“In those days we didn’t have to worry about food or supplies – Ta Mok took care of that,” says 56-year-old Sam Roeun, a former Khmer Rouge soldier with a prosthetic left leg who now sells entrance tickets to tourists in front of his former boss’s home. Ta (grandfather) Mok, as his revolutionary alias went, was the ultra-Maoist regime’s top military commander. In Anlong Veng, an isolated district of mostly wooden homes and crop fields north of Siem Reap, the name still conjures a mixture of worship and fear.
It’s the latter sentiment that the Cambodian government is now trying to cultivate. Hoping to convince visitors to branch out from the more trodden Cambodian-tourism trails of ancient temples and backpacker bars, the government is trying to add a new stop on the foreign tourist’s to-do list: a foray into the last stronghold of the mass-murdering Khmer Rouge. Anlong Veng, where the ultra-Maoist regime held out in its final years, may not be as enticing as the Cambodian hinterland’s majestic Angkor temples nor as easygoing as its coastal hippie dens. But tourism officials are betting that travelers visiting for these two more common attractions can also be enticed by the dark history of this undeveloped pocket hugging the Thai border. (See pictures of the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge.)
More than a million foreign tourists each year pay homage to Angkor Wat. But while it is just an hour and a half drive away, Anlong Veng receives only a tiny fraction of this horde, and its visitors are a trickle compared to the modest flow who visit Phnom Penh’s infamous killing fields and Tuol Sleng torture center for a glimpse of the Khmer Rouge’s goriest operations. Tourism officials’ plans, dating back to 2000, to transform Anlong Veng into a showcase of the regime’s final days suggest that they believe a bit of polish could turn those numbers around. In March, the government approved a comprehensive plan to formalize the area’s development in order to allow “national and international guests to visit to understand the last political leadership of the genocidal regime,” but they have yet to begin any significant construction.
Anlong Veng today is mostly populated by former Khmer Rouge cadres, as well as those who had been their most die-hard supporters or those who were forced by threat of death to join them in retreat. The fanatical regime’s surviving leaders, depleted militia and dwindling supporters decamped here in 1979, after Vietnam toppled the Khmer Rouge and installed a new government. When it fell in 1998, Anlong Veng was the last territory under the Khmer Rouge rule and, to this day, the regime remains a presence in the area – in local residents’ memories, former leaders’ homes and grave sites, and the facilities that served their deadly cause. (Read “A Brief History of the Khmer Rouge.”)
For some Cambodians, bizarrely enough, nostalgia lingers for the final years of Khmer Rouge rule. From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge sought to turn Cambodia into an agrarian utopia and rid itself of traditional elites. In the process, an estimated 2 million people died from overwork, starvation and execution. Ta Mok, who earned the nickname “the Butcher,” had accumulated a small fortune by pillaging this area’s forests for timber he sold to Thailand, and he extended benefits to his followers to ensure their loyalty. Hence the former Khmer Rouge soldier Sam Rouen’s admiration.
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