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Long-lost Khmer Rouge soldiers emerge from jungle

Swiss Info ^ | 12.08.04 | Ek Madra

Posted on by Dr. Marten

Long-lost Khmer Rouge soldiers emerge from jungle

By Ek Madra



LOUT, Cambodia (Reuters) - When Vietnamese troops overran his village in 1979, Romam Chhung Loeung, a

Khmer Rouge guerrilla, had no option but to flee with friends and family into the dense jungle of

northeast Cambodia.



Twenty-five years later, the group emerged from the forest in clothes made of bark and leaves,

unaware that the war was over, the Vietnamese had gone and Pol Pot was dead.



In an extraordinary tale of human survival, the refugees lived on whatever scraps they could find in

the jungle, fearful of any contact with humans, who they believed were the enemy, slugging out the final

chapter of the Cold War in Indochina.



"Whenever we heard gun-shots or people chopping trees, we would move to another site," Romam Chhung

Loeung said after a tearful reunion with relatives in Ratanakiri province, around 250 miles northeast of

the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.



"I cannot remember how many huts we built during those years," he said.



Another refugee, Lek Mun - 15 when he fled, now 39 - recalled with horror the day the Vietnamese

stormed his village as part of the invasion to oust Pol Pot and his ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge, the regime

behind the "Killing Fields" genocide in which 1.7 million are thought to have died.



Soldiers sprayed the forest with machine-gun fire, believing retreating Khmer Rouge guerrillas were

hiding in the trees.



"I saw three people killed. Would you stay in an area like that? No way," Lek Mun told Reuters.



YEARS ON THE RUN



When they fled, the four families, numbering a dozen in total, carried what they could - guns,

clothes, knives, rice, salt, pots and pans.



But as the days stretched to weeks, months and then years and supplies dwindled and disappeared, they

were forced to live like animals off the forest.



When their clothes wore out, they went naked. When the first of the group's 22 children were born,

they made garments out of leaves and bark to protect them from the cold and the malaria-carrying

mosquitoes that infest southeast Asia's jungles.



In the darkness beyond the light of the camp-fires lay other dangers - tigers, bears, snakes, or

landmines left behind from the Vietnam War.



Roots and leaves from the forest floor were their only medicines; animals snared in jungle creeper

traps, their only meat; wild fruits their only dessert.



"All we cared about was survival," Lek Mun said. "We ate anything we could swallow - red ants, mice,

snakes, birds, even tree roots."



"We ate bird meat but kept the seeds from the bird's crop to plant," said another refugee at a

village party celebrating their emergence into the 21st century -- albeit in one of the poorest parts of

one of the poorest countries in Asia.



GLIMPSES OF MODERNITY



For those born on the run, the only glimpses of modernity were the distant vapour trails of

commercial aircraft streaking across the skies long after Hanoi pulled its troops out of Cambodia in

1989.



"When I was there, all I saw were bears, snakes and deer but now I see lots of different things,"

said Mun Kayang, a pallid youth in his 20s.



Like others born into the group, the only other humans he knew were in his immediate vicinity. As the

children grew older, intermarriage was commonplace.



Gradually, as their numbers swelled to more than 30 and health deteriorated, the group's leaders

yearned for a return to humanity.



Only then did they realise they were lost in the trackless wastes of forest along the Cambodia-Laos

border, criss-crossed a quarter of a century earlier by the myriad paths of the Ho Chi Minh trail.



"We wanted to get out but no one could lead us," said Lek Mun's wife, her five month-old-baby - the

latest of her five children - asleep in her arms.



Finally, in early November - more than five years after the death of Pol Pot - they found a truck

tyre which they cut into "Pol Pot sandals", the make-shift shoes worn by the guerrillas.



A few days later, they were picked up by police in neighbouring Laos and taken back to Cambodia under

the auspices of astonished officials from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).



"I had to leave because I wanted to die in a better place - not sad in the jungle," Lek Mun said.



Stunned relatives immediately threw a party of rice wine, pig soup and papaya to welcome back loved

ones from beyond the grave.



