate, my two Nikon cameras dangling around my neck. Walking gingerly across the road, we approached the group keeping an eye on the entire area, feeling not entirely safe. The Khmer Rouge soldiers were probably enjoying their first moments of peace in many days since the operation to seize the city had begun. Looking at them, I slowly lifted one camera to my eye scrutinizing the people around for any sign of disapproval and started taking pictures of them. The crowd started to cheer as the children jumped in front of the photographers. I asked them to look at the camera and eventually everybody smiled and look relaxed. A government soldier wrapped his arm around a Khmer Rouge telling me that they were both from the same village and were happy that the war was over. The inhabitants of Phnom Penh offered the newcomers cigarettes. When the soldiers and children lifted their guns in the air in a sign of victory, it seemed as if peace had finally returned to this war-torn kingdom. After those first incredible twenty minutes, I felt sufficiently confident to start walking down Monivong Boulevard towards the city centre. It was Thursday April 17 and the Khmer Rouge, after five years of fighting had taken Phnom Penh, almost without a final battle. My first move was to walk towards the Phnom Hotel, which was situated less that a kilometre away. Upon reaching the area in front of the cathedral, I noticed other reporters
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opposite the railway station and more people coming out onto the street from the Central Market zone. Eventually truckloads of people appeared on Monivong Boulevard, seemingly out of nowhere. Several armoured personnel carriers joined the fray as well as a few jeeps with what looked like government soldiers sporting fresh uniforms and a new flag. It appeared that they had come out to meet the Khmer Rouge. Strange as it seemed, this would not be impossible given the support that the Khmer Rouge received from some government opponents in Phnom Penh together with an underground network of sympathizers. To this day, no one can tell me where the short lived appearance of a new flag half blue, half red with a cross in the middle came from or who were the soldiers carrying it, unless it was a unit of the army trying to arrange the surrender of Phnom Penh. The events of 17 April were so intense that at times they appear almost unreal. The fact that I had so little film and did not know what was going on in other parts of the city made it all the more difficult to operate. At one stage, a Khmer Rouge soldier riding a motorcycle shouted into a loudspeaker, but nobody was able to tell me what he was saying. Some of the soldiers who had just arrived in town looked particularly stone faced, but they showed no animosity toward me when I photographed them. Phnom Penh that day was a different place. The question was how to get around it without a motorcycle or a car. For the time being, security was not yet an issue in my mind as the collapse of the republican army had occurred without a final showdown.
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I decided that the best way to see around the city would be to climb onto one of the many trucks driving through the streets. Eventually I managed to hitch a ride along Monivong Boulevard in a truck loaded with guerrillas. At times, we could still hear the sound of rocket explosions and small arms gunfire, although it was hard to figure out where it was coming from. Crowds of people now cheered the black-clad soldiers riding on armoured personnel carriers and trucks. The mood was not threatening, but with almost two million people in Phnom Penh what could a few thousand guerrillas do to keep the peace?
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Crowds cheer the victors, but the smiles don’t even last a day. 109
Bullets fly just above our heads; an ill-equipped soldier artist m 110
makes his last dash; the Khmer Rouge are greeted by reporters. 111
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Children cheer the victorious Khmer Ro
ouge whilst people surrender weapons.
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The first hours after the city has fallen. I wonder now what happened to
o many of the government soldiers as no reconciliation ever took place.
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For us reporters, the mystery of the Khmer Rouge had 116
suddenly dissipated. Now they were right amongst us. 117
Army vehicles captured by the victors parade through town. 118
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This image shows a group claiming victory inside
the city. It would turn out to be a fatal mistake.
