Creator

Thet Sambath

Thet Sambath is a Cambodian investigative journalist who co-directed the film Enemies of the People.

Black and white photograph of two men standing on a path among trees.
Thet Sambath (left) with Rob Lemkin, the makers of Enemies of the People.

Thet Sambath is a Cambodian investigative journalist and filmmaker who co-directed the documentary Enemies of the People with Rob Lemkin.[1][2] For about a decade he sought out former Khmer Rouge cadres, from foot soldiers to Nuon Chea, and recorded their accounts of the killings.[2]

Career

Sambath worked as a paramedic for the American Refugee Committee on the Thai-Cambodian border. He then worked as a police interpreter with UNTAC, the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia, and later investigated human rights cases for the Cambodian rights group LICADHO.[1] He also translated and worked as a fixer for international aid groups, then for news organizations, before becoming a journalist himself.[3] Since 1994 he has worked as a producer, translator and camera operator for international broadcasters, among them NHK, NBC, the BBC and WGBH's Frontline.[1]

He reported for Cambodia Today and Cambodia Times, and he built his investigative skills breaking stories about scandal and corruption at the Phnom Penh Post and the Cambodian Daily. In 2011 he was based in Phnom Penh as a senior reporter at the Phnom Penh Post, and his investigative stories had been syndicated internationally.[1] A Jefferson Scholarship took him to the United States in 2002.[1]

Enemies of the People

In 1999 Sambath started researching Khmer Rouge history.[4] Over about ten years he looked for confessions and explanations from people who had carried out the Khmer Rouge killings of 1975 to 1979.[5] Many of the people he interviewed were farmers in northwest Cambodia. He began with two farmers who had taken part in killings, and he has said it was easy for him to talk with them because he was a countryman who spoke their language.[6][5] In Pailin he earned the trust of former cadres as an honest broker.[7] At first he filmed alone.[5]

After he was introduced to Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's second-in-command, who was then living as a free man near the Thai border, Sambath spent three years visiting him regularly before Nuon Chea agreed to talk about his past. Sambath went on to record dozens of interviews with him.[1][6][7] He was with Nuon Chea on the night before his arrest in September 2007. His last interviews took place while Nuon Chea and other senior officials were waiting to be arrested by the UN-backed tribunal.[3][6] In the film Nuon Chea admits that killings were ordered out of fear of Vietnamese infiltration. Two former cadres speak of their regret and sorrow for the killings they were made to take part in.[5][7]

Working with the British filmmaker Rob Lemkin, Sambath turned this reporting into Enemies of the People, released in 2009. The film records testimony from foot soldiers and from Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two.[1][2][5] Sambath and Lemkin refused to let the court use their interviews as possible evidence of confession, and they turned down a subpoena for an advance copy of the footage, citing their agreements with the people they had interviewed.[3][7] He and Gina Chon wrote the book Behind the Killing Fields, which draws on his interviews with Nuon Chea.[8]

Recognition

  • World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival (2010), for Enemies of the People[2]
  • Academy Award shortlist, for Enemies of the People[1]
  • Knight International Journalism Award (2011)[1]

After Sundance the film won 30 more prizes.[1]

Works


See also

References 8
  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 International Center for Journalists, Thet Sambath, Cambodia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 POV, Enemies of the People
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 BBC News, Perpetrator's perspective: Befriending the Khmer Rouge (December 12, 2010)
  4. ↑ Enemies of the People, Thet Sambath & Nuon Chea: A Timeline (undated)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 The Harvard Crimson, Cambodian Filmmaker Finds Truth Beneath the Killing Fields (April 23, 2014)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Keswick Film Club, Enemies of the People film notes
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Time, Enemies of the People: The Khmer Rouge, Close-Up (August 6, 2010)
  8. ↑ Mary Kozlovski, Film's use at trial questioned (December 15, 2011), news article archived by Cambodia Tribunal Monitor
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This page was last edited on 22 October 2026, at 03:18.