Phnom Penh: Tuol Sleng

Choeung Ek (a killing field outside of Phnom Penh) was our first stop after getting off the plane. That was moving. See previous post. From there we went straight to Tuol Sleng, a former prison turned museum in the city of Phnom Penh, about 15 kms away. People were held at this prison before being shipped to the killing field.

Upon arrival we paid our $3USD for entry and asked for an English speaking guide. Teresa and I joined up with three other ESL Spanish speakers and waited for our guide to whom we each paid $2USD for her services. What made this experience "extra" moving was the heart and authenticity with which our guide spoke (we absolutely can not remember her name). She broke down multiple times as she explained the museum to us because as she told stories she remembered her personal connection to the brutal Cambodian history.

She was ten when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge soldiers invaded and took control of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. She was forced out of the city with her mother. Her father was killed because of his association with the former government. Her older brother and sister were also killed. By the time she and her mother arrived at the community farm, her mother was adamant that she needed to save her daughter and herself. I don't know how, but they escaped in the middle of the night, along with a handful of other people, and walked for three days to Vietnam. She and her mother stayed in Vietnam for nearly ten years (I think) before returning to Cambodia. Our guide lived and was personally affected by much of the history she was telling us.

Tuol Sleng (Security Prison - 21, or "S-21") used to be a public high school until April 17 when the Khmer Rouge invaded the city. Pol Pot believed education was a waste and should be abolished so taking over the high school was practical because of space but it was also symbolic of the Khmer Rouge reform. He transformed the high school into a prison and torture chamber. it was eery as we entered as it had a high school campus feel.

The grounds:

Graves of some of the last people who were killed at S-21. They were killed as the Vietnamese were coming, but without enough time to send them to a killing field.

This blog was also very difficult to write for the same reason as the last one. What I will write and show from here on out may be disturbing. Continue at your own risk.

One building contained classrooms turned into solitary cells for the more important prisoners: usually government officials. The rooms have been left in nearly identical condition to when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia in 1979 (after five years of brutality). Prisoners were held here and tortured for information. Prisoners were tortured ceaselessly until they admitted to false crimes and until they admitted people who worked alongside and/or believed the same things they did. They were tortured until the guards heard what they wanted to hear and/or until the guards had names of others that they could hunt down. And the cycle continued.

Another building was haunting. The Khmer Rouge regime, similar to the Nazis, documented all who came through S-21. Each prisoner's picture was taken and then they gave their biography. I'll talk more about the biographies later. One building displayed black and white pictures of faces. Hundreds. Each face representing a life. A person who was here. A person who was killed. It made me nauseous but I couldn't turn away.

A third building showed classrooms that had been sub-divided into about 11 individual cells. In each cell was a bucket for a toilet (if they're lucky). That's it. Prisoners were forbidden to talk to each other. A classroom turned prison. This was real and eery. To be honest, it was difficult to go back to school at the end of August for as I looked at classrooms I saw prison cells and people's faces, even though my school is thousands of miles away.

Upstairs other classrooms were used to hold hundreds of prisoners each: there would be rows of prisoners with their feet shackled to a pole and there would be three or four poles in a room. They would lay on the ground, tightly packed, unable to move, with a solitary drain in the middle, and stare.

Another building showed how people were tortured to admit to the information that the Khmer Rouge wanted. Some people may wonder why you would incriminate family and friends. When you see the modes of torture I can only imagine the grief such procedures would cause. The idea that admitting to a false-crime or giving names would stop the torture is...understandable, I suppose. They had multiple forms of torture but the only one I can clearly remember was: they would put the prisoner's hand in a lock so they couldn't move it, pull their fingernails out and then pour alcohol on the fingers. I can understand why a prisoner would admit to false accusations.

When the Vietnamese came in 1979 there were only 7 surviving prisoners. As we were walking through the buildings our guide casually said, "did you want to meet one of the survivors?" I thought I misheard until Teresa said she had heard the same thing. Away we went and we approached an elderly man who was selling his books. Chum Mey lived in one of the cells in the sub-divided classrooms (the picture of the cell posted above is his cell). He spoke no English. I bought one of his books for $10USD. As I was getting my money out he shakily took a copy and a pen and signed and dated it. Awe. Not Ahh, but awe.

