Befriended With Murderer's Son

Socheat Nhean

Hang Sok Sopheara had never seen his father, except in a four by six centimeter student photo that survived the Khmer Rouge regime hidden in his mother's cloth pack. The bitter history of Cambodia in the 1970s separated him from his father forever.

One day in mid-1977, Sopheara's father, a school teacher, was taken away by one of his neighbors when his son was too young to learn how to talk and love him. Two years earlier, in February 1975, his son was born in a small house near Silip market in Phnom Penh, just three months before a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers entered the heart of Phnom Penh. In early April, as the situation in Phnom Penh worsened due to Khmer Rouge attacks on all sides, the family of four, including two-month-old Hang Sok Sopheara, migrated to Taing Krasaing commune, Kampong Thom province, for safety. Thirty-five years later, in a small hut on a high school campus, Hang Sok Sopheara said that Taing Krasaing was his mother's homeland. It was true; and it was controlled by the Khmer Rouge years before their arrival. What Sopheara has learned about the Khmer Rouge regime comes from his mother. His sister, who is now living in the United States and is three years older than him, knows little about the regime or about what happened to her father.

Nevertheless, the school teacher who died in 1977 influenced his son, who is now a history teacher at a high school near Kampong Thom provincial town. Sopheara confidently said, "It was my father who inspired me to study history and then become a history teacher; he taught history at a Prey Veng High School before the Khmer Rouge time." Now, as a teacher, Sopheara is teaching the history of Democratic Kampuchea, which his parents lived through, to students of the younger generation.

Sopheara learned from his mother that his family was well-off before the Khmer Rouge regime. His father was the breadwinner in the family, and had little knowledge of farming. By the time the Khmer Rouge took power in April 1975, his father did not know how to plough and farm and was very bad at transplanting rice stalk. His mother often helped his father in order to not to lose credit. Once in 1976, the Khmer Rouge cadres assigned his father to herd buffalos; unfortunately, one of them went missing. The whole family was in great sorrow until the missing buffalo appeared a few days later. At a later date, his father was assigned to weave a string for the cows and this task was hard for him to do.

Sopheara's mother said that his father made mistakes and could not complete his job well. His background as a teacher put him in danger. Then the day arrived. Sopheara was in a grandma unit while his parents were at work in the field. From what his mother told him, the night before his father was taken away, he cried a lot. An old lady who was responsible for looking after babies while their parents were working brought Sopheara to his mother that night. The evening of the next day his father was taken away. "It was during dinner time and he was eating," recalled Sopheara. His mother watched quietly as her husband was escorted by Khmer Rouge cadres and walked away, but her heart was in great pain. His father looked into her eyes for the last time and did not say a word; but he knew that he would never have a chance to return. Sopheara, his sister, and mother never saw him come back home since then. The one who took his father away was his neighbor. On the night his father was taken away, the Khmer Rouge cadres returned, but only to take the buffalos that belonged to his father. It was that night that Sopheara's family knew clearly that his father was killed.

Today, Sopheara doesn't want to take revenge against the family of his father's murderer. He understands the situation of the Khmer Rouge regime well, saying that "if the murderer did not kill my father, then he would have been killed too." This is the attitude that allows Sopheara to keep calm about those who killed his father. Now he is friends with a son of that murderer, a mathematics teacher at a high school in Kampong Thom. However, Sopheara takes soft revenge by telling other colleagues about the mathematics teacher whose father caused Sopheara's father's death. Sopheara and the mathematics teacher are friends, but the later would have been shameful of his father's act towards Sopheara's father. Sopheara believes that the murderer was paid back for his sin when he was killed by angry survivors in 1979 after the Khmer Rouge regime collapsed.

In Buddhism, those who have done bad deeds receive harm in either the current or next life. Sopheara believes in this concept and believes that the murderer of his father received what he deserved. Nevertheless, Sopheara wants a tribunal to bring those who initiated the brutal regime to justice. He watched Duch's hearing at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and is looking forward to seeing other senior leaders on trial. With the announcement of Duch's verdict is coming near, Sopheara cannot wait to hear it. With hope, he expects Duch to be jailed. Upset with Duch's efforts to be freed, he wants him to be imprisoned as long as possible. "If the verdict says Duch is not guilty, I would say that the Khmer Rouge tribunal is not fair." Emphasized Sopheara, "children of next generation would say the same." Finally, Sopheara confirmed that Cambodian people need to be reconciled. He said, "It is time to reconcile in order for our country to move forward."


Independently Searching for the Truth since 1997.
MEMORY & JUSTICE

“...a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”

Youk Chhang, Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
66 Sihanouk Blvd.,
Phnom Penh, Cambodia