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Forgiveness:
a journey or an obligation?
interview with claire ly, writer*, philosopher and lecturer at the Institut de Sciences
et Théologie des Religions (ISTR)

17 April 1975: having fought a civil war for five years against the authoritarian and
pro-American regime of Marshall Lon Nol, who came to power following a coup
d’État, the Cambodian communists (Khmer Rouge) entered the capital Phnom Penh,
seized power and established Democratic Kampuchea. They immediately began to
implement a policy of terror targeting all symbols of “Western decadence”, executing
intellectuals, members of the bourgeoisie, notables, those with links to the former
government and anyone who opposed them by emptying towns and cities of their
residents. In just four years, 2 million people, almost a quarter of the country’s popu-
lation, died as part of the regime’s efforts to purify society. Claire Ly, like most urban
dwellers, was sent to a labour camp in the countryside. She managed to survive but
lost almost her entire family at the beginning of the bloody revolution. Formerly a
Buddhist, she converted to Catholicism. Here, she looks back on her past and the
notion of forgiveness, in conversation with Jésus Asurmendi, director of the ACAT-
France Theology Commission.

Jésus Asurmendi: How did you survive when the Khmer Rouge came to power?

Claire Ly: As soon as they entered the capital, they shot anyone who had held a
position of responsibility before they seized power. My father, who was a business-
man, my husband, who was a bank manager, my older brother, who was a member
of Parliament, and my younger brother, who was a businessman and married to a
French woman seen as an imperialist, were all killed. I was teaching philosophy at
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the time and was in charge of overseeing the translation of French schoolbooks
within the Education Ministry; what saved me was my status as a woman. I disguised
my professional identity and passed myself off as an uneducated member of the
bourgeoisie, whose only role in life was to marry a man from a similar background,
so the Khmer Rouge sent me to the countryside to purify myself by growing rice, dig-
ging canals and building dams in a re-education and labour camp.

J. A.: Were you subjected to ill-treatment and torture there?

C. L.: I suffered extreme levels of psychological torture above all. I was two months
pregnant when my three-year-old son and I were sent to the camp, and not only
was I allowed to breastfeed my son, but I also had to breastfeed the other detainees’
children and vice versa. We all had to take on a role as mother of all of the State’s
children under the new society that the Khmer Rouge wanted to build. We were also
deprived of sleep and food, we used to get up as the sun rose at 4 am, and we were
only entitled to one bowl of rice per day. Hunger is a powerful weapon, you know,
which can very quickly encourage you to speak out against others. People will say
anything to get something to eat. What’s more, we never knew what task they would
give us next, we obeyed orders, it was that simple. If you wanted to survive, you
didn’t ask “why?” or “how?”, you couldn’t ask any questions. Angkar, the umbrella
organisation of the Khmer Rouge, did our thinking for us.
By implementing their hate policy against urban dwellers, who were presented to
peasants as impure citizens and even as collaborators of the West, by pitting one
class against another, the Khmer Rouge broke down existing social links and robbed
us of our identity. We completely lost our bearings, it was as if we were in a foreign
land when we arrived in the countryside, we had lost everything, all we had was a
shirt and some trousers to work in, while the peasants were allowed to keep almost
everything they had.

J. A.: Did your Buddhist faith allow you to maintain your morale despite
the nightmare you had to endure in the camp?

C. L.: On the contrary, I was consumed by anger and hatred, which are described as
“poisons” in the teachings of the Buddha, as well as the desire for revenge, and I was
incapable of behaving like a good person in the Buddhist tradition, someone who
refuses to engage in violence and does not respond to aggression but instead leaves
it to one side. Such a person would have been able to step back from the atroci-
ties being committed by the Khmer Rouge. The Buddha actually spoke about such
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weakness and suggested a way out: you build what we call a “mental object” that
does not exist and use it to bear all of the bad feelings that are crushing you. It’s what
modern psychology calls the scapegoat. So I turned towards a mental object that
I called simply the “God of the Westerners”. I chose it because it was not my own, it
was easier to insult someone else’s God all day long, but also because as a teacher
of philosophy, I felt that the West was responsible for the wars in Indochina and
Vietnam. Similarly, the ideology of the Khmer Rouge did not develop in Southeast
Asia but instead came from Marxism, a product of the Judaeo-Christian culture.
After two years, in 1977, I had a very powerful spiritual experience. I realised that the
God of the Westerners was not only my mental punching bag, but that he also accom-
panied me in my hatred and by anger. I felt his presence, I felt that he was listening
to me although I couldn’t speak about. I had to encounter the Gospel before I could
put my experience into words. This whole episode happened in silence, but a silence
that was inhabited like that of a mother at the bedside of her sick child. The logic of
Buddhism immediately caught up with me, telling me that it was no more than an illu-
sion, that my mind was playing tricks with me and causing me to fantasise because
of the hunger and lack of sleep, but that didn’t change what I had just experienced.
The nightmare wasn’t over yet, however. It continued until I was released from the
camp in January 1979, but during the first two years I spent there, I was convinced
that I was the only one suffering and that only my loved ones had been executed.
I was obsessed with myself, I couldn’t see the distress of others. This experience
allowed me to reconnect socially, it developed in me a fraternal compassion for the
hardship of my people. It allowed me, as a Buddhist, to refer to “my brothers and sis-
ters in suffering”. I started to become friendlier and speak to others, I was no longer
locked into my own world. That is the true miracle of the Gospel.

