We chatted for the short time in very halting English before their train arrived. I learned they were from Cambodia and were on their first trip overseas. Then they boarded their train, waved goodbye, smiled again - and disappeared.
I had only started to learn about the dreadful atrocities inflicted on that lovely country a few years earlier. The politicking of King Norodom Sihanouk, the CIA inspired coups replacing one Prime Minister with a series of others. As Max Hastings writes of one in his masterful history of the Vietnam War,
Then the USA without approval from Congress and therefore illegally began a 14-month bombing campaign against this blighted country. The destabilisation that resulted led directly to the rise to power of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. The Americans departed and the country was soon closed off. Town and villages were emptied and all citizens sent to the countryside.Ky was a slick dandy with a pencil-thin moustache; he affected a custom-made black flight suit and an impressionable procession of wives and girlfriends. He was publicly affable, fluent, enthusiastic about all things American . . . and as remote as a Martian from the Vietnamese people.
Only in 1979 with the reports from British journalist William Shawcross did the world start to learn of the extent of the genocide inflicted on the poor Cambodian population. Over those four years, at least one and a half million people were either killed, murdered or tortured to death. The Killing Fields were born.
The world knows about the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot - now bracketed along with Stalin, Hitler and Mao as one of the most murderous distractors of the 20th century. Pol Pot was left to die of natural causes in the jungle. Only a few of his murdering cohorts have ever been brought to justice. Now we learn of the death two days ago of his No. 2, Nuon Chea, known during the terror as "Brother Number 2". He was captured in 1998 and finally faced a Court of Law in 2007. He never accepted any responsibility for being the mastermind behind Pol Pot's ultimately disastrous agrarian revultion. Even then it took another seven years before he was sentenced to life in prison. Now this personification of evil is himself finally dead. He died on Sunday.
As I watched that beautiful young Cambodian couple disappear on their train, I often wondered what they themselves must have suffered. And why the world had totally washed its hands as all that suffering was taking place.
The Rules for Prisoners at the infamous Tuol Sleng Prison. More than 12,000 were jailed. Less than a Dozen emerged alive
Monument at the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh
Further reading - three riveting books:
Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross - revised edition published by Cooper Square Press
Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy by Max Hastings - published by HarperCollins
The Gate by Francois Bizot - published by Vintage
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49234224