RECONCILIATION IS PERSONAL

Lai Sim, Female Revolutionary Combatant
By Som Bunthorn

During the revolutionary period, some Cambodian people changed their names in order to sever their ties to previous regimes. In the early 1970’s, Lai Sim adopted a new name and has used that name ever since.

Lai Sim was born in Ampil village, Ponley commune, Prey Kabas district, Takeo province. She is now 56 years old, and lives in Banteay Malai commune, Banteay Meanchey province. During the Khmer Rouge era, she worked as a medic, a supervisor of a women’s unit, a commune messenger, a special unit combatant, and a salt field worker.

Malai is a five-minute drive from Thailand, but approximately eight hours from Phnom Penh. It is reachable only by a dirt road heavily pockmarked by the rainy season and a steady traffic of overloaded vehicles transporting corn and green beans. Heading south from Kaun Damrei (baby elephant) commune, the road follows the border through some of the most fertile and heavily mined land in Cambodia, connecting numerous villages settled by Khmer Rouge displaced after the fall of the Democratic Kampuchea regime.

Approximately 95% of the nearly 8,350 residents of Malai commune are former Khmer Rouge cadres from various provinces who moved there after 1979. Many fled to the border in response to rumors spread by the Khmer Rouge leaders that the Vietnamese would cut their throats if they caught them.

The region was fiercely disputed during the 1980s and early 1990s, with the Khmer Rouge using the Phnom Malai range, a 400-square-meter area, as its main military sanctuary. During those years, Khmer Rouge leaders warned people that if they fled to government controlled areas, they would be targeted for killing. On 6 August 1997, under the leadership of Ieng Sary, inhabitants in Malai integrated with the government.

When she was young and lived in Takeo province, Lai Sim studied at Kampeng primary school. During her childhood, she bought corn from Prey Lvea market to sell in the village. She stopped studying when she was in grade six. In 1970, following an order from Angkar (the Khmer Rouge leadership), Lai Sim volunteered to work as a revolutionary medic in Kampeng commune. During that period, Lai Sim and many other women were encouraged to work, and some were promoted to become combatants. Angkar did not select women who did not have a strong commitment to the organization.

In 1972, Lai Sim was appointed to be supervisor of the women’s unit in Ampil village. She was in charge of rice transplanting and harvesting. She attended several Self-criticism meetings at a house, built of cement, which still exists today. A couple of members who worked in her unit are also still alive.

In 1973, Lai Sim was transferred to work as a commune messenger responsible for sending letters to different villages by bicycle. Lai Sim was satisfied with this work, but never knew what the letters contained as she never opened them. During the Khmer Rouge regime, being a messenger was a powerful position. In general, Angkar recruited only reliable people to be messengers. Lai Sim still feels proud of that work.

Angkar recruited women who came from poor families to serve the revolution. Lai Sim met the requirements of Angkar, as her father was a cyclo driver during the Khmer Republic period (1970-1975). Lai Sim volunteered to serve in the Khmer Rouge army. Her parents did not oppose her decision. She was trained to crawl, duck, use a gun, and hide from bombs in Prey Khmeng, located in Kong Pisey district, Kampong Speu province. Soon afterward, Lai Sim was sent to special unit 101 of region 33.

Following the training, a regiment commander named Him assigned Lai Sim to fight at the Pech Nil, Doh Kanhchor, Moha Sang, and Trapeang Kra-loeng battlefields. When her unit was overrun, Lai Sim would escape to save herself and leave the remaining soldiers injured and dying. Her commander, however, never blamed her for this. Recognizing the sacrifices of its soldiers, Angkar ordered the army to supervise villagers in transporting the injured and dead soldiers back from the battlefield. The corpses were cut open and salt was inserted in their bellies to preserve them so that their relatives could hold a funeral once they were returned home. Two friends of Lai Sim were killed, crushed by a tank, as they lay hiding in a trench from the Khmer Republic forces. Whenever Lai Sim visited the mothers of her friends they always cried, mourning the death of their daughters.

Before sending them to the combat zone, Lai Sim’s commander divided his subordinates into two groups of soldiers, one female and one male, to lie in different trenches, but to fight at the same time. Whenever she needed to move from place to place, Lai Sim had to cut trees to camouflage her head so that the American air forces would not bomb her. At that time, the Khmer Rouge did not acknowledge the Khmer Republic army led by Lon Nol but instead instigated the people to fight against American forces.

After the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975, Lai Sim was sent to guard Kampong Tuol, Phnom Penh city, and prevent the Vietnamese soldiers from entering at night. Then, in 1976, she was appointed to work in a salt field in Kampot province. Lai Sim and other women were ordered to stamp the earth in a salt field before flooding it with seawater, and then to rake the seawater. After the seawater became salt, the workers put it in sacks and carried it to the store. Lai Sim’s supervisor selected female cadres who were active, capable, and reliable to visit Phnom Penh and watch a documentary film about salt fields at Chenla Theater. The purpose of the screening was to show the improvement of salt production during the regime. Lai Sim was one of the candidates selected.

Lai Sim had been separated from her parents since she was 15 years old and did not want them to worry about her. She wrote a letter in 1977 addressed to her father, Svay Muy, living at Ampil village, Ponley sub-district and sent it via a driver in the village.

Lai Sim worked at the salt field until the Vietnamese captured the village. She then ran to her home village. Because Lai Sim had served as a female village chief and a Khmer Rouge combatant, the villagers living nearby were unhappy with her. Eleven months later, Lai Sim migrated to Pailin. After the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, virtually all Khmer Rouge ran from them and lived on the border areas of Malai, Samlot and Kam-rieng and maintained their support of the Khmer Rouge. At first, countless people settling there became ill and died from malaria and insufficient food. Lai Sim also contracted a swelling disease due to malnutrition. Fortunately, she and others survived after receiving food support from the Red Cross.

Recently (September 2010), Lai Sim visited her father Svay Muy, who is now 84 years old. On the way to her home village, Lai Sim seemed to be happy and described her life under the regime openly and honestly without fear that villagers in her hometown would not like her arrival because she had worked for the Khmer Rouge. If Lai Sim did not move out of her home village, would she feel ashamed that she was a Khmer Rouge? And if she was poor, would the villagers in her home village look down upon her? Would she be able to reconcile with the villagers if she did not move out? And would the villagers forgive her if she maintained contact with the other villagers and victims of the Khmer Rouge?

But some people in the village blamed Lai Sim for the deaths of her nieces a few months earlier. They say their deaths were caused by her karma from crimes she committed against many innocent people while she worked for the Khmer Rouge. Even worse, they claimed that if she had not left the village, she may not have become as successful, or lived as peacefully.

Lai Sim’s life reflects the country’s efforts toward national reconciliation and raises questions about whether victims and perpetrators living in the same village can reconcile.

Searching for the Truth.
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