PAILIN, Cambodia — Their dreams and reputations spent, Khmer Rouge leaders have turned this malaria-racked frontier town into a retirement community where old friends reminisce and need offer no apologies for their murderous reign of terror.
For them and their followers, Pailin, a longtime Khmer Rouge fortress in the mile-high jungles of western Cambodia, is a purgatory of last resort, a one-horse town so isolated and primitive and full of sullied memories that life itself feels otherworldly and the darkness of the night is unsettling.
But with Cambodia now at peace for the first time in 30 years, Pailin no longer rattles the senses as do the killing fields of Choeung Ek, where thousands upon thousands died, or the torture chambers of Tuol Sleng. The guns are gone, the checkpoints have disappeared, and the denizens--a who's who of Cambodia's "dark years"--greet visitors with smiles and a graciousness that mask the town's chilling history.
What feels most eerie is that all of Pailin has selective amnesia. There is no repentance, no soul-searching. No one accepts culpability, or blames the Khmer Rouge, for crimes committed 20 years ago, and the prospect of any war crimes tribunal is remote. The only culprit, people say, is Pol Pot, the movement's mastermind, who died last year in a reported suicide. With him, they say, are buried the horrors of the past.
"During the critical years, we were told we were defending and rebuilding Cambodia," said En Sopeap, 56, once a senior Khmer Rouge intelligence officer. "We believed that. It never crossed my mind there were killing fields.
"Personally, I never received an order to kill or harm anyone, and I never issued such an order. Sure, you'd go to work and find people had disappeared. You just figured they were suspected of something and were sent to an education camp."
But even En Sopeap admits that the Khmer Rouge, during its 1975-79 reign, managed to turn back the calendar to another century.
Pailin has no telephones and no electricity except for what an occasional generator supplies. Teenagers can hardly read or write. No one knows what a credit card or a traveler's check is. Few people have ever heard of a typewriter, much less a computer. Visitors are so rare that when a Westerner went into the Golden Swan for lunch, the entire staff of 12 gathered around his table just to stare.
