Update on the recent weeks

Dear Friends,

A few updates...

Reading of David Chandler's biography (Brother Number One: A Political Biography, Westview Press, 1999)

I read the 1992 edition, which was written before Pol Pot's death in 1997 but it was of course very interesting. Indeed very little is known about Saloth Sar's psychology, feelings and some years of his life are completely undocumented. The author describes witnesses' accounts of Saloth Sar's apparent gentleness, his ability to charm and convince small audiences.

From what I understand the Khmer Rouge came to power with absolutely no experience of leadership. The Khmer Rouge cadres were elaborating their ideology between themselves, away from any contact with reality and all they had previously done when they caught the power was to persuade poor rural people unhappy with Lon Nol and naively thinking they would restore their King to power, to fight the "revolution". The organizational and military skills came from North Vietnam, in my view the lack of popularity of Lon Nol and the alliance with the King did the rest...

The turning point therefore strikes me as Lon Nol's coup against Sihanouk and Sihanouk's subsequent alliance with the Khmer Rouge, without which they wouldn't have got the popular support to overthrow a regime led by the King.

Watching the DVD of "Killing Fields", by Rolland Joffé, with Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor as Sydney Shanberg and Dith Pran.

This famous 1985 movie tells the story of New York Times' journalist Sydney Shanberg and his Cambodian friend/interpreter/colleague when they tried to stay as long as they could to report on the Khmer Rouge taking power. Sydney Shanberg was evacuated to Thailand with the remaining foreigners after the fall of Phnom Penh on April 17, but Dith Pran was handed over to the Khmer Rouge and became one the two million "April 17 people" or "New people" which the Khmer Rouge considered as ennemies and persecuted harsher than the rest of the population simply because they were in Phnom Penh, the last part of the country to fall into their hands, on April 17, 1975. Dith Pran of course was to be even more at risk because of his "intellectual" background as a french and english-speaking journalist.

Going to Sovanna Phum.

See related post.

Work

A lot of work these past two weeks and still a lot to do before I take 10 days off for Passover which happens to fall at the same time as the Khmer New Year. We're making progress though on buying the computer equipment and hiring a Khmer computer engineer. The building is taking shape nicely.

Travel plans

I plan to travel to Bangkok on Wednesday morning to spend the first days of Passover and Shabbat Hol ha-Moed there. They describe the seder at the Chabad House as "Mostly attended by Israeli travellers (mostly very young crowd) all in Hebrew, approximately 600-800 guests": I can't miss that!

Then I plan to take a night bus from Bangkok to Poipet, from there another bus to Siem Reap, spend Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday there, travel on Friday from Siem Reap to Battambang (by boat if possible, I was told it's the most beautiful trip in Cambodia, but this is the dry season and, according to the latest reports, the water is very low) and on Sunday back to Phnom Penh.

That's all folks (for now)!

Joseph