Editor's note: This article was originally published on August 15, 2021, when the Taliban occupied Kabul. Later, it was deleted many times for unknown reasons. It is now retained on Mirror. The author is Qiu Jiaqiu of Real Image.
编者按：本文始发于2021年8月15日塔利班占领喀布尔之际，后因不明原因被多次删除。现于Mirror留存。作者真实影像邱嘉秋。
1975年，刚攻入金边的“红色高棉”，跟几天前占领喀布尔的塔利班，都选择了的“白旗”来标志胜利...
In 1975, the "Khmer Rouge", which had just captured Phnom Penh, just like the Taliban who had occupied Kabul a few days ago, both chose the "white flag" to mark their victory...
与现实相比，1984年上映的电影《杀戮之地 The Killing Fields》，其命名太过温和。
故事发生1972年美军在越南溃败而撤离柬埔寨之际，《纽约时报》记者辛尼（萨姆·沃特森 饰）留在当地继续采访。1975年，红色高棉占领金边。辛尼全身而退，他的助手和翻译柬埔寨人潘迪（吴汉润 饰，史上首位获得奥斯卡表演奖的华人 ）被迫留下接受劳动改造，这期间，潘迪目睹了红色高棉政权的残暴血腥。1978年，越共入侵柬埔寨，潘迪趁机逃亡到泰国边境，与辛尼重逢。
这部电影，源于真实。
Compared with reality, the title of the movie "The Killing Fields" released in 1984 is too mild.
The story takes place when the U.S. military was routed and withdrew from Cambodia in 1972. Sydney Hillel Schanberg, a reporter from The New York Times (played by Sam Waterston), stayed there to continue his interviews. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh. Sydney managed to get out safely, while his assistant and translator, Cambodian Dith Pran (played by Haing S. Ngor, the first Chinese to win an Oscar for acting in history), was forced to stay and undergo labor reform. During this period, Dith Pran witnessed the brutality and bloodshed of the Khmer Rouge regime. In 1978, the Viet Cong invaded Cambodia, and Dith Pran took the opportunity to flee to the Thai border and reunited with Sydney.
This movie is based on a true story.
真实世界中，辛尼·希勒尔·尚伯格（Sydney Hillel Schanberg）就是一位曾供职《纽约时报》的美国记者，以报道柬埔寨战争而闻名，曾获普利策奖和两次乔治·波尔克奖。
1980 年，他根据其亲身报道而出版的纪实文学著作《迪斯·普兰的死与生》讲述了他的同事迪斯·普兰（潘迪 Dith Pran）在红色高棉政权中为生存而进行的斗争。
In the real world, Sydney Hillel Schanberg was an American journalist who worked for The New York Times and was famous for reporting on the Cambodian War. He won the Pulitzer Prize and two George Polk Awards.
In 1980, he published a non-fiction literary work titled "The Death and Life of Dith Pran" based on his personal reports, which told the story of his colleague Dith Pran's struggle for survival in the Khmer Rouge regime.
演员布鲁斯·罗宾逊将其改编成一部300页的剧本，找到了1982年奥斯卡最佳影片《火战车》制片人大卫·普特南。这时，一个名不见经传的导演罗兰·约菲打动了制片人。罗兰·约菲告诉普特南，他不想只拍一部简单的战争片，而是通过战火与屠杀、恐怖与血腥讲述一个有希望的故事。如导演所言，电影最终大获成功，并拿下1985年度奥斯卡最佳影片的提名，以及最佳摄影、最佳剪辑、最佳男配角三项大奖。
Actor Bruce Robinson adapted it into a 300-page script and found David Puttnam, the producer of the 1982 Oscar-winning best picture "Chariots of Fire". At that time, an unknown director, Roland Joffé, impressed the producer. Roland Joffé told Puttnam that he didn't want to just make a simple war movie, but to tell a hopeful story through war, slaughter, horror, and bloodshed. As the director said, the movie was ultimately a great success, winning nominations for the 1985 Oscar for Best Picture, as well as three major awards for Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Supporting Actor.
