It is April 17, 1975 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge have seized the city, after five years of fighting the American-backed Khmer Republic.While most cheered the victory believing that it was necessary to free themselves from American imperialism, they were not certain about the future.
Khim attempts to leave Phnom Penh Hospital with some medical supplies but he is stopped by soldiers.He tells them that his wife is about to give birth and that he needs to get home.When one of the Khmer Rouge soldiers sees that he's a doctor he tells Khim to go quickly. When his superior returns, he tells him he was not a spy. The leave to being forcing people to leave the city.
Uncle Key stops by to see Vanny and Kongcha and their son Samay. While Key believes that the end of the war means equality and prosperity, Kongcha isn't so certain. He doesn't trust the communists. But Key believes the Khmer Rouge will prove they can govern Cambodia. Kongcha is worried about Vuthy who has come to their home with his family. Vuthy was a lieutenant in the Republican army and is hiding his weapons and uniform in the back yard.
Meanwhile Kongcha's daughter Lina comes downstairs and tells her father Kongcha and her mother Vanny that the Houys next door are leaving. Kongcha tells her they will wait until Khim returns but will start packing. Khim tells his family that things are becoming dangerous. So Kongcha and Vanny along with Reth, Phara, Sokha, Koliane, Khim and Lina, along with Lina's parents, Vuthy and Durmay and her brothers and her sister Chenda and her husband Mori and their son, all leave Phnom Penh. As they drive out, they see everyone else leaving as well, and that stores are being looted.Reth sees his math professor who tells him that the Khmer Rouge's claim that the city will be bombed by the Americans is not true, that instead the Khmer Rouge intend to relocate every one and want to reform society.
They travel across the Bassac River to Ta Prom. There Khim is recognized by a man whose son he delivered. The man offers them a place to stay. That night Lina gives birth to a baby boy they name Chan. Thankfully Lina and Khim manage to meet up with her parents.Khim and Sokha return to Phnom Penh and learn that the Khmer Rouge is asking all senior officials including doctors, managers and engineers to return to the city. Everyone else must return to their home villages to return to tilling the soil. While in the city, Khim and Sokha witness the Khmer Rouge murdering people.
That night Khim suggests they travel to Battambang where his parents live rather than return to the Phnom Penh. They decide to take apart the cars keeping the wheels and the gas. They cross the Mekong River in three boats, arriving at Rakakong. They stay in the pagoda where there are many soldiers wearing black uniforms, the Khmer Rouge. There they are ordered to report to the pagoda office.They are told they must write everything about themselves. The next morning they are ordered by the Khmer Rouge soldiers to get into boats that will take them to Kompong Cham. However, before they get into the boats, a man intervenes, telling the soldiers that they are his family. When Kongcha asks the man why he would do this for them, he identifies himself as Rong who worked at the ice factory. Rong tells them that he intervened because every morning the soldiers leave with a boatload of people who are all former bureaucrats and intellectuals. There are rumours that the boat stops in the middle of the Tonle Sap Lake and returns empty. His nephew saw the boat being cleaned of blood stains.
Khim and his family cross the river and begin their journey to Battambang. On the other side they craft a cart with the car wheels and pull the two carts along the road. They also train their children to lie about what their parents did prior to the Khmer Rouge taking over. By mid-August 1975 Khim's family had reached the river near the town of Kompong Thom. Kongcha meets a former employee named Song who is now a member of the Khmer Rouge but he doesn't know whether or not he can be trusted.They also meet Khim's Uncle Vithya. When Khim tells him they are travelling to Battambang, Vithya tells him they will never be allowed into the village. Instead the Khmer Rouge are rounding up people to send them into the countryside. Kongcha tells Khim and Lina to stay with Vithya, which they do.They meet Ming Vy, Vithya's daughter Nary, Dany and Phalla and their cousins Bo and Thy.
