Democratic Kampuchea as a Death-Cult
In November 1978, a bizarre story flashed across news wires around the world. Deep in the Guyana jungle, an exiled cult from the U.S. had committed “revolutionary suicide”, and the aerial footage showed rows and rows of bodies, adults and children, 908 in all, spread out around the commune. Not long after, pictures were broadcast of the disastrous aftermath of Democratic Kampuchea.
Although they were concurrent, these two stories didn’t seem to have much in common, other than being veiled in mystery and nobody knew at the time, or at least wanted to say, what had actually gone on. In time, many things come to light, and while watching a documentary recently, I thought about the many parallels between the two.
Louie Louie- We Gotta Go.
When Jim Jones moved his community of dispossessed people away from San Francisco, overnight they pretty much dropped off the map. Similarly, when Phnom Penh finally fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975, almost all contact with the outside world was severed. The leaders of Democratic Kampuchea saw plots everywhere, and Jim Jones, for very different reasons, was paranoid in the extreme. Outsiders were to be feared or thought of as enemies, and no communication with them would be tolerated. Anyone not with me is against me!
Heaven must be missing an angel?
Away from the interference of outsiders, both societies got busy creating their own version of “heaven on earth”, supposedly to help the poor. This generally involved mandatory hard labor, enforced by armed guards. Working in the fields they had carved from the encroaching jungles, everyone strived for self-sufficiency, and had better be happy about it! Jonestown, to be fair, had more resources to hand, and initially appeared to be a fertile and vibrant community, with flowers, disco music and vegetable gardens in abundance, but beneath this rosy exterior the situation was far from being utopian. Socialist ideals were taken and warped into a form that would have been unrecognizable to either Marx or Engels.
When the Chimes End- Pick up your Guns.
By late 1978, after a prolonged isolation, Democratic Kampuchea had been persuaded by some of its foreign backers to open up to the outside world. Groups of foreign journalists, mainly from the Eastern Block countries, but also a handful of Western writers, were invited to see things for themselves. Around the same time, on the other side of the world, Congressman Leo Ryan and a group of accompanying newsmen were allowed to visit Jonestown to investigate reports of human rights abuses amongst Ryan’s former constituents. Malcolm Caldwell was among the Western journalists to visit Democratic Kampuchea, and as a Marxist sympathizer of the regime, was granted a long private interview with Pol Pot. Both Caldwell’s and Ryan’s respective groups had been shown what could be termed “model communities”, and shielded from the truth.
Caldwell, on the one hand, had a rather blinkered view of things, and was probably only looking to reinforce his already-formed views, while Ryan could not have been more different, and was by the end of his visit becoming more and more skeptical and alarmed. During their visit, one of Ryan’s entourage had been passed a note by a dissatisfied Jonestown resident. On observing this, a nearby child was heard shouting “He’s passed a note!”, and in some ways this echoes Democratic Kampuchea’s documented use of children as spies. Anyway, neither Congressman Leo Ryan nor Malcolm Caldwell survived to report their findings, as both were murdered before they had managed to leave. The idea that it was better to die than to live under any compromised situation was what these two quite different situations had most in common.
Do it to me one more time, I can never get enough…
Looming above many of the pictures from Jonestown is a sign. It states; “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” A seemingly poignant slogan, in the post-holocaust world, but on closer examination one not heeded. In the early decades of the nineteenth century the population of Cambodia had seemingly reached their lowest point. Ravaged by foreign armies, they looked for refuge in the forests, where many survived in dreadful circumstances, and others starved. The words of an old sage had prophesized bad times, when black crows would reign all over the land, people would be thrown to all corners, and evil would triumph.
Little did they know that worse was to come. On the very site where Jonestown was built, but more than one hundred years earlier, a missionary had come to the area. He had preached to the Indians who lived there at that time, and they had come to agree on one thing. In order for these natives to enter the kingdom of heaven, they would have to die, one and all. So there this nineteenth-century preacher found himself, dosing out poison to the converts. Perhaps, for a moment, while they chewed on that fatal host they saw the “good times” ahead. What we can be sure of is that they had all soon checked out, permanently.
Dermot Sheehan