Upstairs was also fascinating as it was full of individually signed biographies. I started by reading those of Khmer Rouge soldiers. They explained why and how they became a part of the army. Hearing their stories humanized them and shed light and gave understanding into why and how they got involved in such a regime. Many had regrets, some did not. it was what they needed to do to survive. Participating in the Khmer Regime was, apparently, their only option.

In S-21 there were foreigners who also got trapped in the Khmer Rouge regime. Parts of their authentic biographies, with their hand-written signatures verifying the information on each page, were on display. Reading through their accounts was disheartening. The Khmer Rouge had suspicions on what their prisoners were involved in and would torture them until the admitted to whatever the Khmer Rouge was looking for. Many were suspected of being spies. The trouble is the prisoners didn't know what charges were being brought against them and didn't always know what to admit to. Reading the accounts of the foreigners was especially interesting. A 26 year old British man was sailing with a New Zealand friend and a Canadian friend, got caught in Cambodian waters and were captured by the Khmer Rouge boats. They were brought to S-21 and tortured until they confessed to having CIA connections. When reading parts of their biographies it became clear that they were co-erced into saying certain things. The biographies are extremely detailed: they talk about where the prisoner was born, where their parents were born, where everyone worked, different addressed they had, schools attended and significant events, even dating back to pre-school events. At one point in the biography Kerry Hamill, the New Zealander, talked about her schooling and she listed all the courses she took in University.  She said she took Mathematics because in America all students were required by the CIA to take Mathematics. She took Psychology and her professor was a recruiter for the CIA. He tested his Psychology students to see who would be good CIA spies. The more foreigner biographies I read the more it became clear that the Khmer Rouge was looking for any and every connection to the CIA possible. Every part of a biography could relate to being a CIA spy or being indoctrinated by anti-communist beliefs. And each page was signed.

Here are some pictures of the biography of an Australian journalist. Read it. The CIA ties are fascinating.

I left S-21 exhausted, nauseous and appetite-less. 

Phnom Penh: The Killing Fields

On August 10 we took a lovely less-than-an-hour domestic flight on a small plane, where they somehow found a way to provide us with food and a drink, we arrived in Cambodia's capital: Phnom Penh. It sits on the Mekong River and has been the capital since the French colonization of Cambodia.

From the airport we hired a Rickshaw/mototaxi driver. He drove a motorcyle attached to a covered "car" of sorts. We were able to get a real life view, feel the dust, and smell the authentic Cambodian smells through such a mode. And it made us happy. The pictures that follow can better describe the drive to and in Phnom Penh.

For my brother Daryl:

 Window washing:

Fixing the road/sidewalk

Lost a part of a load:

But we didn't stay happy for long. Our first stop was "The Killing Fields". This is a museum documenting and honouring the 20,000 people who were killed here during the Pol Pot regime of the late 1970's. As we explored our driver watched our bags. Nice deal.

This post is going to document/describe real history and I am not going to be very guarded as I write. It took me a while to write this post so, even though it is appearing on my blog in proper order, I wrote it after writing some others as it was difficult to "go back to" and process and re-think about. On this day Teresa and I didn't talk about it much other than expressing feelings of "oh my goodness." Anyhow, what follows may be disturbing. Actually, hopefully it is disturbing for you. Read and see at your own risk.

The term "killing fields' refer to a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the reigning Khmer Rouge regime from 1975-1979. From this four year regime there are over 1.2 million victims of execution and estimates of the total number of deaths (including starvation and exhaustion) range from 2-2.5 million of the original (1975) population of 8 million Cambodians. In 1979 communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia, toppling the Khmer Rouge. As you'll know from previous posts "Khmer" refers to Cambodians. As you know from elementary school French rouge = red. Khmer Rouge named themselves - the people's red party. The Cambodian communist party. "Khmer Rouge" sounds exotic. When you break it down, it is the communist part of Cambodia. That's it.

