The Lost World Of The Khmer Rouge: Pol Pot's Cambodian Genocide | Timeline

[Music] this is Cambodia a country of impenetrable jungles and fabulous ruins lost in time where Kings became gods and monks still seek heavenly peace and now this mysterious land has begun to open up to reveal the dark beauty that has lured adventurers here for centuries my journey will take me deep into its exotic heart where land mine still kills and the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge still patrol the remote jungles as I try to discover how such a peaceful country could become the killing fields [Music] hello my name is David Adams and this is the deep jungle of the cardamon Mountains in southern Cambodia over more than 30 years this wilderness has been cut off from the outside world and for much of that time it's been a Khmer Rouge stronghold this primeval rainforest is one of Southeast Asia's last wilderness areas which until recently you entered at your own risk these impenetrable forests were once a refuge for guerrilla fighters but they were also a refuge for an incredible array of unique wildlife my journey starts on the Thai border from there ahead across Tonle Sap Cambodia's great lake then north into the wilderness before heading down the mighty Mekong to the capital for Phnom Penh and then finally on to the jungles of the cardamoms for 30 years Cambodia's history has been one of suffering as it was bombed blasted and brutalized by war France the United States and Vietnam all playing their part but its greatest misery came from within in 1975 Cambodia came under the control of a radical communist government the Khmer Rouge but today there's another side to the Khmer Rouge I'm with a band of former jungle soldiers who are setting up an ambush but the quarry is no longer human this time their weapons are cameras and their targets rare and endangered wildlife in a way both soldiers and animals became allies while the Khmer Rouge hunted the wildlife they also kept everyone else out of the jungles which preserved the habitat of a huge number of endangered species this dusty and looted town on the Thai Cambodia border is called koi pet only a few months ago it harbored one of the most notorious rare animal markets in Asia to enter this illicit world I need people who have access experience guides who know their way around the jungles and the former domain of the Khmer Rouge son he and hunter Weiler were just the guys in their work for the cambodian wildlife protection office both traveled deep into Cambodia's wildest regions if they had their way a shot like this would be closed down one way of saving endangered animals is to stop the illicit trade in rare animal parts well ones this is a Indochina subspecies of the tiger it's quite small yes somewhat smaller than the Bengal tiger and one of these these are clouded leopard also an endangered species they spend a lot of time up on the trees hunting birds there are also parts of animals Banting and rhinoceros horns crocodile skulls and Tiger penises skins bladders and beaks all valued as ingredients in Eastern traditional medicines then there are the trophy horns and antlers these two may be ground up for use in making love potions these are who prey the Cupra is the national animal of cambodia it's maybe totally extinct from the face of the earth and it's here for the first time that I see the horns of a rare perhaps even mythical creature the Keating War it's said to be a shy animal that eats snakes and its horn is supposed to be an antidote for snakebite it's also sometimes known as the Cambodian unicorn despite having two horns has you ever seen one of these mean to a live animal or against Bob Cusack mythology tells us that the unicorn came from the east like the Keating war its horn was supposed to be a cure for poison and was such a demand for traditional medicine it's no surprise to learn that counterfeiters have moved in these real ones about 90% of people say is quinoa what do you think honey well I don't know I'm skeptical about this one of all the kidding bore horns that scientists have examined most of them trapped be fakes there is a very large counterfeit market because of the scarcity the animal and its high monetary value so what price would he sell these for the most expensive horn that he said is that $200 horn for a subsistence farmer that's more than a year's wages I can't help wondering if there's a mythical scam happening here I have a friend in an effort to convince me son he takes me to meet an artist friend who can give me some idea of what this cambodian unicorn looks like on the wall I see a poster of rare and endangered animals amongst them a Keating war let's just call it a - horned unicorn so we know where we are this is one of his references the other is a set of horns but knowing how many fake horns there are maybe he also needs a little imagination [Music] gradually an animal takes shape in a setting that looks like a Garden of Eden with one difference the snail gets beaten by the 201 unicorn so do you think it exists in the jungle somewhere you get higher we have a commune [Music] both son he and hunter are driven by a passion to protect endangered animals for me the chance of