horrific history
by Rachael
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Reading Khmer Rouge survivor, Loung Ung’s book “FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER”, right here in the place where it was set.
Walking up the road to the school-turned-prison-turned-museum.
Standing in the classrooms-turned-cells (all it took was the addition of rudimentary brick walls and rough cattle-stall-like wooden ones).
Lingering on the red and white checkered tiles, unable to tear gaze from the torture bed and instruments.
Staring at gallows.
Touching the barbed wire.
Seeing the photos; old men, young men, little boys, an ancient lady, small girls, a mother with her baby on her lap…..photo after photo after photo, eyes burning out from faces, defiant or hopeless or fearful or angry or just blank.
Sheltering our children from paintings by a survivor, images we didn’t want them to see, not yet.
Thinking through an exhibition; agreeing, questioning, wondering, sighing.
repulsed at the evil
horrified at human behaviour
harrowing
sobering
saddening
the hurt is immense
the hatred cripples
the power of forgiveness is unimaginable
replaces numbness
dries tears
still, the faces haunt
there was nothing they could do
hundreds tortured and killed
every day
just up the road
But it wasn’t just the intentional murders. There were the side-effect deaths. Deaths due to disease, because all the trained medical staff had already been killed. Deaths of starvation as rice was traded for arms. Death as broken hearts stopped beating when loved ones failed to return home. Suicides of hopeless despair.
And it wasn’t just the deaths. There was the displacement of the entire urban population. There were the classes in this supposedly equal agrarian utopia.
There was the loss of culture, religion, education.
There was inhumanity. Brutality. Suspicion. Fear. Anger. Repression.
There was no justice.
Gunnar Bergstrom, one of the first and few foreigners invited to Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge came to power, visited in 1978. His photographs became part of the propaganda machine fed to the West. Thirty years later, with the benefit of hindsight illuminated by simple growing-up-maturity, life experience and the exposure of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, he gifted an exhibition, in an act of apology and forgiveness-seeking, to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, where it is now housed. The scenes with their accompanying captions of “Thoughts from 1978” and “Thoughts Now” provide an insightful window into this time in history, that must never be forgotten.
Such tragedy must be a lesson to us to stay alert, to consider the consequences of decisions (both personal and political), to arm ourselves with knowledge, to be wary of putting faith and trust in a system, to fight for freedom, to release slaves from bondage, to be aware.
Let us learn.
And subsequently, act.
Reading Loung Ung’s story, thumbing through other books at the bookshop (it is a well-documented tragedy), visiting the museum with its various exhibits, watching the movie “The Killing Fields” and visiting the fields themselves have provided us with a few days of harrowing history lessons.
It was not that long ago that it all happened.
Every person on the streets older than ourselves (and some younger) was affected.
And it continues around the world today; not Democratic Kampuchea’s Khmer Rouge, but injustice, slavery, torture, lack of freedom, lack of education, poverty, war, fear, we’re-tired-of-hearing-about-it-famine, unnecessary sickness, hopelessness.
Tags: children, history, justice, learning, postcard: Cambodia
rayres
Sobering.
I am sitting here with my third case of Mastitis in Sam’s short 5 weeks of life. I have been feeling quite sorry for myself all day. You have put life into perspective. It’s not all about me.
wowsers – your pictures and words are very provocative.
provoKATEive.
not funny, funny.
not funny.
loads of thoughts but nothing else to say.
love X
no words, just …
🙁
ohhhh.
reminds me of my visits to yad vashem.
eternally haunting.
xx
I remember Toul Sleng so well. Nothing had ever left an impact on me as much. It was so painful to see the details and to read the accounts of those who went through it. I especially remember the board with the rules on it and one of them read “…you must not cry at all” And I didn’t take a single picture while I was at the museum. Maybe because the images were already etched deep in my mind; maybe because I was afraid that I’ll remember…