"I felt that they were out there in the jungle, but I could not reach them. I feel so sorry for

them," said 60-year-old Nong Konthap, after recounting about Cambodia's landmark elections in 1993, the

beginning of the end of decades of civil war.



Mun Kayang, a refugee in his early 20s, said he felt as though he had moved from darkness to light.

Reuters

TOPICS:

Culture/Society

Foreign Affairs

News/Current Events

KEYWORDS:

cambodia

khmer

khmerrouge





To: Dr. Marten

Man, that's a long time to wait for a Happy Meal.



by 2 posted onby WestVirginiaRebel (Conservatism pays off. Liberalism just wants to be paid.)

To: Dr. Marten

"I going to DISNEY WORLD!"



by 3 posted onby Darkwolf377 (Americans never quit. --Gen. Douglas MacArthur)

To: Dr. Marten





"John Kerry ran for what?"

"John Kerry ran for what?"

To: Dr. Marten

let me think.....they were part of a group that killed 1.7 million people, and yet they are welcomed back home like heroes?



To: Dr. Marten

25 years without committing genocide? How did they ever manage?



To: cherry

I was thinking the same thing.



To: cherry

Didn't the same thing happen with a Japanese soldier in the Philippines awhile back?



To: killjoy

ping



To: Dr. Marten

those asians just don't have a clue on how to read a map do they



To: cherry; Anti-Bubba182; Dr. Marten

let me think.....they were part of a group that killed 1.7 million people, and yet they are welcomed back home like heroes? This really has no bearing on thier situation. We don't know what positions they held in the KR. The current Premier of Cambodia, Hun Sen, was also part of the KR before fleeing to Vietnam. Hatred of the Vietnamese was one of the driving themes of the KR and these people were probably brainwashed into thinking that any Khmer would be shot on sight by the Vietnamese. Going out on a limb, most people in Cambodia that are over 40 years old probably had something to do with the KR based on the simple fact that they are alive.



by 11 posted onby killjoy (My kid is the bomb at Islam Elementary!)

To: angkor

ping



by 12 posted onby killjoy (My kid is the bomb at Islam Elementary!)

To: Dr. Marten; aculeus; general_re; Billthedrill; Constitution Day; BlueLancer; Poohbah; ...

Didn't the same thing happen with a Japanese soldier in the Philippines awhile back? Oft-recurring story, odd enough to ring true. Loyal servant of the Emperor -- unaware of fatal reverse, in summer of '45, to Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere -- emerges decades later from jungle, having survived God knows how.



To: Dr. Marten

In the NYT Version of the same story it says that they left the jungle after their Wi-FI Connection was lost.



To: dighton; Dr. Marten; general_re; Billthedrill; Constitution Day; BlueLancer; Poohbah

"I saw three people killed. Would you stay in an area like that? No way," Lek Mun told Reuters. He speaks American?



To: aculeus; killjoy

Am I missing something here?



Is "American" a language?

...perhaps only to those who have never been outside of her borders.



It's obvious that he was speaking through a translator who speaks ENGLISH.



To: Dr. Marten

It's obvious that he was speaking through a translator who speaks ENGLISH. Picky, picky, picky. Since when do Brit's say "No way"?



To: aculeus; Dr. Marten

Picky, picky, picky. Since when do Brit's say "No way"? Keep in mind US culture is exported all over the world through movies and television, yes even to Cambodia. It is amazing the slang you can hear even in very backwards places. There are even locals who will go out of their way to use the latest slang that they have heard. People are people no matter where in the world they are.



by 18 posted onby killjoy (My kid is the bomb at Islam Elementary!)

To: aculeus; killjoy

"Since when do Brit's say "No way"?"



Well, that might just depend on where you were educated or spend a lot of your time.



I use Chinese slang quite often....I'm an American (caucasian)



To: Dr. Marten; killjoy

Since when do serious print journalists resort to cheesy self-translations of foreigners they interview ... and then pass them off as quotations? Paraphrases would have been more appropriate rather than "quotes". This reporter is confused. He seems to think he's working as a movie-dubber.



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