02’00”
Start
music 10"
(ext. prison, barbed wire)
02’10”
Kann Kall
02’37”
Voice-off
This week Cambodia commemorates the 20th birthday off the taking of Pnom Penh by the Khmer Rouges troupes. The bloody and cruel regime of Pol Port is said to be responsible for the death of more than one million people.
(images photographs with children torture bed)
02’49”
Kann Kall,
03’08”
Voice-off
In this Khumer Rouge prison in the capital Pnom enh some 200,000 people were systematically tortured to death. The terror has been filed with an almost religious fervou. Each and every prisoner was photographed Kann Kall’s parents weren’t among them. Nevertheless he never saw them back. They probably died like so manyothers anonymously somewhere in the countryside.
(images photographs, Kann in the photo hall)
03’33”
Kann Kall
03’38”
Voice off
The communist regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge wanted to start from scratch. All the city people were send off to the countryside. Men, women and children were separated. They were put into different brigades to do forced labour. City people weren’t as obedient as people from the country and had to be obliterated. Pol Pot’s regime was only to be successful with the total submission of it’s people.]
(image: Pol Pot room with statues, Kann Kall behind barbed wire)
04’03”
Kann Kall
04’31”
Voice off
Kann was 14 years old when the Cambodian Holocaust began. He was 17 when the Vietnamese entered Phnom Penh in 1979.
Pol Pot had to flee. Cambodia was thrown into a civil war that continues until the present day.
(image: Photograph, Kann in the photo hall)
04’42”
Voice-off
Rush hour in the centre of Pnom Penh. Little one notices of the ongoing war with the Khmer Rouge. But once you sidetrack the main roads and you will ntice that 20 years of continuous war have destroyed the country and it’s people.
(image: rush hour: bicycle tai’s and Mercedes)
04’55”
Voice-off
In 1991 the future seemed bright. All is well that ends well. The UN began one of it’s biggest operations. They were there to organize free elections. The international community decided to pour money into development programmes. In the end the Khmer Rouge refused to go along and went through with their guerrilla war.
(image: dumpsite; UN-logo, NGO’s , street, Interaid, Worldrelief)
05’20”
Voice-off
Development programmes had difficulties coming off the ground. The World Food programme couldn’t bring loval production to an adequate level. Observerers felt that something was very wrong here.
(image: World Food programme exterior)
05’32”
Cecile de Sweemer
(WHO World Health Organisation)
The programme could only work unless people had confidence in each other. It was very clear that people even in the smallest village had chosen to isolate themselves, to survive in silence and rather not cooperate with each other. The fear of being accused dominated everything. That is why Cambodia remained where it was.
06’07”
Voice Off
20 Years of continuous warfare left its marks on the mental state of the Cambodian. An april 1994 WHO-conference tried to map the causes.
The Cambodian experienced far too much.
(image: blend to countryside, woman and bicycle)
06’23”
Voice-off
This is the village To Kwang in the province Khompon Sue some 30 kilometers from Phnom Penh. Here the first moves towards mental aid to the villages are being made.
(image: social worker busy with boy)
06’35”
Social worker
He is confused. Sometimes he became violent and was angry at someone. Sometimes he became very frightened.
06’49”
Voice-off
This young man gets very heavy medication. According to members of his family he was never able to accept the loss of his mother during the Pol Pot regime.
The social worker guides the Dutch anthropologist Willem van de Put. In this village with 300 inhabitants 5 patients need heavy medicines. 70% of the people here suffer regularly from depressions, 30 % are heavily depressed.
(image: Willem and social worker on the road in hut enters sick girl)
07’14”
Social Worker
During Pol Pot’s time, the father of this patient died. After that her feeling was not good. She was depressed and couldn’t stay with her relatives. Her mother said she reminded her too much of her father. Sometimes she wants to takes off her clothes and walk around in the village.
07’53”
Voice-off
It is in villages like these that the Cambodian holocaust passed. The regime of Pol Pot not only made victims in every family. Each and everybody was set against everybody. If you knew someone who had done something wrong you were as guilty as the person himself.
(image: in the hut, village)
08’06”
Kann Kall
08’30”
Willem van de Put
(anthropologist)
During de Khmer Rouge period the villagers were taught that everyone had to spy on everyone. The communists also did this. The villagers were taught that everyone was the spy, the policeman and solder to everyone else.
09’05”
The Western donor countries begin to see that the Pol Pot regime and the civil war have brought an enormous mental damage. There doesn’t seem to be an easy solution.
09’14”
This woman lost her husband to the same Khmer Rouge she can still hear on the radio everyday. To us, she sears she doesn’t listen to this station any loner. But if the neighbours would notice this, they might tell it to the Khmer Rouge…
(image: Willem and social worker with woman with towel before her eyes
image: woman and radio and photograph dead person)
09’26”
Kann Kall (off voice)
(image: Kann at his typewriter)
09’35”
Voice –off
Presently Kann Kall assists Willem van de Put starting up a programme supporting local projects. Like most Cambodians he is not sure whether he can manage the constant confrontation with the past.
(image: Willem van de Put arrives at the Killing Fields monument, Kann Kall, sculls)
09’48”
Many of the responsible realize that Cambodia only then will have a future when it can throw off the spiritual load from the last decades. But with the ongoing civil war, especially in the countryside the shadow of Pol Pot still remains very alive.
10’02”
Kann Kall
10’32”
END