影片结尾所根据的，两人难民营相遇并谈起经历时，潘迪脱口而出：“杀戮之地 the killing fields ”，用以形容他在逃亡路上所见大屠杀抛尸之地，后来这个词成为电影的片名，然而，“杀戮之地“ 却无法代表全部的苦难。
At the end of the movie, when the two met in the refugee camp and talked about their experiences, Dith Pran blurted out: "the killing fields", to describe the places where he saw massacres and corpses being dumped on his way of escape. Later, this term became the title of the movie. However, "the killing fields" cannot represent all the sufferings.
红色高棉们的野望 The Wild Ambitions of the Khmer Rouge
红色高棉不过三年的血腥统治，留下了柬埔寨几代人的噩梦，更是人类文明史上最漆黑的污点之一。
上世纪六十年代末，美国扩大印度支那战争，轰炸柬埔寨，红色高棉（后柬埔寨共产党）率先举起反美大旗，在国内赢得了广泛支持。
进入七十年代，在中国领导人的促成下，西哈努克和“红色高棉”摒弃前嫌，携手抗美，结成抗美救国统一战线，推翻了美国政府所扶持的朗诺政权，赶跑了美国人，建立了“民主柬埔寨”。
The bloody rule of the Khmer Rouge, which lasted only three years, left a nightmare for several generations of Cambodians and is one of the darkest stains in the history of human civilization.
In the late 1960s, the United States expanded the Indochina War and bombed Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge (the later Communist Party of Cambodia) was the first to raise the anti-American flag and won widespread support in the country.
In the 1970s, with the facilitation of Chinese leaders, Norodom Sihanouk and the "Khmer Rouge" put aside their differences and joined hands to resist the United States, forming a united front against the United States and saving the nation, overthrowing the Lon Nol regime supported by the U.S. government, driving away the Americans, and establishing the "Democratic Kampuchea".
剧中，美军从柬埔寨仓皇撤退。现实中，辛尼在《纽约时报》写到，“很难想象随着美国人的离开，他们的生活会变得更好。”
金边迎来了李闯王，就在百姓以为战争结束，期待和平时，如辛尼等人保持了一定的警惕：
In the movie, the U.S. military retreated in a hurry from Cambodia. In reality, Sydney wrote in The New York Times, "It's hard to imagine that their lives would get better with the Americans leaving.
"Phnom Penh welcomed the "Li Zicheng" (a figure often used to refer to someone who seizes power suddenly and brings chaos). Just when the people thought the war was over and were looking forward to peace, people like Sydney remained somewhat vigilant:
果然，“和平”的假象只持续了极短的时间，崇尚极左的红色高棉领导人波尔布特违背了在毛主席面前许下的承诺，摒弃了同盟和联合执政，软禁了西哈努克，采取独裁统治，启动了自己想象中乌托邦式革命理想国的人间试验，希望一揽子解决所有问题，建立一个比苏联、中国和越南都更为纯粹的社会/共产主义社会，一个“没有富人和穷人，没有剥削阶级和被剥削阶级，全体人民幸福生活”的国度。
除了马上现形的苛政和AK47，动员、说服、教育、限制、利用、改造和赎买等具有“过渡时期”特征的政策在红色高棉和第一次统治阿富汗时期的塔利班身上都是几乎看不到的， 红色高棉认为“大跃进”的速度都不够快。
Sure enough, the illusion of "peace" lasted only a very short time. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge who advocated extreme leftism, broke the promise he made in front of Chairman Mao, abandoned the alliance and joint governance, placed Norodom Sihanouk under house arrest, adopted a dictatorial rule, and launched his own utopian revolutionary ideal country experiment in his imagination, hoping to solve all problems in one go and establish a society more pure than those of the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam, a "country where there are no rich or poor people, no exploiting or exploited classes, and all the people live a happy life".
Except for the immediate appearance of harsh governance and AK47s, policies with "transitional period" characteristics such as mobilization, persuasion, education, restriction, utilization, transformation, and redemption were hardly seen in either the Khmer Rouge or the Taliban during their first rule in Afghanistan. The Khmer Rouge thought that the speed of the "Great Leap Forward" was not fast enough.