Map of killing fields:

Recap: around 2 of 8 million people were killed in four years (and 2 is a safe estimate). Upwards of 25% of a country's population was murdered in four years. 1 in 4 people in the entire country were killed. Just think about those stats for a minute. AND this was all happening while my parent's were having their first two children. It isn't ancient history.

We went to a museum at one of the thousands (???) of killing field sites: Choeung Ek, about 15 km's outside of Phnom Penh. I didn't know what to expect. Although ridiculous, I was expecting the killing field to be a large, open field like you'd see in Gettysburg or Williamsburg. It is not quite like that. It is a place that was detailed, well-organized and masterful in genocide. We got the audio guides and went from stop to stop learning about this story. I had my iPod out and at many of the stations I took notes on what I was hearing. I listened to many of the stops multiple times. I was blown away that this was real life. The idea of "real life" has been a common theme throughout my trip and on my blog, but that was often for positive, exciting, "Wow!" kind of things. This experience was a, "Holy shit this is real life" kind of thing.

We stood at the place where trucks of prisoners being transported from Tuol Sleng, in Phnom Penh, were dropped off. They were brought to Choeung Ek in the middle of the night so not to arouse suspicion from neighbours or people on the road. We drove the distance from the killing fields to this prison and here, in 2013, it is not a nice ride at all. The roads are bumpy now, imagine the jostling in the back of the truck. Add to that the fear of the unknown. The dark. The cramped space. And everything else that comes with being human. From the prison people were told that they were going to "a better place". And they were dropped off here.

Then they would sign their name on a register. It was the job of a 17 year old boy to take the list from the prison and bring it to the gatekeeper at Choeung Ek to make sure no one had escaped. As people exited the truck they would look for their name and sign it off. If someone could not find their name, they would add it to the list: essential sentencing themselves to death.

Who was brought here? Who was Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge after? First and foremost: anyone who was suspected of being associated, in any way, with the old government. Also, anyone who was associated with an international government. Ethnic Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Christians and the Buddhist monkhood were targeted. Also, any professionals or intellectuals: anyone who spoke another language, wore glasses, had a professional degree or had soft hands for all of these things indicated intelligence and according to Pol Pot intelligence was to be abolished. The farmers, the working class were to have the power. They were to run the country. They were the future. If one did not have calloused, tough hands, they were to be killed. Glasses = intelligence and wealth. Die.

To add context on who Pol Pot was, here are some of his quotes:
"the reverence for your parents and your worship for your god are now to be directed to the republic"
"it is better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare a guilty by mistake"
"to keep you is no gain. To lose you is no loss."

Bullets were expensive so the soldiers at Choeung Ek used anything else they could find as killing tools. This killing field is rural so often farm equipment was the ideal choice. Essentially the soldiers had graves dug and prisoners would kneel in front of the pits and they were beaten, hacked and bludgeoned to death with machetes, car axles, bamboo poles, axes, hoes or hammers. After everyone on the list was killed, soldiers dug pits for the next shipment of prisoners.

I stood at and touched a sugar palm tree. Throughout much of Cambodia such a tree is a commodity as it produces sweetening, palm wine and expensive palm oil. At Choeung Ek it was a commodity because the stems have ridges like the teeth of a shark and they were used to slit prisoner's throats. When throats are slit, they can't shout or make a sound. Can't have the neighbours in the surrounding rice fields know what is going on here. Secrets.

Sometimes people weren't dead in the pit so they spread DDT (in powder form) on them to finish the job. The added bonus? This also disguised the decaying smell.

At this site alone there were 129 mass graves on over 6 acres. 20,000 victims. As many as 300 killed a day.

Sites of some of the mass graves:

Some graves swelled as gases were released by decaying bodies. Some graves cracked open.

The Khmer Rouge built up their soldier reserves before the takeover in 1975, by going to the farms and enticing teenage boys to join the revolution. The boys were promised food and a better life, they left their homes and were trained for battle. They were fed propaganda that the intelligent folks were the root of Cambodia's evil. City folks are to be feared. They are the root of the problem. So in April of 1975, getting these soldier to take over Phnom Penh, the capital city, was a logical step. Within 48 hours Pol Pot's regime had the entire city completely evacuated; it was a ghost-town. Every person was sent marching, even every single patient in hospital beds. They were marched many kilometres outside of the city where, if they made it, they would work on community farms. Hundreds of thousands of people died of starvation and exhaustion during this trip. Hundreds of thousands died and their deaths didn't cost Pol Pot a dime.

