Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under Pol Pot

Chapter Six: Monk Mortality and the Destruction of Institutional Buddhism

118 CHAPTER SIX monkmortalityand the destruction of institutional Buddhism Monks and Class Analysis In the 1950s the Khmer Workers’Party still reflected its connections with the saṅgha by describing significant segments of the Buddhist monastic order as possessing a “patriotic, progressive and national outlook” (Sher 2004, 70). Many of these monks were close enough to the land to have some “peasantlike characteristics,” according to the KWP, while others manifested “good political standpoints.” However, by the time of Democratic Kampuchea this preexisting yet rough-and-ready division between rural and urban monks had crystallized into a fairly solid distinction between “base monks” (saṅgh mūlaṭṭhān) and “new monks” (saṅgh thmī). While the former were deemed “proper and revolutionary,” the latter were now described as “imperialists” or as “April 17 monks” (saṅgh ṭap’ prāṃ bīr mesā). Nuon Chea (1987) made a similar distinction in a speech to delegates of the Danish Communist Workers’ Party visiting Cambodia in July 1978. In the talk, he contrasted “rank and file monks . . . [who were] not so reactionary” with those who occupied a high rank in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. After the emptying of the cities, April 17 monks were forced to live side by side with base monks. Often the base monks had lived under communist control for a number of years, for monasteries in base areas unaffected by large-scale fighting generally appear to have been in good to fair physical order until well after the fall of Phnom Penh. But the two groups were not treated equally. They were often not allowed to mix socially, and Monk Mortality 119 the former group underwent more rapid laicization. Thus there were virtually no April 17 monks remaining in robes by the beginning of the 1975 rainy-season retreat (vassā), which lasted from July to September, but there is evidence that plenty of base monks were allowed to observe the whole of vassā before being obliged to disrobe (DC-Cam 1996b, 56–58). From late September 1975, however, earlier distinctions ceased to operate, and all remaining Buddhist monks were now assigned to a “special” or “separate ” class that stood alongside the feudalists, the bourgeoisie, the peasants, and the workers.1 This “special class” (vaṇṇaḥ bises) also included intellectuals (anak ceḥ dịṅ),2 soldiers of the Khmer Republic, the police, and all national minorities. All were regarded as possessing no “practical awareness ” (Ly Sophal 2002, 17), in the sense that they were unaccustomed to the performance of productive labor. Early in Democratic Kampuchea, “Khmer Republic military officers and enlisted men, Khmer Republic civil servants, ‘new people,’ Buddhist monks, the Cham, Vietnamese and people of Vietnamese ancestry, and Chinese and people of Chinese ancestry” (Heder 2005, 382) were redefined as real or potential enemies (khmāṃṅ). The first wave in the elimination of such individuals largely focused on high-ranking military officers and civil servants. Senior monastics occupying positions in the national ecclesiastical hierarchy fell into this category, and they were smashed for much the same reasons as the highest level of the Phnom Penh–based Cham religious hierarchy were. The policy was soon expanded to cover most commissioned officers in the previous regime’s military and police forces, plus civil servants of equivalent rank (paṇtāsăkti) (ibid., 384). It would not be long before monks further down the hierarchy, especially at the provincial level, were in the firing line.3 The origins of this policy can be traced back to a conference held on 20–25 May 1975 in which Pol Pot and Nuon Chea announced an eight-point program, the fourth element of which was to “defrock all Buddhist monks and put them to work growing rice.” The conference also called for the complete disbanding (lup paṃpāt’) of the saṅgha,4 while a follow-up document , On Grasping and Implementing the Party’s Political Line of Gathering National-Democratic Front Forces, dated 22 September 1975, stated that the goal was to ensure that “monks were gone . . . in the sense that they . . . gave up their religion” and were “dissolved” into “collectively organized peasants ” (quoted in Heder and Tittemore 2004, 37n119). Yet neither statement can be legitimately construed as a plan to exterminate monks. 120 Chapter Six Killing Monks It is difficult to identify many rank-and-file ecclesiastics and laypersons who were killed simply because they practiced Buddhism. A story told to me by Chhorn...