波尔布特强迫全国执行“城市大清空”和“平民下乡农耕”，试图建立一个自给自足的农业共产社会。他强制几乎全部城市居民迁至农村务农，废除货币，取消私有财产，禁止上学及参与宗教活动，甚至取消夫妻关系，强制拆散家庭。
在曾经佛教盛行的柬埔寨，通过一连串的强制劳动、内部清洗、集中营、劳改、政治迫害及大屠杀等恐怖统治，致使在1975年至1978年的3年8个月的时间里，造成柬埔寨约200万人死亡（至今未有公认的准确数字），此人数约等于当时全国人口的四分之一。彼时的柬埔寨，堪称现实的人间炼狱。
Pol Pot forced the whole country to carry out "urban evacuation" and "transfer of civilians to the countryside for farming", attempting to establish a self-sufficient agricultural communist society. He forced almost all urban residents to move to the countryside to engage in farming, abolished currency, cancelled private property, prohibited going to school and participating in religious activities, and even cancelled marital relations, forcibly breaking up families.
In Cambodia, where Buddhism once prevailed, through a series of terror reigns such as forced labor, internal purges, concentration camps, labor reform, political persecution, and massacres, during the three years and eight months from 1975 to 1978, about 2 million Cambodians died (there is still no generally recognized accurate figure to date), which was approximately a quarter of the national population at that time. Cambodia at that time was truly a living hell on earth.
1978年，红色高棉建立的民主柬埔寨政权被十万越南大军和自己倒戈的军队推翻。当时仍然承认红高棉政权为柬埔寨的合法政府的中国，与苏联展开对峙，在1979年2月对越南发动“对越反击战”，侧面延缓了红色高棉的消亡。邓小平也借机稳固了国内政治地位，裁军百万，全力推动改革开放。
In 1978, the "Democratic Kampuchea" regime established by the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by 100,000 Vietnamese troops and their own defecting troops. At that time, China, which still recognized the Khmer Rouge regime as the legitimate government of Cambodia, confronted the Soviet Union and launched a "Counter-attack against Vietnam" in February 1979, which indirectly delayed the demise of the Khmer Rouge. Deng Xiaoping also took the opportunity to stabilize his domestic political position, disarmed one million troops, and fully promoted reform and opening up.
有评论说，红色高棉的迅速崛起又马上衰败，是人类二十世纪全球极左运动的浓缩版和强化版，为后人剖析这场人类历史上波及面最广、参与人数最多的运动，提供了惨痛却有代表性的素材。
这些运动的共同特点，就是否认现实尘世生活的意义和目的，否认物质主义和享乐主义，代之以清教徒般的道德自律和近乎苛刻的简朴，并赋予精神世界以最高价值和地位。这些运动的发起者、号召者们，总是给人们描绘一幅十全十美的未来世界的理想画卷，并号召人们为了这个美好的未来世界奋斗终身，抛弃眼前的幸福和世俗的欢乐。
而达到这个理想世界的途径和手段，这些运动也有惊人的一致性，就是以阶级为线进行大规模社会重构。直到今天，这样的运动仍在伺机循环上演。
Some commentators say that the rapid rise and immediate decline of the Khmer Rouge is a condensed and intensified version of the extreme left-wing movements in the 20th century globally, providing painful yet representative materials for later generations to analyze this movement with the widest spread and the largest number of participants in human history.
The common characteristics of these movements are to deny the meaning and purpose of real earthly life, deny materialism and hedonism, replace them with Puritan-like moral self-discipline and almost harsh simplicity, and 赋予 the spiritual world the highest value and status. The initiators and mobilizers of these movements always depict a perfect future world ideal picture for people and call on people to strive for this beautiful future world for life, abandoning the immediate happiness and worldly joys.
And the ways and means to reach this ideal world also have astonishing consistency among these movements, that is, to carry out large-scale social reconstruction based on class. To this day, such movements are still waiting for opportunities to recur.