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An ecstatic member of one of the militia who had fought from within Phnom Penh. The Khmer Rouge would disarm them later in the day. 122
The faces of the shadowy guerrilla army that defeated the US b 124
backed troops of Lon Nol in a little under five years of fighting. 125
There has been no bloodbath in the city as some experts had warned, but the situation remains tense in many parts of town. 127
128 This is one of my most published photos from 17 of April. It shows Monivong Boulevard, past
the convoy of trucks and tanks parading down the avenue for a few hours. I took the picture f
the railway station, at about mid-morning. People are assembling on the streets. Some join rom the top of a truck as I rode the length of the avenue.
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Khmer Rouge cadres head up a group of hardened soldiers on Monivong Boulevard. 130
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17 April 1975. Phnom Penh falls with barely a figh
ht. The victorious forces enter the city from all sides.
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Looking back at these images years later, I am surprised at the
I
shot the roll of film that you see on the following pages almost midway through the morning (you can still see the shadows). The 24 consecutive frames, which were taken from the top of a truck show my progression down Monivong Boulevard. The scene took place along a 5km stretch of road starting near the crossing of what is today Monivong and Charles de Gaulle Boulevard and continuing all the way to Monivong and Mao Tse Toung Boulevard (second picture on the last row). At that time the convoy could go no further as we were close to Chamcarmon Palace where sporadic fighting was still taking place between a column of Khmer Rouge and an elite unit of government soldiers. We had been going for more than an hour when the truck that I was standing on was halted by a small group of heavily armed Khmer Rouge soldiers who promptly ordered everybody off the vehicle. Suddenly, one of the guerrillas on the ground pointed a rifle at my stomach and I found myself almost alone at the back of the truck while he signalled for me to hand over my cameras. I could feel panic rising inside me. But at that precise moment, several mortar rounds fell in the vicinity and everybody scrambled for cover including the soldier who was threatening me. Fearing what might happen next, I jumped from the truck and ran from the scene towards Monivong Boulevard taking cover behind the big trees that lined the street. Seconds later, I tucked my cameras in my bags and stealthily retraced my way towards the centre of town. On my hasty walk back, still shaken by the feel of the
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barrel of a gun against my stomach, I met a French friend of mine. Zoco had originally come to Phnom Penh as a teacher, but was now trying his luck as a photographer. He had just had his only camera seized by a group of soldiers, although he didn’t know which side they were on. The next time that I brought my camera out was when I encountered a group of soldiers who had just surrendered and were being marched probably to the Olympic Stadium in the western part of the city. Amazingly the soldiers didn’t even look frightened. They must have been wholly unaware of the fate that awaited them (it appears that many of them were executed that same evening in the stadium). The area close to the crossroads of Monivong and what is today Sihanouk Boulevard seemed safe enough to take pictures and initially no one paid much attention to me. I didn’t know then where most of the other reporters were, but a few arrived shortly afterwards at that same spot. I decided to wait there and see what would happen next. Over the next few hours I remained in this part of town. So far, there had been no looting or arrests, at least from what I could see. Although nobody knew what to expect, we did not think that there would be a blood bath. People seemed genuinely relieved that the war had apparently come to an end. Looking back now, it’s hard to imagine that the Khmer Rouge were virtually welcomed into Phnom Penh and that no real battle had taken place. We didn’t see any dead bodies lining the streets in this part of city. We could still hear sporadic small arms fire and a
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A contact sheet of the film which I took while ri
ding on a truck. My favorite images are circled.