J. A.: When did you convert to Catholicism?

C. L.: When I was released in 1979, I stayed in Cambodia to look for my loved ones,
hoping that maybe they had not died as I had been told. Then I fled the violence
between the Vietnamese troops and the guerrilla movement, seeking refuge in
a camp in Thailand. In 1980, I arrived in Alès, in France, where a community of
Protestants and Catholics welcomed me in. One day I read the Gospel. It was like an
encounter. It was the character of Jesus of Nazareth that drew me in. When we read
something, we are affected by what we carry around with us, and I was carrying
around a sense of wounded pride. There was a disconnect in my image: I saw myself
as an intellectual who had arrived in the land of human rights, where I was equal
to French citizens, but I was seen as no more than a transparent political refugee
with no identity, “an object of charity”. So I found common ground with Jesus of
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Nazareth, a wanderer like me. But wandering freely, unable to be labelled by family,
religious figures or politicians. Once a Buddhist, I now began to listen to Jesus of
Nazareth. When I return to Cambodia, Buddhists often ask me what I find in Jesus
that the Buddha does not offer. I explain to them that in the Buddhist tradition, even
though the Buddha is depicted as a man and not a God, he is presented as a rounded
and perfect being who mastered everything in a state of total serenity, who never
cried and never became angry. When I read in the Gospel about Jesus becoming
angry and crying, I saw him as a master more within my reach. The humanism of the
Buddha prepared me to recognise the humanity of Jesus. It was not Jesus our Lord
who drew me in, but Jesus the man, to whom I felt closer. And then in 1983, I asked
to be baptised.

J. A.: How do you explain the conversion to Catholicism of many senior

Khmer Rouge figures?

C. L.: I wouldn’t presume to judge the conversion of others. Perhaps they did it sin-
cerely, I just don’t know. What I denounce is the evangelists, mainly from South
Korea, who came to tell them that God would erase their sins and offered them the
most beautiful reward in the Christian faith as if it was a commodity. I can’t accept
that, I don’t want to be a disciple of Christ alongside those people.

J. A.: As a Catholic, what is your understanding of forgiveness, a key concept

in Christianity?

C. L.: First I would say that forgiveness must be dissociated from other concepts
such as amnesty, regret, prescription or apology. I understand forgiveness as a force
for good, as a pure and selfless act that stands above everything and comes from
someone greater than me. Forgiveness is not mine to give, it is not something I can
distribute to whomever I wish, as I wish, it is a gift that one must first receive before
granting it to another, an act of grace that is accorded to us at the end of a long
spiritual journey, one that requires us to rework the past and engage with mourn-
ing. Focusing on the past is a duty of intellect that is owed to victims, who wonder
about the meaning of all the violence that is unleashed, why they have had to endure
it and what they did to deserve it. This duty is exercised as one recounts the past, for
oneself and for others, it involves critically drawing on the past and finding the right
words, those that can heal wounds, those that create a welcoming and hospitable
space for others. Words that the other can understand, words which emerge from
the wound itself and transform our painful contractions into life impulses.
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In the face of Evil, we all have the duty to try and understand. This is not about
explaining or forgiving everything, it is about engaging with reason beyond our pas-
sions. It is about focusing on mourning, detaching ourselves so that we may move
towards a promise, towards a future that can be built together.
Christian forgiveness is a spiritual path that requires a shift away from self-interest,
it is a facet of existence: it is something to be experienced rather than explained
or applied automatically. In order to be sacramental, forgiveness must first be
existential.

J. A.: What is your own position on forgiveness?

C. L.: I haven’t really tried to forgive the Khmer Rouge yet. I live my life in the Catholic
Church, but I feel free not to follow all of its precepts to the letter. Forgiveness is not
a commandment or an obligation that is imposed from the outside. No institution can
order someone to forgive another.
I first began to truly reflect on forgiveness in 2004, when I returned to Cambodia
with my daughter, who never met her father. We returned to the very site where
our loved ones were shot dead. We were accompanied by Buddhist friends, who
immediately lit incense sticks and began to recite the teachings of the Buddha on
non-violence. We listened to them carefully and afterwards decided to recite the
“Our Father”, the prayer of Christ’s disciples. The words “Our Father, forgive us
our trespasses” made us think. We asked ourselves if, standing on the site where
300 people had perished, we could forgive the Khmer Rouge on behalf of the victims.
We came to the conclusion that we weren’t in a position to do so.

