“I am very happy that the court will start finding out what happened
to the Cham people.… It is a little too late for us, but I’m still
positive it is good and will find justice for the Cham when the court
finishes the case,” Man Auseit, 49, said.
Cham community leaders pose in front of a mosque in pre-Khmer Rouge times. DC-CAM.
Chams’ long wait nearly over
More than 100 ethnic Cham villagers sit around the grounds of a
local pagoda, chatting languidly, the women dressed in colourful
patterned blouses and headscarves. They have already prayed once today,
and will do so four more times before the day is over.
The simple freedoms they are enjoying – the ability to speak the Cham
language, wear traditional clothing and practice their Sunni Muslim
faith – are not taken for granted by these mostly middle-aged and
elderly people. Targeted for their ethnicity and religion under the
Khmer Rouge, many lost their entire families in coordinated killings.
“Before the Khmer Rouge came, we used to study with Khmer people.
There was no conflict. We could speak Cham and follow Cham culture and
religion. But after the Khmer Rouge came, everything was forbidden,”
says Hak Sary, a gregarious 57-year-old, who lost 30 members of her
extended family and her mother, under Democratic Kampuchea.
“If we still tried to follow our religion, they would kill us.… We
had to cut our hair and we couldn’t wear our headscarves.… They forced
me to eat pork at gunpoint. I vomited afterwards because I felt so
disgusted.
“But I knew Allah would not punish us, because he would understand that we were forced.”
The Cham ethnic group are descendants of the kingdom of Champa, which
ruled over parts of central and southern Vietnam from the 7th to 19th
centuries. About 350,000 Muslims remain in Cambodia today, according to
DC-Cam, most of whom are Chams.
This area, the Svay Khleang village and commune of Kampong Cham’s
Kroch Chmar district, a picturesque spot on the banks of the Mekong, was
a vibrant centre of Cham life before the communists decided to break up
the community in 1975, according to Ysa Osman’s The Cham Rebellion: Survivors’ Stories from the Villages.
In that year, villagers here got wind of a plan to arrest a group of
people who had held a dawn prayer at the local mosque to celebrate the
end of the Ramadan fasting month. Wielding swords, they rose up in
rebellion, killing a Khmer Rouge cadre.
A brutal assault by the Khmer Rouge followed. Hundreds were killed
and the villagers were forcibly evacuated to a number of different
locations. Most would never see home again.
More than 6,200 people lived here in 1970s, Osman writes, when the
communists first took hold of the area, which then held a prestigious
Islamic school, a village mosque and a beautiful three-tiered minaret
that, though dilapidated, still stands today.
But by the time the Vietnamese invaded in 1979, only 600 Cham, mostly
women and children, were still alive to return to Svay Khleang, finding
buried Koreans and human remains around their homes.
Members
of the Cham community sit with text books on Khmer Rouge history during
a public forum organised by the Documentation Center of Cambodia in
Kampong Cham on Tuesday. Vireak Mai.
Court prosecutors have officially asked the Trial Chamber to include
the “1975 dispersal or ‘break-up’ of the Cham population” in the next
trial, as this forced movement “is essential” in proving a policy to
persecute the Chams existed, they say.
Historians including David Chandler, however, have said they do not
believe conclusive evidence exists proving that genocide was committed
against the Cham.
But according to Dale Lysak, a senior assistant prosecutor at the
tribunal who travelled to Svay Khleang to brief villagers, the Chams
were clearly targeted as an ethnic and religious group by the Khmer
Rouge.
“The stories of the mass execution of the Cham are some of the most
horrific stories of the period, because it was done a little differently
than a lot of other executions.
“The way the execution happened, is that at some point, it was determined it was time to get rid of the Cham people.”
To Lysak, the fact that Chams were gathered and brought en masse to
killing sites, without political interrogations, “tells you they were
being targeted purely because [they] were Cham … they [Khmer Rouge]
didn’t decide who were the good Cham and who were the bad Cham. If you
were Cham, you were killed.”
The number of Cham who died under the Khmer Rouge is unclear.
Historian Ben Kiernan estimates that 87,000 Cham perished, while Osman
has concluded that between 400,000 and 500,000 Cham died.
Like many Cambodians, the Cham in Svay Khleang feel that the court
has taken too long to convict senior Khmer Rouge leaders. But those who
have been following proceedings are grateful that crimes committed
against their communities will soon be given a public hearing, even if
many of those who suffered haven’t lived to see it.
“I am very happy that the court will start finding out what happened
to the Cham people.… It is a little too late for us, but I’m still
positive it is good and will find justice for the Cham when the court
finishes the case,” Man Auseit, 49, said.
In 1978, as the Khmer Rouge conducted its bloody purge of the Eastern
Zone, Auseit, then a teenager, huddled at a pagoda for two nights with
thousands of other Chams who had also been ordered to gather there,
waiting for what he knew was certain death.
But an idea born out of desperation saved him.
“I was so lucky. I was saved because I pretended to be a Khmer. I said I was a Khmer who lived with my uncle.”
When that “uncle”, a friend of his late father, was summoned by the
cadres to prove Auseit’s story, he lied and corroborated the story. “He
said I was his nephew.… He saved my life.”
According to Lysak, having genocide against the Cham heard at the
court would fulfil an important part of its mandate, namely not
excluding any victims’ groups. “Having some Cham witnesses coming to
court and telling their stories of what happened to [their] people,
would be a very key and historic part of the trial.”
But despite the prosecutor’s efforts to reassure villagers that the
court is being pushed to work as quickly as possible, some feel they
have waited long enough. “Why is the trial taking so long to reach a
verdict?” Man Sleh, a frail and weathered man of 67 who filed as a Cham
civil party for both Case 001 and 002, asked at the forum.
After his question was answered, a few minutes later, he was back up again.
“But we have so much evidence.… We have all the documents. Why does
it still take so long? I am old and I am going to die soon. And I am
very worried that I might not see justice.”
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