局外人的战争 The War of Outsiders
《杀戮之地》还是一部有明显他者视角来观察亚洲的西方影片，作为中国观众，我们更有复杂的民族记忆交织在其间，然而，一些抛却意识形态的人性闪光点，仍得以在漆黑的历史中保存。
要知道，作为影片的主角，包括在其改编源头的纪实文学《迪斯·普兰的死与生》书中，都不可避免地会被戏剧性美化或英雄化，但一些基本事实也是难以虚构的。例如，辛尼获得新闻奖的作品：
"The Killing Fields" is also a Western movie that observes Asia from an obvious other's perspective. As Chinese audiences, we have more complex national memories intertwined in it. However, some flashes of human nature that transcend ideology have still been preserved in the dark history.
It should be noted that as the protagonists of the movie, including in the non-fiction literary work "The Death and Life of Dith Pran" which is the source of its adaptation, they will inevitably be dramatized, beautified or heroized, but some basic facts are also hard to fabricate. For example, Sydney's award-winning journalistic works:
他们第一时间报道了美国对柬东部毁灭性的轰炸，作为真正的记者，没有先入为主的观点，是不为任何利益集团服务的，甚至也无关国籍。这位来自美国的记者，在影片开始的片段里，没有和大部分“主流”记者团）同流，而独立揭露了美军试图掩盖的误炸柬埔寨平民的行径，在过程中甚至还试图保护被作为替罪羊的两名“红色高棉”士兵。当然，在在大屠杀发生后，他们也一样会被指责。
They were the first to report the devastating bombing of eastern Cambodia by the United States. As true journalists, they had no preconceived views and did not serve any interest groups, not even related to nationality. This American journalist, in the opening segment of the movie, did not go along with the majority of the "mainstream" journalist group, but independently exposed the U.S. military's attempt to cover up the accidental bombing of Cambodian civilians, and even tried to protect two "Khmer Rouge" soldiers who were used as scapegoats during the process. Of course, they would also be accused after the massacres occurred.
辛尼没有在功成名就时，选择继续消费苦难。
乘船外逃那些难民会写吗？在得到否认后，辛尼说：“你是在寻找一种好卖的苦难么？尽可能自私地揣测，这或许也是一种妥当的策略，反正最好的故事他已经写完了。
或许不同，消费苦难的报道，在今天的新闻媒体间比比皆是；绝对不可否认，很多记者也是为了诸如难民的境况得到关注而获得帮助；而辛尼的看法，在今天看来该如何回应呢？
Sydney did not choose to continue to capitalize on the suffering after achieving fame and success.
Would the refugees who fled by boat write about it? After getting a negative answer, Sydney said: "Are you looking for a marketable kind of suffering? As selfishly speculated as possible, this might also be a proper strategy. Anyway, the best story he has already written."
Perhaps it's different. Reports that capitalize on suffering are everywhere in today's news media; it is absolutely undeniable that many journalists also do it so that the situation of refugees can get attention and help; but how should we respond to Sydney's view today?
而辛尼所依托的也不仅仅是作为一个个人或职业的理想。
And what Sydney relied on was not just the ideals of an individual or a profession.
在此前，政界人士、新闻界和学生对美军的入侵发起了大规模的抗议活动。1970年12月，针对国防拨款法案而提出的《库珀-丘奇修正案》（Cooper-Church Amendment）禁止在老挝或柬埔寨动用任何的美国地面部队，正是片中辛尼对美国军队高声质问的依据之一。
Previously, politicians, the press, and students launched large-scale protest activities against the U.S. military's invasion. In December 1970, the "Cooper-Church Amendment" proposed in response to the Defense Appropriation Bill prohibited the use of any U.S. ground troops in Laos or Cambodia, which was one of the bases for Sydney's loud questioning of the U.S. military in the movie.