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few mortar round explosions, but by mid-day on April 17, there was still no sign of the Khmer Rouge brutality that we had been warned about by the CIA propaganda machine. More soldiers from the shadowy Khmer Rouge army poured into the city center in small units. They marched awkwardly in single file as though they were still in the jungle. In purely military terms, this was a particularly dangerous manoeuvre in a city as it made the advancing troops vulnerable to small arms or hand grenade attack. That did not seem to bother the Khmer Rouge and anyway they were never threatened. By mid-day, around two dozen guerrillas had stationed themselves at this strategic crossroads. Soon people, including many ex-soldiers now in civilian clothes, started to bring guns and ammunition to the centre of the boulevard. Maybe it was what the Khmer Rouge had asked through loudspeakers. The soldiers around us eventually tried to find out what we were doing. I used the handful of Khmer words that I knew to tell them that I was a French citizen knowing that our government had just recognized the GRUNK (Khmer Rouge-dominated government-in-exile). This was vital as otherwise they would probably think that all westerners were Americans. It looked like a hopeful sign when the soldiers did not order us to stop taking pictures although some of them were giving us disapproving looks. The pictures that you see on the contact sheet on page
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86 were taken at the crossroads of Monivong Boulevard. Initially there were just a few guns piled up there, but as time went by, the pile grew much bigger. I even took a close up frame of young Khmer Rouge troops, sitting on a stretcher and eating ice cubes. By now I felt physically and mentally exhausted after little sleep for the last three days and almost no food because of the round-the-clock curfew. Inevitably the situation began to take its toll. It was a relief to stay at the cross roads for a while as I pondered my next move. The pile of guns, ammunition and other military hardware out on the street continued to grow providing me with good opportunities for photographs. During the couple of hours that I remained there, I ran into a few other reporters including Al Rockoff, whom I had met a couple of nights earlier at the usual evening gathering of war correspondents in the pool garden of the Phnom Hotel. I also came across a couple of Khmer photographers that I used to regularly see when I was working on the frontlines. They warned me to be careful with my cameras as some photographers had already had their equipment seized. As time went bye, I began to worry more and more about the safety of the films that I had already shot since the start of the morning. It was clear that the longer I stayed, the higher was the risk of losing my bag containing all my camera gear and films. What also bothered me was that I could not see many other foreign reporters at the scene. Either they had sensed that the mood was turning more tense or they had discovered an even bigger story to photograph elsewhere.
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Without transportation or an interpreter I decided that I would be better off finding a place where I could get reliable information about what was going on. By early afternoon, the situation still didn’t seem in any way threatening for us foreigners. Occasionally a guerrilla would look at me and I would reply in Khmer ‘barang’ which means French (citizen) and that was fine. But being the only ‘barang’ in the place was not quite so reassuring and having photographed the scene extensively, I finally decided to move away. I went first to the Sukhalay Hotel to see if my photographer friends Arnaud Borrel and Ennio Iacobucci who were also staying there had come by to leave a note or collect their luggages. There was no one there, not even one member of the staff. I grabbed my key from behind the deserted counter and went up to collect a bag that I had left in my room. I then proceeded towards the French Embassy compound at the beginning of the Monivong boulevard, from where I had start my day much earlier.
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The mood was rather to celebrate on the convoi. 143
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Passing Wat Koh on Monivong Bouleva
ard, a crowd cheers the end of the war.
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This group of fighters allowed me onto their truck. Some of t
them smelt rotten after sleeping rough around Phnom Penh.
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Young people ride on top of trucks as this is the traditi
onal Khmer New Year which they can finally celebrate.
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Here we are at the crossroads with Monivong and what is now Sihan
nouk Boulevard, heading towards the bridge across the Bassac River.
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Now back at street level with a group of g
government soldiers who are surrendering.
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Marching towards the Olympic Stadium to an unce
ertain future at the hands of Khmer Rouge soldiers.
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In those early hours, nobody had any idea what would follow. We ha
ave since learnt that many of the government soldiers were executed.
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Another contact sheet of a film that was mostly shot at the crossroads o
f Monivong and what is now Sihanouk Boulevard. It’s around mid-day.
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Several guns are thrown in the middle of the street. It seems that the Khmer Rouge were telling people and soldiers to surrender their guns.
The Khmer Rouge guerrilla, while taking over the city, were growing curious about us and of the fact that we were taking pictures. 161
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Unsure of what is going on, this woman and her c
children set out on the road with their belongings.
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A young Khmer Rouge soldier stares into the lens of my camera. Th
ey are sucking plain ice, something they may not have seen before.