How/why did the people leave so "freely"? The Khmer Rouge told residents that they would be moved only about  2 or 3 kms outside the city and they would return in two or three days. Some were told the evacuation was because of the threat of American bombing. They were told they didn't need to lock their houses as the Khmer Rouge would take care of that.  Then when there were people in the street, soldiers began to organize them. I listened to a podcast of a boy's testimonial: he didn't realize what was going on, went out into the street and was told he was leaving his home and going to somewhere new. He asked to go back to his house and get some belongings and was refused. At this point all you need is one rebel-er who gets shot and killed to send a message to all other neighbours. If people refused to evacuate their homes were burned and they were killed immediately. Soldiers began going door to door to evacuate. And within 48 hours the city was empty.

City folks were marched many kilometres to multiple farm sites. People from the cities knew nothing about farming on collective farms. Personal possessions were banned. Those who made it to assignrd districts needed to work 12 hours day without stopping and were only fed some bowls of rice soup. It was said that this once-a-day meal was boiled water where you could count the grains of rice with your ten fingers. Less than ten grains a day, but expected to work 12 hour farm days. Pol Pot ordered rice production in the country to triple immediately. People in charge of these farms were afraid of being punished for of not making their quotas so they gave the workers less and less rice. The crazy thing? Much of the rice produced by these farms was exported, mainly to China, to pay for weapons and supplies. And people on farms were starving.

When in power the Khmer Rouge sought to isolate the country from foreign influence, they closed schools, hospitals and factories, burned money and books, abolished banking, finance and currency. outlawed religions and confiscated private property. They moved people to the farms to turn Cambodians into "Old People" through agricultural labour.

At Choeung Ek there was a grave where soldiers were buried. Some young boys couldn't handle what they were seeing and experiencing and some asked for help either from people inside or from the outside. These soldiers were decapitated because they were said to have a Vietnamese head and a Cambodian body. They were traitors. Traitors for wanting to stop the brutality they were forced to inflict?

At this site, Choeung Ek, I saw a lot of the aftermath of human brutality in "real life". Every three months or so employees here will walk through the fields and gather shards of bone, teeth and scraps of clothing that rise to the earth's surface. These recent findings are on display: but not in a glass case: on display with no coverings. I touched the bones and teeth and clothes of genocide victims. Is this real life? Unfortunately, this time it is.

The most moving and heart-wrenching site for me was the killing tree. This tree is a regular tree but here is where, I think, the most insane brutality occurred. Pol Pot believed that, "to take out the grass, one must dig up the root". If one person was suspected of being associated with a former government or if one person in a family was an academic or a professional, all members and friends and associates must die. If my dad worked for the former government, his position alone would mean the death of his wife, 12 children, their spouses, all of their children (his grandchildren), his brothers/sisters and in laws, and their children, grand children and great-grandchildren. Now, my dad is a bit of an exception as he is from and has his own big family, but my father's government position could have resulted in the death of well over 150 people.

Pol Pot believed all family members should be killed. Even babies. At Choeung Ek mothers were brought to a certain part of the fields, again, always in the dark of night, with their babies. Soldiers were take the babies and, as their mothers watched, grab the children by the feet and smash their skulls against the tree. The killing tree. To touch a tree where such a ...I have no word...happened was moving and emotional and heart, no gut-wrenching. The doctrine of total depravity was made real at this tree. Writing about it is still painful. I can handle this stuff in stories. I can't handle this stuff in real life.

The building to the right is where the mothers were held/killed.

Close to the killing tree was another large tree with big, powerful branches. Once I listened to the audio details for this tree it also lost its beauty. From this tree huge speakers were hung where, every night at sundown and until every morning at sunrise loud chants and Khmer Rouge propaganda and music was played ceaselessly. It numbed the noise of death. It hid the truth from surrounding farmers. It brought fear and peace to awaiting prisoners. The music from this tree was a mask.