photographing a mythical creature however remote is reason enough to join their expedition the Unicorn is a mythical beast with a very strange and distinct horn and it lives in the hearts and minds of some ancient peoples it's maybe like Cambodia's unicorn all in this case this uniform may actually exist I see but they've never brought any body or skins or anything like that so it's it's very hard to believe one thing we do know though our next stop was once the greatest city on the planet and earthly paradise that they lost in the jungle for five hundred years [Music] Cambodia is a strange mixture of Southeast Asian and European culture the icons of the ancient Khmer Empire rubbing shoulders with French colonial architecture it was once part of French Indochina but long before the French occupation Cambodia was at the center of a great empire that once boasted the greatest city on earth we're in the town of baton bang to pick up a boat to take us to the ruined city of Angkor [Music] since so much of Cambodia is traversed by rivers and canals a boat is often the most efficient form of transport [Music] it's here you see another side to Cambodia mile after mile of river communities all along the bags are house birds and floating villages mostly subsistence fishermen [Music] proximity to Tonle Sap and it's ready supply of fish were major reasons for the successful expansion of Angkor though today botha fishing is threatening this great resource and it's not for the first time [Music] when these amazing ruins were first rescued from the jungle the world marveled at the lost capital of an ancient empire from here between the 9th and the 13th centuries the Khmer emperors ruled virtually all of Southeast Asia this is what the tourists see the great and cool Wat temple what's not so well known is that Angkor City sprawled over a thousand square kilometers or 600 square miles in its day it was the largest city on earth it's actually like a great low-density industrial city sort of Los Angeles what's this population we're talking about the general estimates are somewhere on the order of a million within this thousand square K meet professor Roland Fletcher an Australian archaeologist who has spent years studying large cities of the ancient world and how how does that compare to say Paris or London at the same time Paris or London at that period were a couple hundred thousand or less so they have very small places very small indeed so how far does it actually go beyond the tree line there no it extends to the hills on the Lord will horizon literally the horizon all the way around all around it's absolutely an over there that's I'm just getting used to this ancient sprawl when professor Fletcher produces a radar map taken from the space shuttle radar penetrates the jungle revealing a vast network of ruined roads suburbs and canals the colors turning hidden ruins into a skeletal record of civilization that's the Westborough which is eight kilometers away it's the one over there and the bit I'm really interested in is this huge road that runs up for 25 kilometers up to the kalam hills which is up to that high point on the hills and the point of all this well something went wrong even though it was the capital of a mighty empire situated in a green and fertile land it died professor Fletcher thinks he knows why well the reason I'm interested in it is because it's the largest pre-industrial low-density city and there are a lot of problems about why those low-density cities died because this is the biggest example this is the key test and at the moment our suspicion is that it's an ecological problem it's to do with excessive land clearance under all these trees and in fact off beyond the horizon there are n Korean period fields under the forests so this whole area would have actually been just paddy field Plains with with trees where the houses are along the streets like you see in modern villages part of this history here maybe being rerun and that's what we wanted to assess they filled the trees over fished the lake and eventually ran out of food population and purpose professor Fletcher believes this architectural time capsule sends out a warning to the world it was the Los Angeles the Mexico City for the London of its day and it died yet ecologically the same mistakes he believes brought about its demise are being repeated again right now [Music] the question is if it happened once could it happen again [Music] but far more recently Cambodia experienced an even greater Cataclysm we're about to enter the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge and the final resting place of one of the world's bloodiest killers [Music] in 1928 a boy was born to a peasant family in Cambodia for six years he lived and studied peacefully in a Buddhist monastery two of them as a monk later he went to study in Paris his name was Sol at Sur but he was better known to the world as Pol Pot and he became a killer [Music] how such a peaceful country could end up with such a brutal killer as its leader has always been a source of amazement to me we're in the far north of Cambodia heading for the tiny township of an Long Feng on our way to the Mekong River few people on earth have unleashed