Life of Aki Ra
YuppieNomad gave me a leaflet to read yesterday on the bus ride from Siem Reap to Pnom Penh. She got it from the Landmine Museum set up by Aki Ra, an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier, ex-Vietnamese conscript, and an ex-UN worker. You can read his full story here, and I've also copied a few excerpts below. To learn more or donate to the Cambodia Land Mine Mission and Relief Fund, please click here.
Very Early Years
My family was separated when I was a baby. My mother and father lived in villages 5 km apart. I grew up in a house with about ten other children and one or two adults. We worked long hours in the fields pulling ploughs like cattle as the new regime did not allow machinery. We were fed very little, mainly rice soup, and we very quickly became undernourished.
My father, who used to be a teacher, was given a new job of constructing the roads. He was underfed and overworked and soon became very ill. He was admitted to the hospital and given "medicine." The medicine was actually tablets made of rabbit droppings and the IV serum was actually just root-stained water. Consequently, my father was still sick after ten days and also starving. That day, he was given a big bowl of nutritious soup which he very quickly ate. When he had finished eating, the Khmer Rouge accused him of lying about being ill and took him away and killed him as punishment.
Consequently, whenever I was ill, I was scared to tell anyone as I knew what would happen.
My mother had been given the job of collecting sewage from each of the houses which was used as fertilizer. If a house did not have any sewage, the people would be tortured as punishment. My mother told people to make pretend sewage from mud and water. She was considered a good worker and she was promoted to rice rationer and tailor. The only time I saw my mother was when she brought me my food. The guards always accompanied her but when they were not looking, she would sneak people more rice. In return, they would give her small animals to take to the sick people in the village. It was a simple system of helping each other to survive.
One day she was caught committing the simple crime of calling out to an old man to be careful as he was about to trip and spill his food. The Khmer Rouge did not miss anything. They had eyes in the back of their heads like a pineapple. They took my mother away and said that they were sending her to "school." School and education were severely frowned upon by the new regime and if you went to school, you never came back. Consequently, as a child, I was terrified of "school."
As a small child, I knew more than anything else what it was like to be hungry. Everybody was living in a state of virtual starvation. Sometimes my friends and I would sneak out at night to find small animals and insects to eat. One day, my friend went to the pig trough and stole some scraps and quickly ate them. The next morning when the Khmer Rouge were carrying out their usual feces check, they noticed that one lot was different from the others and asked whom it belonged to.
My friend said that it was the pigs but there were telltale child's footprints beside it and the Khmer Rouge accused my friend of lying and killed him for the small crime of eating pig scraps.
One man was so hungry that he decided to steal a banana from a tree. The Khmer Rouge spotted him and told the village that they were going to make an example out of this man in case anyone else had similar ideas. They disemboweled this man in front of his family who were made to cheer and clap. No crying was allowed. This was also considered a crime of weakness.
Every week there would be a village meeting to decide who had been good and who had been bad. Those who had been bad, for whatever reason, would have their throats slit very slowly with palm fronds. Again the villagers were forced to cheer and clap as these people were murdered and they were taught to regard the bad people as the enemy.
One night, when I was peeing in the long grass at the side of the road, I heard a lot of footsteps and could see a long dark shadow winding slowly up the road. I thought that it was a giant snake but as it drew closer I could see that it was about 150 people marching along. I stayed very quiet and hid in the grass. In actual fact, the people were being marched to the killing fields at Ta Yet which is 40 km north of Siem Reap. They were teachers, doctors, artists, musicians and students, all people who, under Pol Pot,s new regime, were considered to be the enemy. Among them, I saw a little girl holding onto her mother's hand. I tried to grab her arm and whisper to her to run away with me but she was very frightened and wanted to stay with her mother. This was one of my earliest memories...
Fighting the Khmer Rouge as a Vietnamese Army Conscript
Life with the Vietnamese army continued in a similar vein as with the Khmer Rouge. We still had very little to eat and would be constantly looking for food. Both the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese forces would raid villages and take what little food they had. I ate many bizarre things during this time, on one occasion the trunk of an elephant. The rations were very poor and the packets of rice were often found to be old and moldy with bits of rocks. If we were very hungry and were unable to find water to cook the rice with, we would pee into the plastic bag to soften the rice and many times I had to eat like this...
The Vietnamese were responsible for destroying many of the precious statues in and around the Angkor Wat area as they used to take potshots at them when they were bored. They looted many ancient and valuable artifacts from the temples and they have never been found. They also killed many animals and birds and took vast amounts of wood from the jungles to send back to Vietnam to then sell on as a valuable commodity. Three times a day, they would chop down the wood and we have lost large amounts of our jungles as a result...
Not all my stories are about killing and horror for people. I remember one time when I was laying mines and I noticed monkeys watching us from the trees. Monkeys are very curious and they wanted to know what we had done with wires and bombs. Unfortunately for the nosey monkeys, they tripped the wire and blew themselves up. When the soldiers heard the explosion, they thought that they had killed some of the enemy and went to see what had happened. All they found were dead monkeys and they took them home for their dinner...
great short. i think i'll check out the link
Posted by: kyle | July 27, 2006 at 02:57 PM