Bo tells Vithya they also want to go to Battambang and he has a plan. It involves sneaking through the checkpoint between 2 and 4am. However, the plan fails when several other family members don't wake them and Kongcha, Vanny, Khim, Lina, Vithya and his family are left behind. Vithya tries to present a fake permit but the Khmer Rouge do not accept it because it is not stamped.They are arrested and Khim and Vithya's families are sent to a village to be "re-educated according to the principles of Angkar." Song who is assigned to help relocate those not from the countryside, takes them to his village of Roneam.
It will be several years of terror, starvation, hard labour and indoctrination before the Khmer Rouge are defeated and Khim and his family have the chance to escape and reclaim their lives.
Discussion
Year of the Rabbit tells the story of one family's experiences under the Khmer Rouge as they imposed communist rule throughout Cambodia. The country had been a colony of France, finally achieving independence in 1953. At that time Cambodia was led by King Norodom Sihanouk. Although Cambodia was neutral in the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong's use of Cambodia as a haven for its soldiers and its supply lines, led the United States to bomb the country from 1965 to 1973. In 1970 a coup d'etat by Lon Nol, removed Sihanouk and led to the start of the Cambodian Civil War. Eventually the Khmer Rouge, initially supported by Sihanouk in the early part of the war, would win, overthrowing Nol and take control of the country in 1975. Under their leader, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge established a totalitarian regime: the cities were evacuated and the population forced into the countryside to work on farms. Ethnic minorities, intellectuals and former government officials as well as anyone who opposed the Khmer Rouge, were mass murdered. It is estimated almost two million people were killed. Eventually the Khmer Rouge were ousted by the Vietnamese who invaded the country in 1978. Elections held in 1981 did not provide stability as the government was not recognized internationally. In 1991, a peace agreement resulted in Sihanouk heading up a coalition government.
There is no doubt that Tian Veasna's family's story is an important one that must be told, but using the graphic novel format may not have been the most effective means to do so. The story is complex with many characters and it was difficult at times to determine the identity of the different family members in some of the comic panels, as the story unfolds. However, the family tree at the front of the novel helps immensely as do the maps showing their journey and the pages explaining some of the Khmer propaganda, the structure of the Khmer government, and events such as the Vietnamese invasion.
Year of the Rabbit captures the terror of life under the Khmer Rouge. Veasna portrays many situations in which the Khmer Rouge brutalized their own people including Khim and Lina's family members. After fleeing Phnom Penh, Khim and Sokha witness a Khmer Rouge firing squad executing people. On their way to Battambang, Khim and his family enter a village where everyone has been murdered. When they are relocated to the village of Roneam, the Khmer Rouge single out anyone with an education or who worked for the government. These people are then taken away to be murdered. Living conditions in the rural villages are terrible, with little food and hard labour in the fields. The prisons are even worse, where inmates are chained together and soil themselves. Lina's father, Kongcha dies in a prison where these conditions overwhelm him. No one knows for sure who they can trust and people denounce one another. Vithya denounces someone but when the man successfully proves he is mistaken, Vithya is thrown into a pit to be eaten alive by crocodiles.
Despite the horrors, the account is filled with many small miracles Khim and Lina's family experience. For example, when they are at the pagoda a man who once worked for Khim intervenes, claiming Khim and his family are relatives. The Khmer Rouge relent and do not force the family into boats that would have taken them into the lake to be murdered. And ultimately, when the Khmer Rouge are deposed, Khim and Lina and many surviving family members are able to leave Cambodia and start new lives in other countries, although their experiences haunt them.
Year of the Rabbit is a novel that needs to be read by young readers. Besides a story of survival, resiliency and courage, it holds lessons in tolerance, acceptance and warns future generations what can happen when we stop striving to live in peace with each other and when we see differences as reasons to hate.
Readers may want to learn more about Cambodia and the Pol Pot regime:
Yale University's Genocide Studies Program: Cambodian Genocide
Book Details:
Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna
Drawn & Quarterly 2020
376 pp.