such chaos as Pol Pot in 1975 he sent the Khmer Rouge into pnom penh to empty it it was part of an experiment to set up an ideal peasant state they marched the population into the fields to work and cut Cambodia off from the world they began again with Year Zero temples money and property were abolished and the purge that followed gave us the phrase The Killing Fields it's estimated 1.5 million people died in Pol Pot's extermination camps as we get closer I feel a sense of apprehension already there are signs of war a lot of people died on this road basically everyone who lives here is an X Khmer Rouge soldier or a member of their families in this area was the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge movement this is where Paul Pott had his headquarters and this was the last air route maps in the fall and all of Campbell a we gonna get through okay or is it difficulties with the with the government troops oh I see hey be just what we need so you're here won't you Marlene wouldn't know about him I mean wouldn't it all good up the time I don't Padma at a checkpoint we offer a small gift it's not a bribe it's a courtesy and it can mean a lot to a man who only earns $20 a month this is the first checkpoint into what what was and probably still is the heartland of the Khmer Rouge and up here on this mountain is where Pol Pot died and whether it was murdered whether he died of old age is still open to conjecture but his body and all the remains of it is still up here and very few people still have been allowed in here and even though it's now part of government territory it's still very much Khmer Rouge [Music] the echoes of war are everywhere derelict and rusting tanks are reminders of the Khmer Rouge's last stand and then another checkpoint it's the entrance to Pol Pot's headquarters more soldiers to negotiate with and again there are signs of fighting these statues are revolutionaries and they've all had their heads blown off [Music] we approach the soldiers cautiously even though they wear the insignia of the modern Cambodian army these men were Khmer Rouge guards in Pol Pot's day he said any body he's like everybody like yeah why did so many people like him John we found that collateral yet gone it's force forcing they're forced they forced him to like him there so most people didn't want to like him yeah it's all a little unclear what he believed or believes the days of the Khmer Rouge are not long gone just in case there's trouble ahead soon he arranges for one of the soldiers to come with us to ease our passage the road gets worse so after the deaths of 1.5 million people how could someone still like Pol Pot I think a lot of people actually liked Paul puck because he was such a that's what I heard from all people individually you know respectful despite him killing all those people whenever there's a sense of dread as we arrive at privy here Pol Pot's last headquarters this was where he died hello the greeting though was friendly this is a real government soldier not a former Khmer Rouge border sensitivities have changed and today it's the government in charge I understand that Pol Pot his last days were spent here and that he died here and his body was burnt there's a current equipment to pour meantime for port monkey but no can I knew how he made me suggest he's not here and he supported a spoon in that cookery shows like you there's not much left of a desert at first it all looks a bit mundane a scattering of Pol Pot's possessions even the remains of his toilet and then was shown his grave that is the place that they pulled all prod Morty after he died so nothing's been removed it's just the ashes of a body they piled up his possessions put his body on the funeral pyre and burnt the lot hardly a state funeral it's kind of an anomalous ending for one of the great butchers of history between one and two million people control all of Cambodia at one time this is Pol Pot's monument of austerity not too impressive probably fitting millions of deaths endless suffering and all that's left is a dirty mound and a broken toilet in a jungle clearing even so the soldiers still speak in hushed tones at his graveside the memory of Pol Pot and the queuing fields still has a profound effect on the Cambodian people as they pick over what remains of his funeral pyre I notice incense sticks Buddhist offerings on the grave of a communist who despised religion a day's drive from Pol Pot's grave is the reason hunter wire lawrence on here have come to this remote part of the jungle they're meeting up with some former Khmer Rouge soldiers who've become professional wildlife trackers and they're on the trail of the Keating for Cambodia semi-legendary - horned unicorn these guys are some of the most skillful wildlife hunters in Cambodia today they're working for the Wildlife Conservation Society an organization that's changing the way locals view the jungle and the animals in it we recruited the best of the former hunters and turned them into wildlife Rangers and the people we've recruited I would say probably 80% of the Tigers are killed by 25% of the hunters there's a sort of elite that specializes in large mammals and these are the people we've gone after so we've