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Guerrilla at the rea
ady on Monivong.
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Rifle shots and exploding rockets send people
scrambling close to Independence Monument.
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On Monivong Boulevard, Khm
er Rouge units patrol the city.
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A Khmer Rouge soldier holds a flag on a pile
of surrendered guns on Monivong Boulevard.
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It is past mid-day. There are no more convoys and a temporary calm h
has fallen over the city, broken only by the occasional burst of gunfire.
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Growing numbers of Khmer Rouge soldiers move into Phnom Penh in t
rucks, probably with new orders to push the inhabitants out of the city.
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Truck loads of guns are collected and dumped at the cross
sroads on Monivong Boulevard until they block the street.
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The pile of guns grows as the hours pass.
Judging by the fact that he has shoes, this soldier is from the Phnom Penh rallying forces, who will be disarmed later on. 181
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The mood is changing. I can sense it from the way that the soldiers look
at me. They are probably wondering why I am taking so many pictures.
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By early afternoon, there are fewer people out on the s
street. Columns of Khmer Rouge still pour into the city.
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A French official (Mr. Migot) attempts to control the influx of
E
arly afternoon in Phnom Penh brought a renewed sense of uncertainty. I decided to head back in the direction of the French Embassy to check what was going on there. I started to walk along Monivong. The mood was changing and I learnt that the Khmer Rouge were apparently telling everyone through loudspeakers to leave the town for a few days with a minimum of belongings. There were also rumours that the Americans were about to bomb the city. It was easy to see how people could believe what they were hearing. Fewer people remained out on the street. I reckoned that most of them had probably gone home to grab their belongings before once again tramping back to the countryside from where many had only recently arrived.
Stopping by the Phnom Hotel, I found only a handful of Cambodians and none of my usual acquaintances. The French Embassy, where foreigners were now being advised to go, was at least a kilometre away. When I arrived, there were only a few people at the gate and since the guards knew me, they let me in. It was here that I first learnt that the new authorities had ordered the entire population to leave the city. Many French families had already moved into the compound for safety reasons and the place started to resemble a university campus. To still my hunger and thirst, I managed to get my hands on a few army rations biscuits and fresh water from staff whom I had befriended a day earlier. At that moment, the most important thing was to secure my films and retrieve a small bag that I had left a day earlier
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in a corner of the reception hall. Inside, the mood was frantic. Journalists from AFP and several well known French newspapers were trying to file stories from the chancery phones and telex lines, but nobody had a clear grasp of what was going on. A few eyewitness reports of violence and rape were doing the rounds of the press. There was even some talk of execution squads although the truth is that we could be certain of nothing. I had started the day with just over half a dozen rolls of Kodak Plus X black & white film and a single roll of Ektachrome colour film. My supplies were pretty low, but thanks to Claude Juvenal from AFP who had given me a pack of films that he had brought with him when he landed in Pochentong Airport a few days earlier, I could still consider myself in relatively good shape. Up to this point, I hadn’t lost anything. It seemed like I was one of the very lucky ones. By late afternoon, we were being advised not to leave the compound. Some soldiers were shooting in the air in order to force people to flee the city. With the light failing and my camera loaded with 125 ASA film, I was not in a position to take photographs for much longer. I decided that it would make more sense to wait until early the next morning before heading out onto the streets. Having secured my bag and its precious contents with someone I knew in a building in the compound, I came back to the gate of the French Embassy. Foreigners as well as Cambodians were arriving at the entrance where they waited to be let into the compound by the French authorities. But it seemed that the French Embassy was
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Contact prints of my last film of the day shot at the Monivong crossroad and the
French Embassy gates. Two of the images are enlarged on the following pages.
