Film With Rare Khmer Rouge Interviews Opens

By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
27 November 2009

A documentary film that uses rare interviews with Khmer Rouge leaders and foot soldiers to demonstrate the regime’s chain of command is screening in Amsterdam this week.

The 94-minute “Enemies of the People” includes testimony from the regime’s ideologue, Nuon Chea, who was silent on his role within the Khmer Rouge for 30 years and is now in detention awaiting an atrocity crimes trial at the UN-backed tribunal.

“For the first time, you can see the chain of command that went up and down the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge party,” one of the film’s producers, Rob Limkin, told VOA Khmer by phone.

“We make the connection between one person who received an order from another person, and we’re able to make quite close connections from all the way up from the top to the bottom of the Khmer Rouge,” he said.

Thet Sambath, the film’s co-producer, who lost his own family to the regime, spent almost 10 years researching the tragedy of the “killing fields” and meeting with some of the regime’s topmost leaders.

”I can say that the film documentary I am producing is different from others,” he said by phone from Amsterdam. “It is not to support anyone. It is in the middle and not in support of the Khmer Rouge or its victims. We are in the middle so that we can show the truth so everybody knows the real history.”