taken out of circulation in this province ten of the very best hunters in each of those hunters is capable of killing several tiger a year so that's a dramatic impact to take that many experienced hunters out of circulation and get them on the side of conservation yeah so here the stories come together Khmer Rouge and endangered wildlife and together the possibility of a bright future for this beleaguered land so it have they ever had much luck recently for their efforts the cameras are beginning to reveal what lies beneath the canopy and from this province we have tiger Gower and Banting two endangered wild cattle stem bar deer barking deer and China diverse bird and any sign of cattivo not yet we're hoping as we walk back we stick strictly to the path thanks to the Khmer Rouge Cambodia is one of the most heavily landmine countries on earth six million of them are still scattered across the country one false step and you can lose your leg or worse every day somewhere in Cambodia a landmine explodes under someone every single person who lives in this village as either stood on a mine or is related to a victim they're all here because of this remarkable man but Gibbons these are Vietnam vet who decided to return to Indochina to try and help those maimed by landmines [Music] [Applause] he couldn't do much about the landmines but he could try and help the victims put their lives back together afterwards so he started a factory to make low-cost artificial limbs it's time to pay back you know it's time to pay back for what I didn't but we were part of it in the past and also to share to share some of the incredible wealth and the incredible knowledge that we as Americans have everyone working here is missing a limb or has been severely maimed but bad soon realized that providing the limbs wasn't enough in Cambodia such victims are usually shunned as unemployable unmarriageable and generally a burden on society if his scheme was to work he had to do more learning how to use the limb there's no problem one two weeks we do give them training how to walk out of balance that kind of thing then they go back to their village that is where I think the problem is because they can't find a way to support themselves financially or economically they are now supporting themselves mechanically with this limb but they have no job so they need to have some way to get money so but in his landmine victims started a silk industry and it's good silk commanding high prices and it's all made by the maimed and the limbless [Music] they grow their own mulberries to feed to their own silkworms then they spin it diet weave it and market it to the world on the Internet what it's done is give them back their self-respect with the money they earned they bought land and they built homes many have married and now educate their children in the school they build themselves and now they even pass on their skills to those that have limbs and much of it is due to the drive and enterprise of a former GI in such an impoverished society it's amazing what hope and support can achieve especially when they've been dealt such a cruel blow by war I leave the village feeling both uplifted and humbled but we must move on the Mekong River is home to pirates since the end of the war attacks on boats have increased steadily tomorrow we run the gauntlet of these modern-day Buccaneers on one of the most dangerous sections of the river the Mekong is 2,700 miles long that's 4,300 kilometers which makes it one of the longest rivers in the world from here it's a 200-mile journey to per Phnom Penh a journey the government advises all Westerners against because of banditry and piracy [Music] Wildlife Protection officers hunter and son here have made the journey many times though the jungles that line the banks are a rich source of wildlife for the poachers that they're trying to wipe out at first the river appears as a vast drifting lake but it's not as serene as it seems this river is a navigators nightmare the crew place a bowl of fruit on the bow an offering to the river spirits to ensure that the passage goes well these Rapids all down the make another yeah they have sir all of them you know on the way from them trying to pitch it I think that is one of the small smaller one not the biggest one soon the water start to ripple then simmer and whirlpools rips and currents erupted right about now I'm glad that these are the small wrappers stone boys put in place by the French a century ago mark the course the helmsman must apply just the right amount of power on the rudder or the boat would be ripped apart by the rocks below for a moment even the captain casts a concerned eye but just for a moment he has total faith in his helmsman his son and I guess so should I Rapids and shallows make travel on the mekong dangerous after dark not for getting pirates so we look for somewhere to rest up for the night sailing on this river is very much a family affair living aboard is the captain's wife his mother-in-law his sons their wives and a new member of the crew his grandson no doubt he too will one day captain on the Mekong and this is like a sweet rice they just bundle up together with them banana leaves keeps it lovely and fresh