假象源于假想 Illusions Stem from Assumptions
波尔布特们，始终自认为是纯粹的“理想主义者”，他们的使命无比光荣，为柬埔寨人民而着想，追求主义的信念是终极的依托。
要提到的是，包括《杀戮之地》这部电影，其改编来源的纪实文学、报道和故事中的真实人物，以及更多我们今天所了解到有关红色高棉大屠杀的信息主要是由西方媒体和学者的工作所提供，西方也还力主援建柬埔寨审红特别法庭（Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia，ECCC）被称为柬埔寨的“纽伦堡大审”，自2006年至 2021 年15年来已耗费3.3亿美元，红高棉政权“2号人物”谢农、红高棉外交部长英萨利及其妻英蒂丽（前社会福利部长），在审讯过程中相继病逝。
西方意识形态在整体事件定性过程中的位置公正性曾被一类声音质疑，例如美国在对柬埔寨进行轰炸的过程中造成的较大人员伤亡（有说法从数十万到百万不等）是否混淆于红色高棉大屠杀中。
Pol Pot and his ilk always considered themselves pure "idealists", believing that their mission was extremely glorious, that they were thinking for the Cambodian people, and that the pursuit of their ideology was their ultimate reliance.
It should be mentioned that including the movie "The Killing Fields", the real people in the non-fiction literary works, reports, and stories from which it was adapted, as well as more information we know today about the Khmer Rouge massacres, were mainly provided by the work of Western media and scholars. The West also advocated and assisted in the construction of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which is known as the "Nuremberg Trials" of Cambodia. From 2006 to 2021, 15 years have cost $330 million. Khieu Samphan, the "No. 2 figure" of the Khmer Rouge regime, Ieng Sary, the foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge, and his wife Ieng Thirith (former minister of social welfare), successively died of illness during the trial process.
The impartiality of the Western ideology in the process of defining the nature of the whole event has been questioned by some voices. For example, whether the relatively large number of casualties caused by the U.S. bombing of Cambodia (with estimates ranging from hundreds of thousands to a million) was confused with the Khmer Rouge massacres.
即使如此，红色高棉的大屠杀仍然是基本事实，而其实对于波尔布特的共产理念，早期在西方也有不同声音：1976年，两名康奈尔大学教授撰写《柬埔寨——饥饿与革命》（Cambodia：Starvation andRevolution）一书中认为，媒体报道不全面，合作化、撤空城市和大规模集体劳动，是柬埔寨独特的解决粮食问题的办法。在大屠杀被披露后，麻省理工学院的乔姆斯基（Noam Chomsky）表示他怀疑其真实性，因为这些材料的提供者都是反红色高棉的难民。
Even so, the Khmer Rouge massacres are still a basic fact. And in fact, there were different voices in the West regarding Pol Pot's communist ideology in the early days: In 1976, two professors from Cornell University wrote in the book "Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution" that the media reports were not comprehensive and that cooperation, evacuation of cities, and large-scale collective labor were unique ways for Cambodia to solve the food problem. After the massacres were disclosed, Noam Chomsky from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology expressed his doubts about their authenticity because the providers of these materials were all anti-Khmer Rouge refugees.
在当今世界，每个国家和组织都在尽皆自我标榜正义的相互争斗中，我们到底可以相信谁？
不过，大体可以确定，我们应该不会再一次相信那些善于编造谎言，甚至连自己都能骗倒的“红色高棉们”。
In today's world, in the mutual struggles where every country and organization is self-proclaiming justice, whom can we really believe?
However, generally speaking, we should probably not believe those "Khmer Rouge" who are good at fabricating lies and can even deceive themselves again.
题外 Digression
饰演《纽约时报》记者辛尼的萨姆·沃特森 ( Sam Waterston )在多年之后，在美剧《新闻编辑室 Newsroom》中饰演了一位媒体总编，最后，在现实和新闻理想矛盾交织下，心脏并发猝死。
片中，Will说，他试图去和这个道德崩坏的世界交战，他就像是堂吉诃德，堂吉诃德最终从骑士梦中醒来，回到家乡，但是Charlie（萨姆·沃特森 饰）依然在坚持，只是他坚持不住了，他太累了。
Sam Waterston, who played Sydney Hillel Schanberg, a reporter from The New York Times, played a media editor-in-chief in the American TV drama "The Newsroom" many years later. Finally, under the intertwined contradictions between reality and journalistic ideals, he died suddenly of a heart attack.
In the drama, Will said that he tried to fight against this morally corrupt world. He was like Don Quixote. Don Quixote finally woke up from his knight's dream and returned home, but Charlie (played by Sam Waterston) was still holding on, only he couldn't hold on any longer. He was too tired.
