Behind the Killing Fields: A Khmer Rouge Leader and One of His Victims

Chapter 11. The Homecoming

11. The Homecoming I do not seek revenge against you. We are all old now. Please do good things in the future. —Nuon Chea’s aunt Deng Chhoeng to Nuon Chea A convoy of vehicles carrying dozens of government bodyguards snaked through Wat Koh village and parked in front of a modest-looking home in early 1999. Residents of the farming community, always open to distractions from manual labor, came to see what the commotion was about. Some wondered why a high-ranking government official would visit their small town. Others thought it must be a general. A guard opened a car door and the guest of honor stepped out. Attendants rushed to steady him. Some of the guest’s relatives gasped when they saw how frail and weak he had become. Leaning on a cane, he walked slowly toward the crowd. As he recognized some of the faces before him, tears welled in his eyes. His first visit in decades, Nuon Chea had come home. The Khmer Rouge were no more, and the people Nuon Chea most wanted to see in his first days out of isolation were his family, still living in his hometown in Battambang province. He did not tell his relatives the exact day he would arrive, but they made preparations anyway, scurrying to cook enough food for the odd family reunion. From the airport in Battambang town, government security forces escorted him to the home of his handicapped sister, Lao Reuth, who had lived in their childhood home since she was born. When villagers realized it was Nuon Chea, word raced through the village. Many crowded into Lao Reuth’s home to hear what Brother Number Two had to say for himself after all these years. Nuon Chea has long had a ghostly presence in his family, but this was especially true after the Khmer Rouge were ousted by the Vietnamese in 1979. Most relatives treated him as the skeleton in their closet, not to be spoken of to outsiders or even among themselves. “It’s the one subject we did not talk about,” said Nuon Chea’s cousin Hout Panha, whose father, brother, and The Homecoming 145 sister died during the Khmer Rouge years. The specter of what he had done was always there, represented by absent family members and heartwrenching memories. Nuon Chea’s mother, Deng Peanh, rarely mentioned his name after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea. One of the few times came when Nuon Chea’s sister Lao Poun broke down crying and crawled to her mother’s feet, cursing her brother. “My husband and children were killed because of him,” she said. Deng Peanh stopped her, saying, “If you want revenge against him, and are angry at him, then you are cursing his mother.” Nuon Chea, who was later told about the exchange, said he understood that his mother reacted that way because she didn’t know what to do, divided between her daughter and son. When his mother died in 1981, her thoughts about her once cherished eldest son died with her. Nuon Chea’s younger brother, Lao Bun Long, a customs official who died in 1998, also never spoke of Brother Number Two. It was as if Nuon Chea never existed. “My mother never said anything about Nuon Chea,”Lao Poun said. “She kept her feelings in her heart. I think only the old people in our family talked about him in secret.” But Poun was not content to keep quiet. She often told relatives that she would stab Nuon Chea the next time she saw him. Her husband, a government soldier, was killed by the Khmer Rouge when the communist forces took over Phnom Penh. Three sons died later of illnesses and lack of medicine . “Living was very bad during the Khmer Rouge years and we never had enough food,” Lao Poun said. “I knew many people who were killed. One of my sons was arrested but he was later released. I was very happy when the Vietnamese came.” Nuon Chea’s aunt and Hout Panha’s mother, Deng Chhoeng, often talked about getting revenge against Nuon Chea. Her husband, Sieu Heng, and son were among the first to be killed in Wat Koh after the Khmer Rouge took power. Sieu Heng was one of the early leaders of the communist movement, and he and Nuon Chea worked together in the waning days of the French colonial era and the early days of Cambodia’s independence. At the...