In Pailin, the Khmer Rouge still in power!

No plate that Saint-Andre-des-Arts, at number 28, does not attract the attention of passersby. We could learn that this old Paris building, three Cambodian students were a few decades later, access to international fame. It is normal when you're twenty, you want to transform the world and desire to do it again. This is the time of radicalism. Saloth Sar, who would later be known under the pseudonym Pol Pot, and his two other accomplices watered Karl Marx dreamed of revolution.



Once again, it comes to a clean sweep of the past. We must follow the example of the Great Helmsman Mao Tse-tung launched the Cultural Revolution. They concoct a series of plans to allow the birth of the new man finally got rid of countless slag alienating modernity. The return to the campaign is the first step towards salvation. The collectivist agriculture and the disappearance of money complete the program. Finally, will the rehabilitation of the people.


Once returned to Cambodia, the watchword is to eliminate the elites. We must get rid of any emergency that resemble those of the notables. Judges, lawyers, professors, teachers, monks, priests of these religions from the West, students and other wearers are designated victims of a first series of purges. It is important to drive the city so that they fall apart the deadly miasma of the city. In three days, two million people were expelled from the city.

Olivier Weber, winner of the Albert Londres, a reporter at the Point, has traveled the world. Driven by a rash curiosity, he buzzing in Afghanistan, Iran. He wandered through the forests of Amazonia and slipped in Africa in war zones where the maquis waved. For decades, he also traveled to Cambodia. He returned and reported this journey this book that one takes as a punch in the face.

Accompanied by a young Cambodian whose family was exterminated, he plunged into the Pailin area, refuge, on the border of Thailand, the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power by the Vietnamese tired of their murderous obsession. In this autonomous zone, a sort of sub-kingdom within Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge are ubiquitous and rule with impunity. Olivier Weber - and there lies the originality of his work - reports the singular reversal of the authors and accomplices of genocide that is beyond comprehension. In Pailin, the executioners terrorize their families. They have guns, money. Fear is everywhere. This is a terribly contagious disease. Guilty and innocent are inextricably linked. The former militiamen drowned in the crowd. They apparently disappeared but are terribly present. The result of this amazing mix that the perpetrators themselves as innocent, even though they recognize lip have committed in the past few "minor mistakes." The republic of silence settled in the land of perpetual anxiety.

A second reversal, much more down to earth, and thought-provoking question. The Khmer Rouge, Mao zealots have claimed in the past to be the high priests of pure Marxist-Leninist. The ones who wanted the abolition of the capital gains, money, those who believed that any sex outside of marriage was punishable by death, have now become owners of brothels, multicard traffickers, operators ruby mines and intermediaries in the most shady dealings where young women are doomed to become whores.

Pailin is the region of absolute evil, but also forgotten. Here we do not speak of genocide. There will be no Nuremberg to judge these crimes. There will be in Phnom Penh, a small handful trial leaders, exterminating eminences of Pol Pot as Duch, the former head of the S21 camp trial will be broadcast on Cambodian television in the greatest indifference.

The criticism that can be made to the author is not to be reported, even if it is only a few pages, the trial held in early January 2009 in Phnom Penh. He could tell that it took years of negotiations between the UN and the Cambodian government that it can open. A legal battle over thirty years of evasions ended. One can also regret that he did not, with a preface or prologue, told the story of this self-genocide that took place from 1975 to 1979. Must refresh the memory of readers and do not forget that many people who were not born when this tragedy began. It should also remind the balance sheet, the final stage of evil when Saturn devoured his own children.

Grinding machine the people were running for three years, eight months and twenty days. During the reign of Angkar during 1361 days, 1.7 million Cambodians will be swallowed by a rampaging Moloch. 1249 victims are daily sacrificed to the triumph of a cause without a name doctrine. A cause which, in fact, does not exist. Beyond barbarism, says a survivor, it is clear a delirious wave of stupidity.

Olivier Weber plunges us into the Republic of silence. Its great merit is to get us not forget that this extermination beyond its scope all the holocausts of the twentieth century was not yet not stingy. Remains that there will be no trial, no more than official regrets anyone here have supported the Khmer Rouge. Most leaders are dead. Their descendants remain. Their impunity requires us to be more vigilant against the emergence of all the barbarities.