The Cambodian province of Anlong Veng was once a stronghold of the Khmer Rouge and home to its murderous leaders. Controversially, relics of the regime are now becoming a tourist attraction. Gemma Price reports.

You come from Siem Reap?’ the proprietor of the Phnom Dangrek Guesthouse asks me, wide-eyed with amazement. ‘Oooh – road very bad…’ ‘Bad’ does not come close. After spending two hours bouncing along in a ’share taxi’ with nine other passengers, the route quickly became impassable for a car, and for the last 50km I was forced to swap to a 100cc motorbike. The rains had wreaked havoc and left little more than a barely dried river bed, but at last I have arrived safely at my destination – Anlong Veng, one of Cambodia’s most remote and heavily land-mined provinces.

At Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat – the massive three-tiered pyramid – the swarm of bus station touts had gawped at me in amazement. ‘Anlong Veng? Why do you want to go there? There is nothing to see!’ Maybe not yet, but the scruffy frontier town is tipped to be the latest addition to Cambodia’s genocide trail. Following a proposed $70,000 face-lift, numerous significant sites are scheduled for restoration. One of the key places expected to attract the foreign dollar is the final resting place of Pol Pot – the infamous ‘Brother Number One’ of the communist regime, responsible for the deaths of around two million Cambodians during the 1970s.

Some condemn it as dark tourism, and the exploitation of Cambodia’s tragic past, but the idea of visiting the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge had certainly piqued my interest. And the locals definitely do not hold back: I have barely opened my guesthouse door and collapsed onto the garish polyester sheets before a woman settles herself next to me. After exchanging pleasantries in mutual, broken Khmer-English, she pauses for a moment before leaning forward conspiratorially and announcing: ‘I hate the Khmer Rouge. They killed my whole family.’ Clearly battling to contain her emotions, she tells me a story shared by many Cambodians.

‘I was only five years old when my mother, father and sister were taken away. They were all killed because of Ta Mok. I hate him. But the people here, many love him and think he was a good man.’ Dubbed by the western media the ‘one-legged butcher’ after losing a limb to a land mine, Ta Mok, or ‘Brother Number Four’, lived in Anlong Veng until his death in July 2006.

The town fell to government forces as recently as 1998, and it is hard to see how former soldiers and immigrant victims of the regime could peaceably co-exist with memories so fresh, never mind tolerate the development of Khmer Rouge HQ as one of Cambodia’s star attractions.

Ta Mok’s house is one of the more prominent sites proposed for development, and as I wander around the expansive mansion, some locals are laying out food and drinks on the bare concrete floor, beneath the murals of the ancient temple of Preah Vihear and pyramid of Angkor Wat that adorn the upper party meeting hall.

‘This is where the people come to drink and socialise – there is nowhere else in the town,’ says You Davy, a guide from Phnom Penh, one of the first people assigned to resurrect the area’s dark history for inquisitive visitors. ‘Every month, around 300 Khmer people visit here, plus maybe 10 to 20 Westerners, and Thais from across the border. Fewer now, because the road is so bad, but when the new highway is finished in the next few months, I think there will be many more tourists. Several big tour companies have already said they will come here.’

Davy drew up the official restoration plans at the behest of the government and did not view the development as distasteful or insensitive. ‘I support democracy. Under the communists my family nearly died. I nearly died. But I think it is important for these historical sites to be preserved. People did not like Ta Mok, but they want to visit here to see if his home is strange. They do not have admiration for him – they just want to know.’

On the faded, photocopied map at the tourist office, a number of sites are labelled: Ta Mok’s sawmill and nearby grave; a weapons factory and storage warehouse; Pol Pot’s cremation site; and numerous houses owned by Khmer Rouge cadres. ‘When the fighting got bad, they could run away,’ Davy says. ‘They all had houses here and along the border on the mountain. Ta Mok had space under his house for a motor car so he could escape quickly.’

Most of the locations were unmarked and unremarkable, and all that remains of the former structures are barely discernable patches of concrete overgrown with weeds. Locals squat in huts, and I feel a sudden affinity for their pigs and dogs, as I nose through the rubble for scraps. Ta Mok’s grave is far from impressive – just a bare, low rectangular concrete mound sheltered by a wooden hut. Some locals, clad in the distinctively Cambodian red and white-chequered cotton clothing called kroma, are nonchalantly erecting a slightly more impressive structure, but it is not something I would pay to see. Around 13km out of the main village, we stop at the end of a snaking sandy path close to the Thai border. ‘Pol Pot was cremated here,’ reads the sign, knocked haphazardly into the ground. Behind lies a rectangle of charred earth and debris, outlined by glass bottles and covered by a rusting corrugated metal roof.

After a period spent under house arrest culminated in his death in 1998, Pol Pot was hastily cremated on a pile of tyres by Ta Nov – one of the higher-ranking soldiers. The whisper in the village was that Pol Pot had been blindfolded and shot on Ta Mok’s orders, but You Davy assures me that this was not the case. ‘He had a heart problem, and was afraid of the bombs. One night his heart failed, and his wife [who lived with him] couldn’t get the medicine to him in time.’

Apparently there used to be a porcelain toilet at the three-roomed house where Pol Pot was held, the seat of which has somehow found its way behind a bar in Siem Reap, but all that remains of the place is a tiny patch of concrete. The rest has been dismantled for souvenirs and salvageable house-building materials, and I cannot help thinking that the locals had the right idea: getting on with their lives seemed more important to them than preserving such a dark past that had seen so many lose their lives.

