When I realized Cambodia was a real option for us, I emailed a good high school friend, Brett. He met a Cambodian girl named Soriya in college and later married her. He is fluent in Cambodian and has spend considerable time in the country, helping the government transfer the country's entire hospital system onto computer and more recently doing HIV/AIDS work. Brett sent me an unbelievable list of recommendations and advice, which was very helpful. Thanks Brett!
One of the recommendations he sent was for a tuk-tuk driver in Phnom Penh named Tony. Early Thursday morning we gave Tony a call to see if he was available. So excited to meet friends of Brett's, within 10 minutes he had arrived at the hotel and we all piled on his tuk-tuk.
We knew we wanted to see The Killing Fields, but Tony thought we may be interested in visiting a shooting range along the way, which definitely peaked the interest of the guys. They had fun shooting an M-16 and Russian made AK-47. I had fun looking at the chicks, chickens and ducks around the property until I was reminded about Bird Flu and told the birds were being raised for shooting practice. The owner of the property was an ex-Cambodian soldier...which gave us the feeling that he hadn't bought many of the guns in his possession.
Stacey prepping herself for the blast
After the shooting range we drove for about an hour to The Choeng Ek Killing Fields, which is the most well-known of countless similar locations throughout the country. This was the site outside of Phnom Penh where over 20,000 people were executed and buried in mass graves after being tortured and held at S-21 prison. It is an eerie place to say the least. In memory of the victims, they have erected a stupa holding the skulls of the nearly 10,000 corpses that have been exhumed. Due to a lack of ammunition, the Khmer Rough (KR) killed the majority of their victims without bullets. Many of the skulls reveal fatal head trauma. Our guide described the gruesome acts of the KR at this location, including killing babies by hitting them against one particular tree and beheading people slowly by using the (not quite) blade-like edge of large palm fronds.
After hearing such horror stories and understanding the number of innocent voices that were silenced in Cambodia during that awful time, it was particularly bittersweet to hear the voices of children playing outside at the school just next door. The sound of their songs was a stark reminder that life goes on.
The Memorial Stupa
Clothes of victims found in mass graves
Unearthed mass graves
The tree which was used to kill babies
After The Killing Fields, were were eager to fill in the pieces by visiting the S-21 prison that our tour guide had continually referred. Tony also thought this was an essential of any trip to Phnom Penh, so we made our way to the former high school turned horrific torture center by the Khmer Rouge. S-21 is just one of many such prisons, but is most famous for the perfect records kept. Little is known about the inner workings of the KR, due to a killing of all possible defectors, so S-21 has filled in a lot of the gaps behind the atrocities committed by the terrible regime. Each prisoner had their picture taken upon incarceration, while holding a number which indicated year, date and number per day. Certain days saw up to 700 people incarcerated. Many of the pictures show people in KR uniform and around 100 of the S-21 prison guards who had heard prisoners confess and could no longer be trusted. Being incarcerated at S-21 meant probably torture and certain death. Only 7 of the 20,000 people held there over the 4 years of the KR survived.
Rooms where 14 prisoners were found dead when the Vietnamese overtook Phnom Penh. Pictures in each room depicted the victim upon the Vietnamese army's arrival.
When these buildings functioned as a high school, this was a piece of exercise equipment. Khmer Rouge used it to torture victims and then dunked their head in the large urns below.
Photographic documentation of inmates the day they were imprisoned. It was shocking to see how young most of them were.
The cells had no doors which was a definite form of torture. Prisoners had shackles on their feet which prevented them from being able to move very much.
The Khmer Rouge installed barbed wire over the openings of the balconies to prevent inmates from committing suicide.
A map showing the original migration of people out of Phnom Penh and then a later resettling by the Khmer Rouge.
Dusk at S-21
Our tour guide in S-21 gave us a very informative tour of the grounds, and at the end was very open to our many questions concerning Cambodia's history and her personal experience under the Khmer Rouge.
When the Khmer Rouge won the civil war and came to power in 1975, our guide was 10 years old and living in Phnom Penh. The 2 million citizens of Phnom Penh were told to evacuate because America was going to bomb the city and ALL did so within 24 hours. She was one of these people and was separated from her mother and sister. The following is from www.dithpran.org. Dith Pran is the survivor on whose story the movie "The Killing Fields" is based.
On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot, took power in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. They forced all city dwellers into the countryside and to labor camps. During their rule, it is estimated that nearly 2 million [some put this estimate closer to 3 million] Cambodians died by starvation, torture or execution.
The Khmer Rouge turned Cambodia to year zero. They banned all institutions, including stores, banks, hospitals, schools, religion, and the family. Everyone was forced to work 12 - 14 hours a day, every day. Children were separated from their parents to work in mobile groups or as soldiers. People were fed one watery bowl of soup with a few grains of rice thrown in. Babies, children, adults and the elderly were killed everywhere. The Khmer Rouge killed people if they didn’t like them, if didn’t work hard enough, if they were educated, if they came from different ethnic groups, or if they showed sympathy when their family members were taken away to be killed. All were killed without reason. Everyone had to pledge total allegiance to Angka, the Khmer Rouge government. It was a campaign based on instilling constant fear and keeping their victims off balance.
After the Vietnamese invaded and liberated the Cambodian people from the Khmer Rouge, 600,000 Cambodians fled to Thai border camps. Ten million landmines were left in the ground, one for every person in Cambodia. The United Nations installed the largest peacekeeping mission in the world in Cambodia in 1991 to ensure free and fair elections after the withdrawal of the Vietnamese troops. Cambodia was turned upside down during the Khmer Rouge years and the country has the daunting task of healing physically, mentally and economically.
After the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia our guide was reunited with her sister and they eventually found her mother, who she said looked 30 years older. Her father had been killed. Her main question was one that also struck me: How could Cambodians do this to Cambodians? It struck a sharp contrast from the insanity of the Nazis killing Jews because they targeted a particular group. But Pol Pot target his own people, and I think for many Cambodians this is the fact that makes understanding and moving on nearly impossible.
No comments:
Post a Comment