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not yet aware that the Khmer Rouge were sending all foreigners to them. Although the scene was not particularly exciting, I snapped a handful of pictures, counting one by one the remaining frames on my Nikon F camera with its 24 mm wide angle lens. From where I stood, I could see groups of people heading north up the boulevard, including men, women and children. There was even a group of doctors or nurses pulling a cart with what appeared to be patients on it. I didn't yet know that the nearby Calmette Hospital was also being emptied. The entire evacuation of the city was taking place in almost complete silence. Beside several jeeps loaded with Khmer Rouge soldiers driving around the streets, there were few cars. Only occasionally could the sound of explosions and bursts of gunfire be heard.
Inside the Embassy Compound I was so exhausted that I eventually fell into a deep sleep which lasted until the early hours of the morning. By that time, there was almost one thousand people in the embassy compound. I went out to finish the roll of film in my camera (six frames) and hide it with my other bags before loading my camera ready to go out on the street again. It was then that I found that we were virtually prisoners inside the compound with the French authorities asking us not to show our cameras and to stay away from the gate. The flow of people was slow and silent down Monivong Boulevard. I decided to keep my remaining unused film for a better opportunity to take pictures of the Khmer Rouge, and possibly even the new government.
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This seemed more than likely to happen. In the normal scheme of things, a new ruler would come to power and invite the press to record the event. The Khmer Rouge would probably do the same. But where was King Sihanouk? I imagined that we would certainly be able to see him. So I kept my last unused films and waited, like all the other photographers who had stayed behind. The Khmer New Year had now passed, and the days were hot and languid. For most of the time, the city was quiet. Only occasionally would we hear the noise of a car speeding along in first gear or the sound of an explosion. The war appeared to have ended without the much talked of bloodbath taking place. The question on everybody's lips was ‘what’s happening to those people who have left the city?’ It was obvious that there was nobody left in Phnom Penh and yet no American bombing had taken place. Was the same thing happening in other big cities like Battambang and Sihanoukville? In total, about fifteen hundred people had managed to get inside the French Embassy zone. But there was no food and hardly any water. Only years later when I had spent more time in refugee camps around the world did I realize the enormity of the task facing the few French embassy personnel who were working there alongside several volunteers. With babies crying all around us at almost any time of the day or night and Khmer families cooking their rice pots on
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wood fires wherever they could find shade, the embassy compound began to resemble one of these camps. Cars were parked in every available space around the residence whilst groups of people were scattered under the big trees in the sprawling park behind. Eventually on the third day of our confinement, the consulate introduced some form of zoning. All the reporters and other non-French were requested to move into the ambassador’s residence. Amazingly it still had airconditioners that worked and a piano in the corner. Someone soon found a stock of cognac together with other spirits and cigars that were quickly shared out amongst us. With empty stomachs, the alcohol went straight to our heads. I remember my friend Zoco seated at the piano playing his best blues and jazz compositions. And so we settled in for what would eventually be two and half weeks of anxious waiting. Our daily tasks consisted of helping at collecting firewood, cooking and handing out one meal a day subsistence from sacs of rice and live pigs brought in by the Khmer Rouge. Our first shower in a week came one evening during a monsoon downpour. It ended up with most of us throwing off our clothes and dancing among the cars like crazy children in a camping site. We spent many hours dreaming about going out on the streets to see what was going on. Then one day we heard a plane landing at Pochentong Airport. We were convinced that either it was a plane flown in to evacuate us or else it was King Sihanouk returning home
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after his long exile in China. But to our intense disappointment it turned out to be nothing. Eventually a group of Khmer Rouge arrived to search our bags for film. I surrendered a few unexposed rolls to avoid suspicion. It was not a thorough search but some unprepared members of the press lost everything they had. Expecting this sort of eventuality, in the first days of our captivity, I had painstakingly taken my films out of their metallic can, rolled them up tight and taped them in black sheets. I then hid them in soap bars, tooth-paste tubes, medicine cans and shoes placed among my personal belongings. After more than two weeks inside the Embassy compound, we were sent by a fleet of army trucks and ancient buses to Poipet on the border with Thailand. It was a three day journey that took us through deserted countryside and the now abandoned cities of Kompong Chhnang, Pursat and Battambang. Although the memories of those days are still engraved on my mind, I only need to return to Phnom Penh and close my eyes to be transported back to Monivong Boulevard and the incredible events that took place there more than thirty years ago. How could I forget the fall of the capital Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge or the moment when the city was emptied of its citizens? Most of all, how can I erase from my mind, the horrors that the Cambodian people were subjected to in the following years, but which few of us could have predicted.
