February 12, 2015
In reviewing the itinerary for today, I knew it was going to be a hard, emotionally draining day – a combination of bling and soul wrenching revelations. My expectations were modest compared to the reality I encountered. It’s difficult for me to write about this, so I’ve taken more time, to reduce the ‘heat in my heart’ as the Buddhist would say, before writing this blog.
We started the day by visiting the royal palace [the bling] that was built in 1866. It is a travesty and total contradiction to the hardship and poverty of the country and its people. I admit, I am not a fan of these peacocks we call royals and still find in several countries today – as Jon Stewart said, they don’t do anything but dress up in different costumes, prance around, and have their pictures taken. The current king of Cambodia is irrelevant, while his father and prior king reigned during the French war, the Vietnam War, and the Khmer Rouge era, until he abdicated in 2008. Despite the government dedicating a huge monument to him, he is viewed as either advancing or destroying the country. I’ve included some photos of the palace, but I really don’t want to give any more attention and legitimacy to the monarchs – so I’ll stop here.
The royal palace
The palace entertainment pavilion
Yes, we were there – long live the king
Our next stop was the ‘killing fields’ of the Khmer Rouge period, from 1975 to 1979. It is very complex and almost impossible to put together a coherent picture of how this all happened. Like a game of chess, the alliances, agreements, relationships, and counter moves by the ‘chess players’ – Vietnam, Thailand, China, Russia, France, and the USA, all played a role in this tragedy. Groups of people have sloshed back and forth in the Indochina area for a long time, either running away from conflict or hoping for a better future. Some of the results: 25% of the people of Cambodia were killed in the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge era, hence only about 6 % of the population is over 40 years old today. The US bombing along the Vietnam-Cambodia killed 100’s of thousands. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, killed millions. When Pol Pot ‘liberated’ and marched into Phnom Penh, the residents cheered. The next day he ordered all 2 million residents to leave town, because the Americans were going to bomb the city. They were ordered to leave their homes unlocked because they would return in three days. The city turned into a ghost town. Property and possession were taken and redistributed to the ‘First People’ – farm laborers and the extremely poor. People did not return for more than 3 years. Pol Pot’s army set out to kill all wealthy people, factory workers, soldiers of the defeated South Vietnamese army, teachers, professionals, doctors, farm owners….basically all non-farmers.
The Killing Field or Genocide Center
Monument to the victims
A mass grave
Some of the recovered skulls
The children killing tree
It says it all
Skeleton parts and clothing emerging from the grave site
They have identified more than 19 thousand mass graves [anywhere from four to thousands of bodies] at 388 sites. They excavated thousands of remains – just a drop in the bucket given the total number killed. Following each Monsoon, the mass graves sink further and more bones, skulls, and clothing float to the surface. They gather them and place them in a repository of remains. The Khmer Rouge would truck people in – men, women, and children – by the hundreds each day, and kill them. Pol Pot’s stated philosophy was that it was better to kill 100 innocent people than to let one traitor get away. People were not worth the cost of a single bullet, so they were executed by using a club, hatchet, hoe, etc. to the back of their heads. Babies were thrown into the air and speared as they came down, or they were smashed against a tree. Not all died immediately but were pushed into the mass graves. They spread D.D.T over the still-living to kill them and to mask the stench.
Don’t imagine for one moment that anyone was safe from suspicion. The Khmer Rouge also killed each other. They were paranoid and suspicious of everyone. No one could trust anyone.
S.21 Prison – It was a school in earlier times
Four children were found alive when the prison was opened
Liberated from the prison
Survived the prison
After leaving the Killing Fields, we visited the notorious S.21 prison. More than 70% of the people who passed through here were Khmer Rouge. They tortured and maimed to extract confessions and names of others, and then executed them. When the prison was opened following Khmer Rouge’s defeat in 1979, they found four children among the survivors. We met a couple of old men who had survived and wrote about their experience in the prison. We bought both books, but haven’t read them yet. I opted not to show some of the more gruesome tools and cells.
It is clear that no one talks about their experience or inquires about an other’s experience or role in the war. Most follow the Buddhist way of life, so they believe that what has happened is done and can’t be changed, lets move on. My initial reaction was to find the guilty, to assign blame, and to punish. What has happened? Two top leaders were executed, one committed suicide, two are in prison, and two are still on trial claiming to be innocent. That’s it!! By the way, Pol Pot died in the mountains of old age. People believe that everyone emerging from this dark period is neither guilty nor not guilty. They subscribe to this rationalization with the moral dilemma: You were given a choice – shoot your father or neighbor, or we’ll kill you right now? If you select to live and kill the person, you are not guilty, because you had no choice – if you didn’t kill, you would be shot and someone else would be given the choice to kill your father or neighbor, or die. How would each of us respond if we were faced with this dilemma?
So today, Cambodians agree not to dwell on the past, to rebuild their country, communities and families, to move forward, to understand, and to love each other – and don’t ask.
I repeat: this was a hard day. I porpoise between the deep-sea of horror and savagery, and the air of looking at everything in the abstract. Can anyone survive when staying in the deep?
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