Halfway down the Danube: Ta Mok: A Handshake Away

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From the Washington Post: "Ta Mok, known as "The Butcher" for his brutality as military chief of the communist Khmer Rouge, died July 21 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, his lawyer said. He was believed to be 80. "Ta Mok had been in and out of consciousness since last week at the military hospital in the capital, where he was being treated for high blood pressure, tuberculosis and respiratory complications, attorney Benson Samay said. Ta Mok had been in government custody since 1999." What caught my eye: the name of the lawyer.

This requires a brief digression into Cambodian history. If that bores you, skip the next few paragraphs. Cambodia, late 1978. The genocidal, psychotic Khmer Rouge regime is preparing for war with Vietnam. This is a Very Bad Idea. Vietnam has six times the population of Cambodia. It has tanks, heavy artillery, and warplanes, and an army of a million battle-hardened veterans. But the Khmers Rouges are insane, so they're gearing up for war. For genocidal dictator Pol Pot, preparing for war does not mean stuff like "improve training" or "buy more equipment". No. It means "purge and kill". As long as the comrades are ideologically pure, they can easily defeat the Vietnamese deviationists. Didn't the Khmers Rouges defeat the old Khmer Republic, even though the Republic had artillery and tanks, and the help of the US Air Force? But to ensure purity, it's first necessary to ruthlessly root out weakness and treason. Pol Pot's chosen tool for this was Ta Mok. Mok had already proven himself in the Southwest District, where he had presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. His nickname was "The Butcher", and he deserved it. Everyone but Pol Pot was terrified of him. He was sort of the Beria to Pol Pot's Stalin. Ta Mok was every bit as bad as his boss, if not worse. Moral comparisons begin to break down here. Pol Pot set policy, Ta Mok carried it out, nearly two million people died. Who was more evil? It's a meaningless question. But while Ta Mok is not a household name, he makes the short list of the 20th century's greatest killers. So Pol Pot sent Ta Mok to the Eastern District, the frontier region with Vietnam, to prepare for the coming apocalypse. Eastern District had been through a few purges already, so a few of the local Communist leaders were bright enough to see what was coming. Two of them included a division commander named Heng Samrin, and a young cadre officer named Hun Sen. As soon as Heng and Hun heard that Ta Mok was coming, they ran. Ran across the border, to the enemy, to Vietnam. Ta raged, and killed hundreds of officers and Party members, and thousands of helpless peasants. A few months later, the Vietnamese attacked. The Khmer Rouge army collapsed. In six weeks the Vietnamese were masters of the country. Pol Pot, Ta Mok and a few other Khmer Rouge leaders fled across the western border into Thailand. The Vietnamese installed a puppet government with Heng Samrin in charge. But Heng turned out to be weak and ineffectual, so after a few years they replaced him with the younger, more energetic Hun Sen. That was in 1985. Hun Sen has been running Cambodia ever since. The remaining Khmers Rouges lurked across the border in Thailand through the 1980s, but in the 1990s they began to disintegrate. Pol Pot died in 1998, under mysterious circumstances -- it's quite possible that Ta Mok turned against him and had him killed. Then Ta Mok himself was captured in 1999. This was something of an embarassment for Hun Sen's government. A lot of former Khmers Rouges found their way back into power under Hun Sen. Why not? They were his former comrades, after all. And he had pragmatically agreed to let all the lower and middle ranking Khmers Rouges back with no worse than a tap on the wrist. Only a handful of names -- the inner circle of the leadership, the most notorious killers and torturers, the worst of the worst -- were banned, and those only because of international attention. Hun Sen's solution was simple: he kept the bad guys locked up, but never brought them to trial. Trial would be bad; they might name names, and they'd certainly bring back memories. No, better to keep them under confinement until they could simply die of old age. Fast forward to early 2006. I'm in Phnom Penh, and I have an interview with Benson Samay. He's the guy who has the complete monopoly on all notary activities in Cambodia. That may not sound like much, but Cambodia is a country of thirteen million people, and -- in theory -- every major contract, including every sale of land, must first be reviewed by Benson Samay. I remember coming back from that interview and saying, damn, what a total sleaze. Huge, ghastly building right in the middle of downtown, mansion and office combined, a jarring combination of Chinese temple and Roman villa. An office full of heavy, expensive furniture, valuable-looking sculptures, Chinese rugs, American bric-abrac. Samay was jittery and didn't want to talk about details; I had the impression he half regretted granting an interview, and didn't want it to go on too long. He wanted to brag, but didn't want to answer questions. I had no idea about his clientele. But of course it makes sense. Samay got his monopoly by being close to Hun Sen. I have no doubt Samay's job was to keep Ta Mok out of a courtroom until he died of natural causes. And he succeeded. -- I find a lot of stories referring to Samay as Ta Mok's lawyer. Oddly enough, Samay doesn't seem to be, well, a lawyer. Nobody can say where he got his law degree. And the Cambodian Bar Association kicked him out in 2001. Not that this matters. Hun Sen's Cambodia is a spectacularly corrupt country, and the Prime Minister's favor is a more important qualification than any degree. Ta Mok died in bed at the age of eighty. Benson Samay is rich and getting richer. Hun Sen has been in charge for twenty years, and looks good for many years to come. Cambodia goes on. And that's all.