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:
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.
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.
Window washing:
Fixing the road/sidewalk
Lost a part of a load:
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.
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