Cambodians Await Word on Dictator

For years after the Khmer Rouge movement turned Cambodia into a prison, emptying the cities and forcing the population into hard labor, Song Tan and his family wondered what kind of person could torment so many people.

Even now, two decades later, they know his face only from outdated, grainy photos. So as reports indicated that the former dictator known as Pol Pot was to be turned over to authorities, Tan wanted to confront him, to stare into the face of evil, however wrinkled and sickly it might look after all these years, and ask him the questions that have tugged at him since he escaped Cambodia in 1979.

“I really want him to be alive to answer these questions: ‘What do you think about what you did?’ ” said the 47-year-old Long Beach pediatrician, whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge. “It would be a good ending to the Cambodian odyssey.”

Long Beach’s Little Phnom Penh neighborhood has been abuzz with reports of Pol Pot’s capture for days, as opposing factions within the Cambodian government have alternately confirmed and discounted reports of the militant leader’s surrender, apprehension or death. Word continued to spread Monday as refugees in this city, home to an estimated 40,000 Cambodians, called relatives in Asia and checked news reports.

If the latest accounts of Pol Pot’s fate prove to be false, it would not be the first time. Many Cambodians interviewed Monday wavered between hope and disbelief over rumors that the former dictator, believed to be responsible for the extermination of more than 1 million people, had been imprisoned by a breakaway cabal of his guerrilla soldiers.

His capture “is a thing I never imagined would happen,” said Tan. “I’m still skeptical that he will go to trial.”

Even if he is extradited and forced to stand before an international tribunal, several Cambodians said, there is no punishment that they would consider just.

Keat Yin, a Long Beach convenience store owner who also works in a social service agency, said his family believes that Pol Pot is already haunted by the ghosts of his victims.

“But we don’t think that is bad enough. He must be brought to justice. He must die,” said Yin, 38. “Even if he pays with his life, it is not enough.”

A veteran of Cambodia’s killing fields, Yin watched the Mekong River fill with bodies, saw workers die in public beatings, and witnessed whole families being slaughtered by Khmer Rouge soldiers.

“I will never forget,” he said. “I saw the beatings, the punishment. At night I would sneak away to fish--it was illegal to fish so I had to hide--and when it was still I could hear the beatings a mile or two miles away. The sound would carry. You would hear a thump, like someone hitting a drum, then a scream. . . . They didn’t care that so many people died. Life was worthless to them.”

And so Pol Pot’s life is now worthless to the survivors of his regime.

“I don’t want to hear that name in here,” said Leng Bun, 46, as she helped a customer in her Long Beach beauty salon. “I hate him. If he [was standing] by me, I’d get a knife to kill him.”

Bun recalls that she was on the verge of starving to death when she finally escaped Pol Pot’s authoritarian grasp in 1979.

“I was just only bone and skin. You know ‘The Killing Fields?’ ” she asked in reference to the 1984 film that depicted the horrors of the Khmer Rouge reign. “It was [worse] than that.”

But she doubted that a war crimes tribunal would ever be convened, saying Cambodian officials “don’t know what to do with him.”

Sovann Tith, director of the United Cambodian Community, a social service agency for refugees, also questioned the ultimate value of Pol Pot’s apparent capture.

“In my opinion, Pol Pot is the least threat. He’s going to die anyway. He’s too old and he’s too sick,” he said. “Pot Pot is one man, but he’s not the only one. There were others who were involved in all this. What happened to them? All those who are involved need to be brought to trial. Only then will we have a complete closure to the [Khmer Rouge] era.”

Of greater concern to Cambodian refugees, Tith said, are today’s political differences between the ruling factions.

“I’m afraid that war might erupt again because the two main political parties don’t work together . . . and that people wind up being killed again. I’m not concerned what happens to Pol Pot.”

Narin Kem, the editor of a weekly Cambodian newspaper, , said of Pol Pot’s reported capture: “It cannot solve any problems at all. Two million Cambodians [are] dead anyway. You take Pol Pot to trial, the 2 million people [would] not return back anyway.”

Most people interviewed, however, said Pol Pot must pay for his reign of terror.

“Three years, eight months, 20 days,” said Yin, the convenience store owner. “We remember the time exactly. In Cambodia in those days, time went by very slowly. . . . Pol Pot did remarkable damage to my country.”

Times staff writer Douglas P. Shuit and correspondent John Cox contributed to this story.

* A TRIAL FOR POL POT?

The U.N. is seeking ways to bring the former dictator, who reportedly is in custody, to trial. A4