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A Khmer relative waits near the embassy gate. However the few days of reprieve may not have saved her. 197
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The Khmer Rouge order foreigners to ga
ather at the French Embassy compound.
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Families and diplomats with their Khmer dependents as well as
a group of reporters wait to be let into the Embassy compound.
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Outside the embassy compound on Monivong Boulevard, pe
eople start to leave the city, heading north towards Route 5.
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A close-up reveals the harshness of the exodus. Here you can just about see
e nurses pulling a cart that carries the wounded. The families follow behind.
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An uninvited war victim stares at us through the steel mesh of the gate with litt
le hope of gaining entry into the compound. He too is forced to join the exodus.
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There is almost no food and water. But several days later the situation be
ecomes worse when many of the Khmers are forced to leave the embassy.
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Friday 18 April. Reporters inside the French Em
bassy residence discuss what will happen next.
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Outside the residence in the embassy’s vast garden, the mainly Khmer peo
ople rest in the shade under the trees, still believing that they will be safe.
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Years of Darkness A
fter April 1975, a macabre curtain fell over the country. In those first months after the fall of Phnom Penh, with the country’s borders sealed, nobody could have imagined the suffering that was being inflicted on millions of Cambodians as they re-entered the dark ages. In August 1975, I visited the Thai border at Aranyaprathet and Surin to hear a few reports of atrocities from the several refugees who had risked their lives to escape. I tried again to get closer to Cambodia in 1977 and 1978, visiting border area of Pong Nam Ron in the province of Chantaburi. But it took more time and planning before I was able to cross over the border, skirting units of Thai soldiers who had imposed martial law on the area. Eventually in August 1979, thanks to careful preparations with my contact in the Aranyaprathet refugee camp, I was escorted over the border by a heavily armed group of pro-Sihanouk guerrillas. The group was under the control of Kong Sila, a French-Cambodian who had been in the French army and had come back to wrestle control of the country from the Vietnamese. In this virtual no-man’s land dotted with mines, I witnessed the early stages of what was to become one of the largest refugee crises of the 1980s. For three weeks, I stayed in the forest along the Thai border of Tapraya district together with thousands of Khmers who were fleeing
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January 1981. My first official trip to Cambodia for
r the anniversary of the second fall of Phnom Penh.
