●Tong Meng
In 1975, Vietnam was reunified. The Lon Nol regime "supported by the United States in Cambodia" was in a precarious state. The Khmer Rouge was approaching Phnom Penh, and "Land of Killing" began at this moment... Two
Birds That Can’t Be Closed
The main figures, one is Sinny, the New York Times correspondent in Cambodia, and the other is his translator and assistant Pandey. But the Oscar awarded to Pandey's actor Wu Han (Southeast Asian Chinese, Buddhist) is actually a "best supporting actor" award, making us "foreigners" who don't understand the rules inexplicable. Although Wu Han had no acting experience before, he personally experienced and escaped the catastrophe, so it can almost be said that he was acting himself.
Pandey's firm and sharp eyes are unforgettable, like a plant peculiar to Indochina, vivid and eye-catching. Although Pandey was in distress several times during the "reconstruction through labor" and jungle escape, his life was like a string; although the plot was tense and terrifying, I still believed that Pandee would be able to escape and be free——" After all, some birds can’t be kept because their feathers are so beautiful."... The
Khmer Rouge is about to enter the city. Zinni told him that "There will be a massacre." Pandey said, "I love my family, but I am A reporter, I am very painful..." The inner conflict was plainly revealed on his tearful face... On the last day of the evacuation, he sent the wives to the last batch of helicopters in the United States, knowing that he would "put them to death." "But resolutely stayed. It’s hard to imagine that this was the choice of a “rational man”. After all, as a frontline reporter, he must be well aware of the Khmer Rouge’s thunderous methods of treating him as an “old man”. Moreover, he could have chosen to leave, like those already The reporters who left early are the same, but out of professional ethics and trust in friends, he made this choice that made him endure hardships. How much courage does it take to choose to stay in a lonely city beset on all sides? In the "labour camp" he sometimes hesitated and feared, but at the moment of life and death, he calmly lurked in the pond, swam through the paddy fields, through the jungle... Under strict guards, he escaped from the Khmer Rouge. How much courage does the magic claw need?
However, courage alone is not enough. The Khmer Rouge is a group of "revolutionaries" who are proficient in power, and they need to have the wisdom of silence if they want to "work with tigers for skin". The party representatives sent by "Anka" (organization, Khmer language) used English to test the people in the labor reform, and called on "doctors, professors and students" among them with "Anka needs you, and Anka forgive everything in the past". In the heart, a few people were moved by tears and fell into the embrace of "Anka", and the god of death turned around and drew a scythe on these "deeply hidden class enemies"-"Towards Ankatan, all the white people disappeared. NS". Pandey insisted on keeping silent, endured the melodious flute sound of the party representative "leading the snake out of the hole", pretending that he did not understand French and English, and sat like the most simple peasant. Unlike the intellectuals in the group of "ivory towers," Pandey, the "venomous snake" with only rich experience in survival, has insight into the intentions of the "revolutionaries", and he continues to lurch, waiting for opportunities.
In the fight with the Khmer Rouge, Pandey’s human light was not extinguished: he protected a gecko from being trampled to death in heavy rain, and he was worried about the plants that were uprooted. He cherishes life, as a Buddhist, but also as a person who understands the meaning of life. When Pandey escaped from one group of the Khmer Rouge and was captured by another group, he took care of the leader's child. Through the subjective perspective of the boss, the film eloquently portrays his care for a descendant of the Khmer Rouge. He gently hums a nursery rhyme—slowly put the child on the bed—carefully tuck the account— -Then tiptoe to tidy up the table. There was even a place in the back where the child fell asleep, he even went into the tent and kissed him, and he was like a child with joy. Suffered from the inhuman abuse and torture of the Khmer Rouge, he did not have "hate" in his heart (at least it was "not as good as his wife and children"), but instead interpreted the state of "you are young, and you are young."
Red nightmare
The atrocities of the Khmer Rouge have been disclosed by scholars from various countries. There are two hot spots in Cambodian tourism. One is Angkor Wat and the other is the Khmer Rouge ruins represented by the S21 concentration camp. There have been numerous litigations concerning the massacre of the Khmer Rouge. The focus of the controversy is who the United States and the Khmer Rouge are the executioners, just as the domestic academic circles argued over who "slaughtered Shu" between Zhang Xianzhong and the Qing army. But unlike the latter which occurred in the seventeenth century, this catastrophe has survivors, materials such as photos and videos, and mass graves. These important evidences have nailed the Khmer Rouge to the pillar of historical shame. "Even the Cambodians themselves do not think that the number of people who died in the US bombing in 1973 can be compared with the number of deaths during the four-year rule of the Khmer Rouge." At the time of filming, the Khmer Rouge had retreated into the jungle, but the nightmare was It will dissipate after more than ten years or even longer.
