Cambodia

A few thoughts inspired by a very interesting discussion on C’est dans l’Air on the Cambodian genocide today:

• The utter lack of interest displayed here in the West about the antics of the Khmer Rouge over the period 1975-1979 at the time. I myself was scarcely aware of, and even less concerned by the massacres. The turning point was certainly the release of the film of The Killing Fields in 1984, just as the television series Holocaust marked a watershed in our reaction to the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. It is as though we cannot confront atrocity until it has, so to speak, been personalised in a semi-fictional account.
• A certain bewilderment at the apparent lack of revolt on the part of the Cambodians themselves. I think there are many reasons for this, not least the fact that the Khmer Rouge even today remains deeply embedded in Cambodian society. Could it also be that the set of beliefs and practices espoused by Buddhists in some way and to some extent acts as a brake to a healthy quest to “set the record straight”? Perhaps. But then again, is it possible to rebuild a shattered society without incorporating elements of the “shatterers” into the new order? (Nazis in post-war Germany, collaborators in post-war France.) De Gaulle was quite clear-eyed about this
• The prevailing discourse in the West is that “things are getting better”, and I myself have long subscribed to this idea, at least subconsciously. But does it hold water? Some things definitely have got better, but how much of this is merely the result, directly or indirectly, of improvements in material conditions? How much of it will survive when these conditions start to deteriorate? Was it Churchill who said the price of democracy is eternal vigilance? (No, I’ve just checked: it was Thomas Jefferson!) As I get older, I see life more and more as the struggle between good and evil.
• Seen from the inside, our capacity for outrage seems to diminish with distance. Nazis, yes, Balkans a bit, Cambodia and Rwanda not so much. That is understandable and not altogether reprehensible.