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their own country but still denied entry into Thai territory. Most of these people were virtually starving, their diet consisting of a few roots, rodents or insects plucked out of the forest and occasionally a clear rice soup. Almost everyone I spoke to had their own pitiful tale of suffering under the iron grip of Pol Pot and his ruling organisation named the Angkar. Between 1979 and 1983, I was a photoreporter based in Bangkok. From there, I travelled frequently to the border area, a five-hour journey to the east. Despite the invasion of the Vietnamese army in 1979, a veil of secrecy remained over the country. The closest that most of us could get to the new Cambodia was along the border where the smuggling of basic commodities flourished under the control of various guerrilla groups. During this period, I kept in close contact with several warlords who controlled jungle fiefdoms to the north and south of Aranyaprathet. For two years, this ‘Wild West’ town became my second home. During those times, I would often visit the border refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of Khmers lived in harsh conditions crowded together in seas of mud and refuse during the rainy season or clouds of dust and swarms of flies during the dry season. On other occasions I would accompany these armed ragtag armies on raids against Vietnamese patrols operating a short distance inside Cambodian Northeastern forests. In the countryside, the people were once again starting to travel to outlying districts, stretching the relatively new freedom of movement that had prevailed since the dismantling of the Khmer Rouge prison-state. After four years of mental and physical
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torture, the period of total darkness had come to an end. In the last weeks of 1980, after a lengthy delay mostly due to poor communications, (the Cambodian Foreign Ministry had only one international phone line connecting via Moscow), I managed to get a visa for Cambodia. I wanted to be in Phnom Penh for the first grand celebration of the Vietnamese military victory over the Khmer Rouge on 7 January 1979 together with the establishment of Cambodia’s new communist regime. I flew into Saigon renamed Ho Chi Minh City on New Year’s Eve, accompanied by a small group of Bangkok-based reporters. We stayed there for two days, allowing time for the Cambodian authorities to organize our trip to Phnom Penh. It was only then that my eyes were opened to the enormity of what had happened. In the Tuol Sleng school turned prison S-21, I was shown the place where over ten thousand Cambodians, mostly from the Khmer Rouge ranks, had been interrogated and tortured. They were then sent to the paddy fields of Chœung Ek, ten kilometers to the south to be executed with shovels and sticks. Elsewhere in the country up to two million Khmers had been killed or had died of starvation in what would go down as one of the worst cases of genocide in the 20th century. For almost a month, I walked the streets of Phnom Penh, piecing together my memories. With a population of about one hundred thousand people at the time, new life was slowly returning to this city once a model of peaceful colonial capital, which had been virtually empty for almost four years.
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Even now, it is difficult for many people who did not witness these tragic events to understand what really happened on the 17 of April 1975 and the subsequent years. I hope that this book will add another voice to a chapter still etched on the mind of every Cambodian.
Right page : The Chœung-Ek mass grave near Phnom Penh. I visited the place shortly after they had excavated a large number of bones and lined up the skulls in order to count them. 220
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Portraits of Khmer Rouge guards
and interrogators at Tuol Sleng.
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September 1979. In in the forest North of Pailin on the Thai-Cambodian
border, exhausted civilians died on arriving at the makeshift relief center.
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Another mass grave situated at the foot of the Oudong hills, north of Phnom Penh. T
he area had been almost entirely under the control of the Khmer Rouge since 1973.
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August 1979. Thousands of Cambodian wait along the Thai borde
er of Tapraya District to be alowed to received relief from UNICEF.
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A littered back street in Phnom Penh; refugees walking near 232
the Thai border of Pailin; new settlers in filthy Phnom Penh. 233
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One of the first images of the newly formed Sihanoukiste guerrilla organiza
tion under the leadership of Kong Sila. The photograph was taken in 1979.
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Août 1979, lors de mon séjour dans la jungle du nord-west cambodgien le long de la frontière thaïe. Je compris alors ce qui s’était passé depuis la chute de Phnom Penh en 1975 à travers les témoignages des rescapés. Photo prise avec une unité de la guérilla Sihnoukiste du Moulinaka.
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Published in Bangkok - Thailand by Asia Horizons Books Co., Ltd This edition 2010 (First published: 2007) All materials Š by Roland Neveu Text and captions edited by Ben Davies The Fall of Phnom Penh book is the copyright of Roland Neveu and Asia Horizons Books Co., Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or any other way including the internet) without prior written consent of Asia Horizons Books Co Ltd and its representatives worldwide. All photographs are the property and sole copyright of Roland Neveu. Design & layout by Asia Horizons Books Co.,Ltd. Printed in Hong Kong. Enquiries about distribution should be directed to the following Email: info@asiahorizons.com ISBN ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my wife Ko and my kids Mimi and Marco for their teamwork, sometimes. Besides my family, a number of friends and acquaintances have also played an important part in organising old memories. Among them are Ben Davies, Roland Eng and Michael Hayes. I can’t name everyone here but I would like to pass on my warmest regards and thanks. www.asiahorizons.com
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