Les Sillars - Intended for Evil: A Survivors Story of Love, Faith, and Courage in the Cambodian Killing Fields

Y ou should call this guy, David Aikman told me in the fall of 2013. We were in a hallway at Patrick Henry College, where we both taught. David, a senior Time correspondent for many years, had heard from mutual friends an incredible tale about a Cambodian Christian who had survived the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. According to David, this person wanted someone to write down his stories. He passed along the email address of one Radha Manickam of Seattle.

As my knowledge of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge at the time consisted of a hazy recollection of a movie, The Killing Fields , I had no idea where this might lead. But I sent Radha a note, and we set up a phone call. Radha mentioned his forced marriage, the loss of almost all his family, and seeing people murdered. I promised to do some reading and call him back.

I soon realized that the Khmer Rouge regime was one of modern historys greatest catastrophesand one largely forgotten in recent years. I found the Khmer Rouge both horrifying and fascinating. No other government in modern history has killed a greater percentage of its own citizens? The most totalitarian government ever attempted? Torture, starvation, and mass executions? Civil war and bloody revolution? Because of the Vietnam War, the American military was involved in Cambodia and even, said critics, partly responsible? And Radha, then a new Christian and the slightly spoiled son of a wealthy merchant, had lived through it all? Wow.

So in January 2014, I started interviewing Radha; we had long conversations at least weekly for a year. Every time we spoke, he told me something else that made my jaw drop: people sliced open before his eyes, treks through the jungles, unbelievable deprivation, and a faith that survived many doubts and much anger. The story he told was stunning. I hope Ive done it justice.

The human memory is often less than completely accurate, but Radhas story was remarkably consistent with what I was learning in my investigations about life under the Khmer Rouge. For example, when Radha described how the leaders of his village were purged in the summer of 1978 or communal dining areas were instituted in the fall of 1976, I later read in various historical and scholarly studies that, yes, the Central Committee in Phnom Penh had instituted just such a policy around that time.

Radhas story also matched the many memoirs of Khmer Rouge victims; what he described for me corresponded to the experience of many, many other people. He seemed rather reluctant to dwell on the more sensational details, which made him all the more credible to me.

Quotation marks indicate my best attempt to represent accurately the substance and tone of Radhas conversations as he recalled them, but of course the dialogue is not verbatim; obviously, its difficult for anyone to recall exactly what they said thirty-five years ago. Where possible, I confirmed dialogue with Samen or others.

A note on spelling Angka: its also commonly spelled Angkar (pronounced with a silent r), but many of the scholars writing closest to the time of the Khmer Rouge tended to prefer the shorter version, so I went with that.