I've written about much frustration already but what really gets me is the International community at this time. The Khmer Rouge decimated Cambodia's population. Vietnam invaded and stopped the brutal regime. In 1980 the Khmer Rouge was recognized by first world countries as the leader of Cambodia because the new government, after Pol Pot, was set up by Vietnam and deemed un-democratic. The Khmer Rouge had a seat in the United Nations in New York less than a year after the brutality was stopped.

The killing field museum at Choeung Ek ends with a stupa, a monument. It is 17 levels of skulls of victims found at this exact site. If you look closely you can see wounds from machetes in the skulls. Heart-wrenching. Real life.

Siem Reap: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

The next temple we went to was Ta Keo (still within Angkor grounds). This was also built by the Khmers, but this was built entirely out of sandstone. I am not at all a big movie buff but for those of you who are: this temple is where part of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (released in 2001) was filmed. There are 45 faces in the towers on this site. We easily could have spent a day here exploring, people watching and pondering. Easily. But we were only in Siem Reap for less than 24 hours total therefore we stopped wishing for the impossible.

Ta Keo was build around 1000 and has five sanctuary towers. It used to be surrounded by a moat and is a temple dedicated to Shiva (one of the three main Hindu gods). I know this description is weak. A reminder that from this day forward I will pay money for local guides. Oh well, here are some pictures:

Check out the faces! Such intricate detail.

The third temple, Ta Prohm, was built in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. It was also featured in Lara Croft. This temple was fascinating because it was essentially left in the exact same condition as when it was originally found. Restoration on it has only begun semi-recently. This was built as a Buddhist temple but many of the bas-relief work (carvings in the stone) were destroyed by Hindus after the death of the Buddhist leader. This temple is an example of man vs nature and it seems as though the balance is swinging in nature's favour.

A centipede like we saw in the DR last year:

Evidence that I was really here:

Buddhist art:

Restoration:

The trees growing out of the ruins are fascinating and a distinctive feature of Ta Prohm. For the information junkies/tree lovers: "Two species predominate, but sources disagree on their identification: the larger is either the silk-cotton tree (Ceiba pentandra) or thitpok Tetrameles nudiflora,[8] and the smaller is either the strangler fig (Ficus gibbosa) or Gold Apple (Diospyros decandra)" (Wikipiedia Ta Prohm page). The pictures do not do the scene justice but this whole environment captivated me. I explored silently and alone for a good length of time. Man vs. nature. Everywhere. The massive trees just keep growing and growing regardless of the beautiful architecture man placed in their way. Their roots seemed alive and more like moving snakes than roots of trees. What got me most, what mesmerized, stunned, silenced and held me still was the perpetual sound:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrSY8Th5Q2k

That evening after dinner we checked out the night market: the market that opens at 4pm. It reminded me of the Dominican market we go to each year: vendors vying for your attention. Not an environment I like to be in at all. What was new for me was the massage station at the back: a half hour leg and foot massage for $5USD. It was packed with tourists! I resisted all invitations to buy something but a booth at the back caught my attention: a man and his wife were sitting quietly and didn't address me once as I browsed: that's my idea of customer service! They had authentic Cambodian license plates and I bought one for $13. This has become my new 'thing': to try to get a license plate from each country (as I wrote about in india).

We also decided to go to an ice cream shop: "The Blue Pumpkin" (apparently a Cambodian novelty). It was novel. The ice cream was lovely and the atmosphere even lovlier. You could opt to enjoy the silky ice cream at a table and chairs or you could opt for a lovely bench with a tray and a newspaper. Clearly we went "Asian".

After the market and ice cream everything in me wanted to walk around the town an explore life. But I just couldn't do it. I was exhausted. I could own that I was done and needed to sleep. For me, this is quite the revelation. I felt bad for Teresa but back to the hotel we went. After watching some more world Badminton championships tv, my evening was over. Let's be honest, I was so tired I may have stayed awake for 17 seconds of tv.

I woke up early so I could take advantage of the pool. Then we packed up, ate breakfast and headed to the airport for our domestic flight to Phnom Penh (departing a mere 21 hours after we arrived). I mentioned earlier, and I speak the truth when I say, both China and Cambodia are whirlwind adventures!