J. A.: But you yourself are a victim of the Khmer Rouge!

C. L.: Yes, but others suffered much more than me. I find it a little bit presumptuous to
claim to be more of a victim than those who died without ever being given the chance
to speak. François Roux, the French lawyer who defended Duch at the International
Criminal Court, which tried the Khmer Rouge, asked to meet me in Phnom Penh. He
wanted my opinion on the fact that Duch, having converted to Christianity, intended
to ask for forgiveness for his crimes. My daughter and I thought about it, we felt
that our country had been destroyed by the genocide and we felt devastated by the
disastrous state in which it was left. We were incapable of saying in truth that we
had forgiven the Khmer Rouge. So as disciples of Christ, we turned to Jesus on the
cross. Jesus did not say: “I forgive them”, but rather “Father, forgive them for they
know not what they do”. My daughter and I turned to the Father and told Him in total
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confidence of our weakness, our inability to forgive. We placed ourselves in His

hands and entrusted Him with all those who made Cambodia suffer.
Forgiveness is difficult because it asks me as a Christian to take the Lord’s cross
seriously and to face the Evil that destroys humans, but it is not impossible because
in each of us resides a surplus of goodness that the philosopher Paul Ricœur calls
“capable man”. By following the necessary spiritual journey, perhaps one day, with
the passage of time, I will be able to say that I have forgiven the Khmer Rouge.
What I like so much about the work of Paul Ricœur is that he refers to forgiveness
as a voice that is silent but not mute. It is silent because it claims nothing, but it is
not mute because it has the capacity of speech. When this silent, capable voice is at
work, it restores our consideration for others and allows Christians to believe that
they are worth more than their acts.

J. A.: Would you be more willing to forgive if the culprits recognised

their actions?

C. L.: Forgiveness is unconditional and comes free of charge. You can forgive some-
one’s actions without them asking for forgiveness. And conversely, a request for
forgiveness need not always be granted. I also think that crimes against humanity,
i.e. crimes which are designed to attack the integrity of man, are unforgivable; rather
than any human institution, one must look to God Himself, who was just as deeply
hurt by these events as me. Otherwise, I feel it would be an act of imposture.

J. A.: Yet forgiveness can help us to rebuild our lives after we endure suffering.

C. L.: Yes, but I wouldn’t force myself to forgive just so I could feel better! Some
time ago I taught a class at the Royal University of Phnom Penh to students aged
25 to 30. At the end of the class, one of them came to see me and said: “When I
listen to you I see your wounds, which have not gone away, but what is great is
that you allow us to touch them, and by doing so we gain the strength to look at our
own wounds”. As a Christian, I was reminded of the resuscitated man who said to
Thomas: “Reach out your hand and put it into my side”. I have not completely got
over the trauma that the Khmer Rouge inflicted upon me, but I am able to name it and
share it. Life resumes as we accept the scars of the past little by little.
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J. A.: At the fall of the Khmer regime, you had the opportunity to denounce
the camp leader who used to attack you, but you refused. For what reason,
other than that you had forgiven her?

C. L.: I hated that woman, who used to send us out to pick up excrement and regu-
larly subjected us to lashes of the whip when we failed to show enough enthusiasm
in carrying out our tasks. But when the time came to denounce her, I saw in her
eyes the same fear that I had felt for four years, the fear of dying, and for a moment I
recognised her as a human being. The gaze of another is arresting. There is a reason
why people are blindfolded before being shot dead.

J. A.: You were steeped in Buddhism for much of your life. Was the question
of forgiveness also part of that spiritual path?

