The Week UK – 23 August 2019

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24 August 2019 THE WEEK

Obituaries

Nuon Chea, who has died
aged 93, “was Pol Pot’s right-
hand man in the genocidal
Khmer Rouge regime in
Cambodia that killed up to three million of
its own people”, said The Times. Known as
“Brother Number Two”, he was the regime’s
chief ideologue, ensuring that its “ultra-
extremist brand of Maoist and Stalinist thinking
was murderously implemented”. So committed
was Nuon Chea to the Khmer Rouge that he
personally authorised the murder of dozens of
his own family. Two of his nieces were sent to
the notorious Security Prison 21,aformer
school in the capital Phnom Penh that was used
for interrogations and executions. Decades
later, Nuon Chea was convicted of genocide
and crimes against humanity by UN tribunals.

Nuon Chea was born Lao Kim Lorn in 1926, to
awell-off Chinese-Cambodian family in the
western city of Battambang. His father was a
corn farmer and trader, his motheraseamstress. He moved to
Bangkok to complete his education, but in 1950, he joined the
Communist Party of Indochina and returned to Cambodia to
“participate in the struggle against French colonialism”, said The
Washington Post. He adopted Nuon Chea as his “revolutionary
name”, and went to North Vietnam for training for two years.
Back in Phnom Penh, he met Pol Pot and was elected deputy
secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, dubbed the
“Khmer Rouge”–red Cambodians–bythe nation’s post-
independence leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In 1957,
the party arranged Nuon Chea’s marriage to Ly Kim Seng.

Pol Pot, fearing arrest by Sihanouk’s police, fled into hiding on
the Vietnamese border in 1963. Undetected by the police, Nuon
Chea stayed behind in the capital to build up the party, sometimes

visiting Pol Pot in his jungle hideouts. In 1970,

Sihanouk was deposed byamilitary coup, and

the power of the Khmer Rouge grew rapidly.

Nuon Chea himself convinced the North

Vietnamese to launch an invasion against the

US-backed Khmer Republic. In April 1975,

the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh; soldiers,

officials and intellectuals were massacred.

After Pol Pot’s forces seized control, they

declared “Year Zero”, said The Daily

Telegraph, “abolishing religion, schools and

currency, and set about turning the country

into apeasant society”. Towns and cities were

emptied; more than two million people left

Phnom Penh inamatter of days. Families

were separated, forced into new collectives

and made to work in the countryside in the

notorious “Killing Fields”, where, at a

conservative estimate, 1.7 million people

(more thanafifth of the population) died from

execution, starvation, disease and overwork.

Amid economic ruin, the revolution turned on itself and Nuon

Chea, who ran state security, launched purge after purge.

The Khmer Rouge “utopia” was ended byaVietnamese invasion

in 1975, but the group waged guerilla war from its jungle bases

in western Cambodia until 1998, when Pol Pot died. Nuon Chea

then surrendered, but there was no immediate attempt to bring

him to justice. In 2002,aBBC reporter found him living quietly

in the countryside with his wife and grandchildren, proclaiming

his innocence. But when he eventually came to trial beforeaUN-

backed tribunal in 2011, he was damned by the files preserved at

Security Prison 21, and by his own words. Interview recordings

showed that he was unrepentant, saying: “We only killed the bad

people, not the good.” He was convicted, first in 2014, and on

separate charges last year, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nuon Chea

1926-2019

The documentary-maker D.A.

Pennebaker, who has died aged

94, wasapioneering force. Best

known for his groundbreaking

filmDon’t Look Back,which followed Bob

Dylan on his 1965 UK tour, he hadahabit of

capturing pivotal moments in the history of both

music and politics, said The Guardian. He filmed

the 1960 Democratic presidential primary that

led to John F. Kennedy’s nomination (Primary);

he shot Jimi Hendrix setting fire to his guitar at

the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival (Monterey Pop);

and he filmed intimate portraits of artists from

David Bowie to Jane Fonda. The opening

sequence ofDon’t Look Back,inwhich Dylan

flips through flashcards with the lyrics of

Subterranean Homesick Blues,iss een as the first

modern music video. Pennebaker was also one of the first people

to developaportable camera that recorded sounds synchronised

with images–revolutionary for documentaries, which had until

then been carefully curated and voiced-over. Time and again,

Pennebaker captured “lightning inabottle of his own invention”.

Donn Alan Pennebaker was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1925,

to John-Paul Pennebaker,acommercial photographer, and Lucille

Levick. He studied engineering at Yale, graduating in 1947 after

serving in the US navy. He foundedacompany, Electronics

Engineering, which created the first computerised airline

reservation system–but his life tookasharp turn when he

was shownashort film byafriend. “In about 15

minutesIsaw right away that film-making was

whatIwas going to do for the rest of my life,” he

said. Pennebaker sold his company to make his

first short film,Daybreak Express,set to the

titular Duke Ellington track and showing the

sunrise from New York’s elevated subway.

FollowingPrimaryandDon’t Look Back–

“regularly cited as one of the best documentaries

ever made”–Pennebaker met Chris Hegedus,

who became his co-creator and third wife (he was

twice divorced). Together they made the Oscar-

nominatedThe War Room(1993), filmed on Bill

Clinton’s first presidential campaign and novel in

its focus not on the politician, but on the spin

doctors behind him, said The New York Times.

Pennebaker’s skill was in subtly contrasting the public and private

personas of his stars. Between clips of his performances inDon’t

Look Back,Dylan “antagonises the press, outruns mobs of fans,

and loudly types over the voice of Joan Baez while she sings in a

hotel room”. Pennebaker knew the importance of “making the

camera the least important thing in the room”. Doing away with

large crews and elaborate lighting, his footage was rough; he

rarely looked through the viewfinder, often leaving the camera on

atable, on his lap, or even on the floor. He said there was plenty

of luck involved in making documentaries. But “it’s like playing

blackjack in Vegas–you assume you’ll be lucky or you wouldn’t

do it at all”. He is survived by Hegedus, and his eight children.

D.A.

Pennebaker

1925-2019

“Brother Number Two”, Pol Pot’s right-hand man

Nuon Chea: unrepentant

Pennebaker: music-video pioneer

The film-maker who showed another side of Bob Dylan