Synopsis
« Khmers islam », a documentary filmed during the Spring of 2008 in
Cambodia reveals the merciless repression suffered by muslims under the
regime of the Khmer rouge (1975-1979). During those four years, when the
entire Cambodian population suffered a ruthless descent into hell, the
muslims had been particularly targeted by the Khmer rouge death machine
which saw them as « enemy No.1 ».
Based in the fishing villages of Mekong or in the muslim quarters of Phnom
Penh, the directors of « Khmers islam »went to meet the survivors. Their
words, incited and recorded by Hisham Mousar – young franco-cambodian lawyer
engaged in the promotion of human rights, show the ferocity with which the
Khmer rouge have attempted to exterminate the large muslim community of
Cambodia.
Torn between the fear of talking and the desire for revenge, the survivors
deliver stories that become more and more harrowing as the film goes on :
round-ups of children, abjurations, mass murder. Beyond the humilations and
the profanations (transformation of mosques into pigstys, use of the Koran
as lavatory paper, etc), it is the hard reality of the « muslim genocide »
which appears for the first time on our screens.
At the time when the international trial of the main Khmer rouge leaders
opens to Cambodia, this recognition of muslim suffering finally opens the
path towards reconcilaiton and justice. Far from coming down to an annex or
community question, the problematic of a muslin genocide is the deciding
factor on the juridical front as it makes legal proceedings against the
Khmer rouge for crimes against humanity possible ; and, from an historic
point of view, it demonstrates that the Khmer rouge ideology, far from
coming down to an extreme maoism, also contained a racist component which
radically distinguishes it from other communist dictatorships.