The forlorn wooden shrine seems all but forgotten. The only telltale signs of visitors are a few sticks of long-dead incense. ‘People just come here if they want some good luck for the lottery, you know?’ Davy says. But if the proposed real estate plans go through, visitors could soon return in the hope of luring Lady Luck. There is an ambitious plan for the mountain top of three casinos and an upmarket hotel, and it seems that within a decade the little town in the valley will have emerged from one shadow to fall under another – capitalism at its gaudiest extreme. Davy is unsure who holds the respective leases for the new Anlong ‘Vegas’ – apparently the deeds have changed hands several times – but it seems prominent government figures are directing the action.

Of the 18,000 families now living in the area, roughly half are former members of the Khmer Rouge, and I wonder what the lower-ranking soldiers think about this new onslaught into their formerly communist province. Potthea Oung, a 20-year-old high school student, came to Anlong Veng with his family in 1999, once the war had ended. He introduces me to a relative who had served in Ta Mok’s guard up until his leader’s death. I want to ask Teanny if he considers the new real estate and proposed tourist developments inappropriate, considering the region’s former far-left persuasion, but both men turn to me in confusion. ‘What’s communism?’ they ask.

They have no concept of politics, or of the Marxist-Leninist principles that underpinned the totalitarian regime. As far as the people are concerned, life was divided into two segments: before the Khmer Rouge, and after. Teanny tells me how he was taken from his homeland at the age of 20 and forced to fight. ‘I was afraid of everything. Afraid to die. There was no time to think about being happy – just worry, worry, worry all the time. That’s no way to live. Now it’s better. I have time for myself, nobody controls us. When I supported Ta Mok there was no money, I couldn’t even have a bicycle, but now everybody can have a motorbike if they want one.’

Although he has retired, some former Khmer Rouge soldiers, like the soldiers guarding ‘Brother Number Two’ Nuon Chea’s former farmstead on the mountain – also prepped for restoration – continue to work for Prime Minister Hun Sen. They tell me their Khmer Rouge commanders ordered them to defend their country against Vietnam, but when they learned it was their own government, they just wanted to end the war.

I do glimpse an intimation of continued KR support, however. As we make our way back down the mountain to the town, You Davy stops at the Khmer Rouge monument. A sculpture in stone, it depicts a female figure carrying sharpened stakes and a man bearing arms – the gender-respective combat roles. The stone is pockmarked and riddled with bullet holes, and the figures have been dismembered by victorious government troops, but the monument still stands and is frequented by locals. Unlike the meagre wooden structure marking Pol Pot’s last resting place, there are numerous brightly coloured shrines adorned with offerings of fresh fruit and voluminous bunches of incense. I notice the female figure has been wrapped in a black cloth, fashioned into a sarong and tied with a red sash – the garb of the Khmer Rouge. But as soon as You Davy notices the rudimentary uniform, he tears it off and throws it into the bushes.

Even though the Khmer Rouge era is over, and the argument for restoring its sites is a valid one, it seems there is still some underground support for the old regime simmering in Anlong Veng. Whether this is merely some form of misplaced nostalgia, or an indication of something more powerful, I cannot tell.

CHRONOLOGY OF KILLING
1975: Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) ‘liberates’ Phnom Penh on 17 April. Inhabitants of all cities ordered into the countryside to take up agricultural work. Kampuchea declared the new name for Cambodia.
1976: Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) proclaimed, with Pol Pot as prime minister. S-21, an interrogation and torture facility, is set up in Phnom Penh. Over the next four years this prison claims an estimated 100,000 lives.
1977: Purges in the first half of the year wipe out most party intellectuals, along with cadres in many zones. There is constant fighting with the Vietnamese.
1979: Phnom Penh falls to the Vietnamese. Vietnam installs a new government of Cambodia under Heng Samrin. Pol Pot flees to the northwest and thousands of DK (Khmer Rouge) soldiers seek refuge along the Thai border. Approximately two million Cambodians died as a result of war, malnutrition, disease and execution during the Khmer Rouge period.

HISTORY OF THE REGION
According to locals, the northern provinces of Pailin, Oddar Meanchay, Anlong Veng, Preah Vihear, Somloat and Malei were known as the Pol Pot Region, and were controlled by the Khmer Rouge until 1998.

Up to this point, Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Son Sen, and Ta Mok – named Brothers One to Four in 1978 – retained high party positions along with Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan. All of their homes in Anlong Veng will be restored as significant sites under the development plans.

POWER STRUGGLES
Pol Pot suffered a stroke in 1995, effectively leaving Ta Mok in charge, but now moved against him, accusing him, Nuon Chea and Son Sen of negotiating with government forces.

Prominent cadre Ieng Sary defected to the government in 1996. Minister Hun Sen staged a brutal military coup in Phnom Penh in 1997, and many KR soldiers continued to defect to his army.

MURDER AND SHOW TRIALS
Son Sen and his family were murdered on Pol Pot’s orders in 1997, and this angered many cadres into supporting Ta Mok.

Pol Pot fled, but was captured by Ta Mok and subjected to a show trial on 25 July 1997. In April 1998, government forces seized Anlong Veng, and Pol Pot, who was being kept under house arrest by Ta Mok, died on 15 April. He was cremated three days later.

‘ANYTHING FOR A PARTY’
Ta Mok continued to live along the border until government forces took him, by helicopter, to Phnom Penh, where he died in July 2006. His body was returned to lie in state for three days before being interred. According to his adopted son, Un Khemara, 800 people visited the body, and around 300 attended the funeral. ‘Anything for a party,’ he told me.

WHERE TO STAY

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