need like a king on the Mekong Mekong River water isn't quite the purest on earth but after a hot day it's got to be the most refreshing and as the sound of singing reaches out to us across these waters again I wonder has such a peaceful country could have suffered so much as day breaks fishermen are returning from a night's work and the river glows rich and golden as we slip our moorings and prepare to continue our voyage and for me no chance of asleep in the revving engine soon sees to that I wouldn't say that's the best night's sleep I've ever had a lot of mozzies and really sticky but now it's beautifully cool I have to say it's an incredibly peaceful place and the meat cone you expect this incredibly crowded River seething with humanity but there's nothing it's just jungle and really beautiful however this wilderness has remained not because of a desire for preservation it's remained simply because civil unrest meant that no one could safely live here and no man's land of opportunity for pirates bandits and renegade units of the Khmer Rouge we said when we stopped the boat to shot the gun and then let me get in to get all the people up to the jungle and then those people come into the boat and they Ted and see everyone everything they want a toke away he tells me that a few shots over the bow from the jungle would announce the attackers it happened so often that once he had to cover his boat with armor plating our conversation ends as we approach River shallows they check the depth but again no one's really that concerned they've all been this way many times before but then the wilderness disappears and on the banks another brand of piracy illegal loggers felling the great forests in a desperate attempt to earn dollars in a cash-strapped country but spending the inheritance is what happens when order breaks down and a country is pulled apart by war greed and opportunism and when war came to per Phnom Penh it wasn't just a city devastated by bombs it was an empty city cleared by the Khmer Rouge who'd forced everyone out at gunpoint [Music] so it's with some relief that I find a vibrant busy city and it's here that I made cheered one of Cambodia's leading journalists and I couldn't have hoped for a better guy let me pick about four Phnom Penh is it's a really small town quite a bit of traffic around easy by motorbike there's cafes everywhere and then this wonderful architecture led by the French really lovely city so that the palace yes it is even this most Cambodian of structures was built by the French so what happened next hunter is a relatively recent arrival in newly peaceful per Phnom Penh over lunch at his house I learn about cheats Khmer Rouge passed me but you're not not with your wife anymore yeah but I couldn't say no I say no it would be hit or miss appeal yeah but you're a survivor and like it and people did disappear millions of them to bring me face to face with the demons of Cambodia's past Chia takes me too tall slang now known as the Museum of genocide tall slang was once a high school but the Khmer Rouge turned it into a torture chamber here they interrogated anyone who they considered to be an enemy of the state which seemed to be just about everyone how many people were killed here how many people dies more than 20,000 people 20,000 or died in this in this prison and they just brought them in and tortured them torture and then send them to Chennai and killed which were the killing fields yeah million people got killed over there the quiet is unsettling as we step further into this dreadful place morbid fascination is overtaken by horror this wasn't just a place where people died it was a place where they died horribly in a horrible place yes was it a map of Cambodia's American boy pretty macabre isn't it yes it is they were intellectual and farmer and I made a Madison yeah my god the tragedy can be seen in their faces victims and victors side by side those of the Khmer Rouge defiant and arrogant those of the victims simply defeated [Music] it's impossible not to be moved by the unspeakable suffering and brutality that took place here [Music] as we walk i wonder how any ideology or hatred could ever justify such evil for cheered it must be particularly confronting you know i feel sad and remind in the past day when I see this picture yeah it's just unbelievable yeah so remind me today in the past about a Khmer who live starving fearing what do you thing about it I just never seen anything like it the Holocaust in Germany must be similar similar yeah I just I haven't seen that so this is I've never seen anything like it and you managed to live through this prior to you know to live in this food equation I think you're lucky to be alive let's go guys help me yeah what's gonna get a drink okay [Music] in spite of all they've been through or perhaps because of it whenever Cambodians get a chance they party like there's no tomorrow and karaoke is the urban entertainment of choice when they sing they do so without a shred of embarrassment which is sometimes a good thing [Music] and sometimes not particularly when it's my turn [Music] [Music] it's hard to believe that not long ago the entire population of per Phnom Penh was forcibly relocated