C. L.: For me, the concept of forgiveness as understood in Christianity is founded on

the Abrahamic tradition and presupposes the existence of a personal and merciful
God. That is not a feature of Buddhism, which does not refer to God but rather to the
ultimate truth and awakening. Indeed, the word “forgiveness” has no exact equivalent
in my native language: when someone becomes aware they have injured another,
they ask them “not to retain the transgression”.
This does not mean that Buddhists are incapable of opening up to the act of for-
giveness. They share the Hindus’ primary belief in what is called the law of karma,
a Sanskrit word which refers to actions and their consequences. All of our acts,
whether good or bad, produce good or bad effects which follow us like our shadow.
It is a law of causality, like a physical law. So the average Khmer does not believe in
impunity, since all bad actions eventually catch up with us.
The Khmer Rouge used the law of karma as an instrument, they used the notion
of retribution to claim that their victims deserved their punishment, that they were
suffering the consequences of earlier bad actions. It was terrifying, they made the
victims responsible for their own deaths. There were no longer any criminals or
torturers. If everything is justified by karma, there can no longer be any injustice.
Now that I am a Christian, when I hear Christians say “God is punishing you” or “it is
because of God’s will that you have been punished”, I cannot accept it, it’s the same
as the Khmer Rouge discourse, which used religion to explain Evil, even though it is
something that remains enigmatic. As soon as you start to explain Evil, I think you
show contempt for your victims.
The other fundamental conviction of Buddhism relates to the responsibility of
human beings. To recognise that humans are responsible for what happens to them
is to recognise the greatness of human beings, something that is all too often for-
gotten. Responsibility is not given to just anyone, not even divine beings. When
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an appalling act is committed, such as the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, we have a
responsibility not to accept it, to “cut off” the transgression. That is non-violence.
It is a moral requirement of Buddhism to do everything possible to alleviate the
disastrous effects of bad actions. This raises a question for Buddhists: when vio-
lence occurs on a massive scale, when it is committed as part of a State system,
what of my responsibility to “cut off” such actions? What must we do when we are
overwhelmed and no longer have the space necessary to withdraw? Faced with
this dilemma, Buddhists who have not travelled far on their spiritual path can con-
sole themselves with the idea that those responsible will be punished sooner or
later, they can avoid the tiring process of reflection and let karma take over. More
advanced Buddhists will engage what are known as the four incommensurable sen-
timents: benevolence, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, sentiments that
the Khmer Rouge should have felt for their victims in an effort to understand the
other. To do this, one must believe not only in individual karma but also collective
karma.

J. A.: In the West, we tend to think of karma as a purely personal concept.

C. L.: No, it includes a dimension which in the West is expressed in what we call geo-
political and social causes. That was the mistake of the International Criminal Court
in confining itself to the period between 1975 and 1979 rather than looking at the
collective factors which overlapped and produced the Khmer Rouge tragedy. First,
the country was suffering from extreme levels of social injustice, as the wealthy
seized its riches and its resources, in effect preserving the hatred that peasants felt
towards urban dwellers. King Norodom Sihanouk also had individual responsibility as
he never allowed the emergence of any real political opposition. Then there was the
responsibility of the international community, as I mentioned earlier, with regard to
the Vietnam War and the spread of Communist ideology. This question of ideology is
crucial. Perhaps I am overly influenced by the Buddhist tradition, but I am convinced
that people do not behave badly with bad intentions, but rather with good intentions.
Of course there is no way to defend the Khmer Rouge, but they really did believe
in the new society that they wanted to build. Every time there is a shift towards a
singular ideology that will not countenance any criticism, the outcome is disastrous.
Indeed, that is what is interesting about the ICC, which some Cambodians feel is a
parody of justice and serves only to flatter the good conscience of Westerners: for
the first time, the Communist system was put on trial. As a priority, the tribunal
should have created a forum in which the events involving the Khmer Rouge could
have been explained in economic, sociological, geopolitical and even spiritual terms,
a forum in which the victims and their torturers could later evolve side-by-side, in
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the “here and now”. That is what I have always recommended, along with a few other
Khmer intellectuals.

J. A.: But it is not the role of the ICC to ensure reconciliation.

C. L.: That’s just it. I think that the Khmers raised an important issue for the ICC
and the wider international community: that of the meaning of justice. If justice is
about no more than judging, convicting and punishing, then we are not interested.
Of course sanctions are required when the rule of law is violated, and impunity can-
not be allowed to remain a daily reality, but justice should not stop there, it must
introduce the possibility of a shared future after the Khmer Rouge and the collective
trauma they caused, without which we don’t know in which direction to turn. We
must talk and exchange views, name and recognise bad actions, analyse and under-
stand their causes, and share and confront our pain. To rework the past and engage
with mourning, as I have said, is the duty of all witnesses towards Cambodia’s
younger generations. It allows us to move beyond all feelings of guilt and any vic-
timisation complex so that we may rebuild our lives as a people and as a country.
Isn’t the ultimate aim of justice to help us learn to live together and to renew social
links when they are severed by mistrust and hatred of the other?

Interview conducted with the help of Olivia Moulin.

* Revenue de l’enfer, 27 March 2002, Éditions de l’Atelier, Ivry-sur-Seine, 175 pages; La Mangrove :
À la croisée des cultures et des religions, October 2001, Laval, Éditions Siloé, 208 pages; Retour
au Cambodge : Le chemin de liberté d'une survivante des Khmers rouges, 18 January 2007, Éditions
de l’Atelier, Ivry-sur-Seine, 221 pages.