HOME / dispatches: Notes from different corners of the world.

Digging for Gold in the Killing FieldsWhat a macabre treasure hunt reveals about Cambodia's uneasy relationship with its past.

By Suzy KhimmPosted Wednesday, June 13, 2007, at 3:02 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

RSS

To date, not a single individual has been held accountable for the atrocities of the ultra-Maoist regime that has been blamed for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians. When the regime ended in 1979, former Khmer Rouge officers were simply absorbed back into the power structure, and time has made the distinctions between victim and perpetrator even hazier. The nation's textbooks barely address the period, and an entire generation has grown up knowing astonishingly little about the traumas the country suffered.

Much hope is hinging on the U.N.-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a long-delayed tribunal that will try the surviving leaders of the regime and is slated to begin this year. (Old age and infirmity have already felled Pol Pot, Ta Mok, and other top commanders.) But even if the tribunal achieves some form of national deliverance, so much time has passed that Cambodians' own reactions to the regime have visibly diverged: Events that inspire one man's trauma may well be another man's gold. If and when reconciliation is possible, it may have to be a personal sort of reckoning with the country's hungry ghosts.

After the crowds had dispersed, one Sre Liev villager took it upon himself to gather the shards of bone that the diggers had left behind in puddles of muddy water. "It's not quiet here," said Sao Son as he draped a few large leaves over the remains to shield them from the steady drizzle. "I put them in one place so the monks can come and give a prayer."

The 66-year-old farmer still hated the Khmer Rouge for killing his four nephews, and he hoped the tribunal would deliver justice. But Sao Son hardly blamed his neighbors for joining the grave-looting. "The diggers were poor, they just wanted to get a little rice to eat," he said, watching as the final stragglers combed the site with sticks, their necks bent intently toward the ground.

A crowd digs for gold left on the bodies of Khmer Rouge victimsA few diggers had been lucky enough to find a bit of gold to buy a cow or a week's worth of provisions for their family. But the victims' ghosts came to haunt them, too, howling in their homes after the gold-digging spree ended, said Chuon Da, the landowner's husband. "The diggers will have a [Buddhist] ceremony this week—to express their thanks for finding the jewelry," he said, watching as three children chased each other inside an upturned grave, pulling at each other's muddied skirts.

Time may have numbed some of Cambodia's anguish. But its 30-year-old bones still need to be put to rest. "Even the poorest person believes that the soul is still there in the bones," said Youk Chhang. "The bones still speak, but now it's a shell, a scar of suffering … You hardly see people cry anymore when they see them."