Long-lost Khmer Rouge soldiers emerge from jungle

Swiss Info ^ | 12.08.04 | Ek Madra

[Dr. Marten]

Long-lost Khmer Rouge soldiers emerge from jungle

 

By Ek Madra

LOUT, Cambodia (Reuters) - When Vietnamese troops overran his village in 1979, Romam Chhung Loeung, a
Khmer Rouge guerrilla, had no option but to flee with friends and family into the dense jungle of
northeast Cambodia.

Twenty-five years later, the group emerged from the forest in clothes made of bark and leaves,
unaware that the war was over, the Vietnamese had gone and Pol Pot was dead.

In an extraordinary tale of human survival, the refugees lived on whatever scraps they could find in
the jungle, fearful of any contact with humans, who they believed were the enemy, slugging out the final
chapter of the Cold War in Indochina.

"Whenever we heard gun-shots or people chopping trees, we would move to another site," Romam Chhung
Loeung said after a tearful reunion with relatives in Ratanakiri province, around 250 miles northeast of
the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

"I cannot remember how many huts we built during those years," he said.

Another refugee, Lek Mun - 15 when he fled, now 39 - recalled with horror the day the Vietnamese
stormed his village as part of the invasion to oust Pol Pot and his ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge, the regime
behind the "Killing Fields" genocide in which 1.7 million are thought to have died.

Soldiers sprayed the forest with machine-gun fire, believing retreating Khmer Rouge guerrillas were
hiding in the trees.

"I saw three people killed. Would you stay in an area like that? No way," Lek Mun told Reuters.

YEARS ON THE RUN

When they fled, the four families, numbering a dozen in total, carried what they could - guns,
clothes, knives, rice, salt, pots and pans.

But as the days stretched to weeks, months and then years and supplies dwindled and disappeared, they
were forced to live like animals off the forest.

When their clothes wore out, they went naked. When the first of the group's 22 children were born,
they made garments out of leaves and bark to protect them from the cold and the malaria-carrying
mosquitoes that infest southeast Asia's jungles.

In the darkness beyond the light of the camp-fires lay other dangers - tigers, bears, snakes, or
landmines left behind from the Vietnam War.

Roots and leaves from the forest floor were their only medicines; animals snared in jungle creeper
traps, their only meat; wild fruits their only dessert.

"All we cared about was survival," Lek Mun said. "We ate anything we could swallow - red ants, mice,
snakes, birds, even tree roots."

"We ate bird meat but kept the seeds from the bird's crop to plant," said another refugee at a
village party celebrating their emergence into the 21st century -- albeit in one of the poorest parts of
one of the poorest countries in Asia.

GLIMPSES OF MODERNITY

For those born on the run, the only glimpses of modernity were the distant vapour trails of
commercial aircraft streaking across the skies long after Hanoi pulled its troops out of Cambodia in
1989.

"When I was there, all I saw were bears, snakes and deer but now I see lots of different things,"
said Mun Kayang, a pallid youth in his 20s.

Like others born into the group, the only other humans he knew were in his immediate vicinity. As the
children grew older, intermarriage was commonplace.

Gradually, as their numbers swelled to more than 30 and health deteriorated, the group's leaders
yearned for a return to humanity.

Only then did they realise they were lost in the trackless wastes of forest along the Cambodia-Laos
border, criss-crossed a quarter of a century earlier by the myriad paths of the Ho Chi Minh trail.

"We wanted to get out but no one could lead us," said Lek Mun's wife, her five month-old-baby - the
latest of her five children - asleep in her arms.

Finally, in early November - more than five years after the death of Pol Pot - they found a truck
tyre which they cut into "Pol Pot sandals", the make-shift shoes worn by the guerrillas.

A few days later, they were picked up by police in neighbouring Laos and taken back to Cambodia under
the auspices of astonished officials from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"I had to leave because I wanted to die in a better place - not sad in the jungle," Lek Mun said.

Stunned relatives immediately threw a party of rice wine, pig soup and papaya to welcome back loved
ones from beyond the grave.

"I felt that they were out there in the jungle, but I could not reach them. I feel so sorry for
them," said 60-year-old Nong Konthap, after recounting about Cambodia's landmark elections in 1993, the
beginning of the end of decades of civil war.

Mun Kayang, a refugee in his early 20s, said he felt as though he had moved from darkness to light.

Reuters

 

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Man, that's a long time to wait for a Happy Meal.

[Darkwolf377]

"I going to DISNEY WORLD!"

[Citizen James]

"John Kerry ran for what?"

[cherry]

let me think.....they were part of a group that killed 1.7 million people, and yet they are welcomed back home like heroes?

[ScottFromSpokane]

25 years without committing genocide? How did they ever manage?

[Anti-Bubba182]

I was thinking the same thing.

[Dr. Marten]

Didn't the same thing happen with a Japanese soldier in the Philippines awhile back?

[Dr. Marten]

ping

[NorCalRepub]

those asians just don't have a clue on how to read a map do they

[killjoy]

let me think.....they were part of a group that killed 1.7 million people, and yet they are welcomed back home like heroes?

This really has no bearing on thier situation. We don't know what positions they held in the KR. The current Premier of Cambodia, Hun Sen, was also part of the KR before fleeing to Vietnam. Hatred of the Vietnamese was one of the driving themes of the KR and these people were probably brainwashed into thinking that any Khmer would be shot on sight by the Vietnamese. Going out on a limb, most people in Cambodia that are over 40 years old probably had something to do with the KR based on the simple fact that they are alive.

[killjoy]

ping

[dighton]

Didn't the same thing happen with a Japanese soldier in the Philippines awhile back?

Oft-recurring story, odd enough to ring true.

Loyal servant of the Emperor -- unaware of fatal reverse, in summer of '45, to Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere -- emerges decades later from jungle, having survived God knows how.

[IronMan04]

In the NYT Version of the same story it says that they left the jungle after their Wi-FI Connection was lost.

[aculeus]

"I saw three people killed. Would you stay in an area like that? No way," Lek Mun told Reuters.

He speaks American?

[Dr. Marten]

Am I missing something here?

Is "American" a language?
...perhaps only to those who have never been outside of her borders.

It's obvious that he was speaking through a translator who speaks ENGLISH.

[aculeus]

It's obvious that he was speaking through a translator who speaks ENGLISH.

Picky, picky, picky.

Since when do Brit's say "No way"?

[killjoy]

Picky, picky, picky. Since when do Brit's say "No way"?

Keep in mind US culture is exported all over the world through movies and television, yes even to Cambodia. It is amazing the slang you can hear even in very backwards places. There are even locals who will go out of their way to use the latest slang that they have heard. People are people no matter where in the world they are.

[Dr. Marten]

"Since when do Brit's say "No way"?"

Well, that might just depend on where you were educated or spend a lot of your time.

I use Chinese slang quite often....I'm an American (caucasian)

[aculeus]

Since when do serious print journalists resort to cheesy self-translations of foreigners they interview ... and then pass them off as quotations?

Paraphrases would have been more appropriate rather than "quotes".

This reporter is confused. He seems to think he's working as a movie-dubber.