In the film, when the Khmer Rouge entered the city of Phnom Penh, the former government forces and citizens played the white flag, and what was hoped was that "a piece of water came out of a stone", and the whole street seemed to be shrouded in an atmosphere of victory and peace. Pandey jumped into the crowd and shouted: "Peace! Peace!" However, victory has always belonged to the victor, not the illusory so-called "people". It didn't take long for Pandey and three foreign reporters to discover the truth about blood in the hospital. But it was too late. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot expelled all the people from the city on the pretext of war preparedness and implemented the "agricultural utopia" plan. The white flags are shrouds that send the suffering Cambodian people to death.
Pandey hid in the French embassy, but because of a rain, his fake passport was reimbursed, and he had to leave sadly. He was tortured in the labor camp: the high-intensity labor and arbitrary insults and beatings he could resist, but the evil he saw made him shudder: the girls have chilling eyes, and they kill people just like them. It’s as easy to pull out plants; in the classroom, there was originally a chalk drawing of "family portrait" on the blackboard, but a little girl stepped forward to cross the "parents" severely, and did not forget to cut off the "children" with her fingers. "The hand held together with the "parents"...; the ear-filled compulsive instillation made him annoyed: "The enemy is within us, and no one is worthy of trust", "There is no thought, except for the party's thought; there is no love, Except for loving'Anka'"...
On the way to escape, Pandey saw a terrifying scene. In the valley, hundreds of dead people’s remains were piled up: hideous skulls, weak hands, ragged clothes, those who were slaughtered by "Anka". People are alluvialized together. This apocalyptic scene caused him to fall and climb up in horror, and his bones creaked as he stepped on. After passing through this "Valley of the Shadow of Death", he fainted on the side of the road... The
Khmer Rouge took the theory of violent revolution since Rousseau to the extreme. They tried to establish a heaven on the earth, and they repeated history again-brought living hell. However, the Khmer Rouge was blue, "Angka surpassed Lenin and surpassed Mao Zedong" and finally pushed the 20th century "Utopian" experiment to the highest point. In this sacrifice, all 20,000 Vietnamese died and 430,000. 215,000 Chinese people died, 10,000 Lao people died 4,000, 20,000 Thai people died 8,000, and at least more than 1 million people died in the whole country. At that time, Cambodia only had more than 7 million people.
Voltaire predicted long ago: "The system in which the priest and the empire are consistent is the most terrible system." Where does the terrible system come from? In "Foreign Land 2" written by Wu Nianzhen, the drug lord Commander Luo once said shockingly: "What is poison? Those who have a kind of thinking will let thousands of people fight and bleed for this kind of thinking. It’s the poison!” What
happened later was that the
international community used “non-interference in each other’s internal affairs” as an excuse to sit back and watch the Khmer Rouge trample on human rights. At the time of genocide, Vietnam “invaded” Cambodia in 1978. In just two weeks, the Khmer Rouge went into action. Defeated like a mountain. In the previous UN General Assembly since 1979, most of the member states that "do nothing to do with themselves" condemned Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and demanded that Vietnam unconditionally withdraw its troops. China even sent troops directly to Vietnam to relieve the Khmer Rouge.
Of course, Vietnam has its own wishful thinking, and the purpose is not simple. However, his own overseas Chinese were slaughtered by the opponent, and sending troops in the name of the "volunteer army" is not considered to be an obscure master. Moreover, Cambodia, which has lived in the hell on earth for more than three years, simply regards the Vietnamese as saviors, and the Vietnamese army has received such a welcome that they cannot even imagine. Hun Sen, who went to Vietnam to rescue soldiers, has never been regarded as a "Cambodia rape". On the contrary, he has been the prime minister with steady progress.
Since then, Cambodia’s internal "relationships are tens of thousands" and the international political situation is turbulent, which has been delayed for nearly ten years. When the leaders of the Khmer Rouge pass away or are dying of old age, the "special tribunal for trying the Khmer Rouge" "It was late on November 20, 2007. There is a saying in the Western saying: "Justice that is late is injustice." Is this song of soul-suppressing on the ruins really an unstoppable nightmare from worries and worries?
Is Cambodia’s national sovereignty and the human rights of the Cambodian people a matter of course that "the universe is especially important to us"? Does the Khmer Rouge have the right to massacre its own people and commit genocide without allowing interference from another country? The film ends with John Lennon's "Imagination", but-the answer is blowing in the wind.
2007-11-25, written on the occasion of the first public hearing of the Khmer Rouge Special Court
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