leaving the city empty tomorrow by 2 must leave the city as I head into the last of Southeast Asia's great wilderness areas the cardamon mountains [Music] Southeast Asia's monsoons were heavy this year in Cambodia's cardamon mountains and few of the roads survived so we resort to a hangover from the communist days a Russian built six wheel drive and it's like rhyming an angry elephant Brendan's watch that every year the worst road I've ever been on my traveling companions from the wildlife protection office Hunter Wyler and soon heen have invited local journalists cheered to join us so he can witness firsthand what's happening in the cardamoms once more we're heading into the Khmer Rouge as former territory it wasn't far from here that cheered was stationed when he was a Khmer Rouge soldier [Music] nearly everyone who lives here was once in the Khmer Rouge this was where they rule last of longest it is the remotest and wildest corner of Southeast Asia the cardamon mountains are on Cambodia's southern coast and they're one of Southeast Asia's last wilderness areas our destination is the remote village of Assam the cardamon's are covered with thick tropical rainforest which is full of wildlife this is what Cambodia would have looked like before land clearance and mass exploitation of forests ironically if the country had remained under the Khmer Rouge the loggers would have been kept at bay [Music] this is illegal people cutting tree down very fast and they are moving into the junk hall and blowing up the elephant and tiger so I'm afraid it will be all of three and animal will be going in the next video or two year if the government yeah if the government do not have any action to stop this kind of activity and it's not just loggers in the last couple of years some five thousand refugees have moved in they want land so they slash and burn the jungle this is the village of Osan if the Khmer Rouge had had their way all of Cambodia would have been like Assam to them it was the ideal community there was no money no organised religion it was free of intellectuals and decadence - the Khmer Rouge this was a peasant communist utopia the Osan village elders are animists they worship the spirits of the forest the Khmer Rouge tolerated these beliefs as they pose no threat but their isolation and this simple uncomplicated lifestyle is coming to an end the cardamon's are about to be caught in a pincer movement on one side the forces of exploitation as the loggers denude the forests on the other side the forces of ignorance as the refugees slash and burn for hunter and Sun Haiyan it's a race against time they must find out what animals live in these jungles otherwise they can't mount an argument for their preservation for them the camera traps are the key providing hard evidence that this wilderness should be preserved thankfully they're already finding a treasure trove of rare animals our cameras snap southeast-asian wild cattle sambar deer clouded leopards and a rare Indochina tiger but alas no - horned unicorn the elusive keating war though if it exists anywhere it'll be here in the cardamom mountains [Music] even skilled hunters who spend years from the forest only encounter one of these animals maybe one three five seven ten years it's usually once or twice in a lifetime encounter from what we were able to learn to Cerreta has never seen one and he's spent over 15 years in the forest 12 years as the Khmer Rouge gorilla as a hunter for the girl of supplying meat he's one of the most skilled hunters in Cambodia and he in the cardamoms 12 years in the forest he's never seen it kidding more so I guess if the KT boar is hero nod it's academic because this forest actually might not be here in five years time that's why we're all working so hard to establish a new protected forest and seria exempt from logging to preserve the species we know about and probably other unknown species maybe not as big and glamorous with the kidding war but surveys from the last year have turned up new species of snakes butterflies moths this is a biodiversity treasure house and we do need to inventory it thoroughly when you need to preserve what we have [Music] [Music] in a small shrine I find a monk giving blessings for all who enter and I can't help but leave a prayer of hope on the ancient altar [Music] it's too late to stop the killing fields and probably it's too late to save the snake eating to Horned unicorn but it's not too late to stop the destruction in the cardamon mountains and it's not too late to prevent Cambodia's other endangered wildlife following the Keating war [Music] it's also not too late to consider the lessons of ancient and core though next time there may not be any trees left to take their revenge here at the ends of the earth [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, BBC documentary, history documentary, documentary history, david adams films, khmer rouge documentary, khmer rouge, cambodia documentary, pol pot, killing fields, khmer rouge history, travelling documentary, travelling documentary 2019, david adams, david adams documentary, david adams timeline

Id: MU4hWdIMTGs

Length: 50min 22sec (3022 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 03 2019