Somber in Phnom
Sophan picked me up this morning and we headed to Choeung Ek Memorial or the Killing Fields. The site is just out of the capital, Phnom Penh, but at 20 kph Sophan took his sweet time getting us there. Almost all the road surfaces that I have seen are paved and its pretty good pavement so things are light years ahead of much of Africa even here in Cambodia when it comes to infrastructure and transport. I come to this with an inside-of-Africa mentality and I am once again shaking my head regarding what Africans and non-Africans have managed to do (read: NOT DO!!!!!!) over the past 50 years. If Sophan can be so slow and not out of the ordinary at least here, what would he drive like around Nairobi?! Anyway, we finally arrived at what is a rather small site which was disturbing and almost not real. I thought it was underwhelming. But that is because it’s a simple place with little humanity… until you get to the pagoda with hundreds of skulls…
My belief is that I found it underwhelming because I know the scale, at least the numbers, and this is a “tiny” site of 17,000 plus I was thinking about Rwanda and the very live and real stories, first-hand accounts, that I heard there until I stopped asking people about their “story”. The two countries suffered dementia for three years (Cambodia) and three months (Rwanda) during which time 1-1.7 million Cambodians and 800,000 Rwandans were exterminated. The pits at Choeung Ek hardly made any of this real today. All of the buildings at the mass grave site which took care of the bodies coming from the notorious S.21 prison in the inner city are now gone. Signs tell you what was there, but it was a leap for my imagination and just somber. A tree was noted as a place where children were beaten and that certainly was disturbing.
Sophan is 39 so he was a six year old in 1975 when Pol Pot and his army tried to make everyone the same – basically simple peasants, subsistence farmers and ignorant. They attempted to create a purely agrarian society by murdering all of the educated people and the Muslims, banishing religion and moving everyone out of the cities and onto farms. Sophan was lucky because he lived in the country, but his family still lost members. Like many others in Phnom Penh, his mother sent him here after the Khmer Rouge fell to the Vietnam Army. This country lost so many people in the 70s it appears to be a country of very young and some old. There is definitely a noticeable gap of a lost generation.
We drove back into the city and made our first stop at the Russian Market. It was quite lively and fun. As in Thailand, Cambodians are not camera shy. My favorite photo is “fresh chicken” – on the left are skinned chickens with heads hanging over the table and on the right they are even fresher – a pile of still living ones! Every kind of software is available at this market including the newest from Microsoft such as Office 2007. And they cost only $2 each. Bill Gates would never have made a million dollars if he started Microsoft in Cambodia!
Genocide Round 2 was next with a visit to the S.21 or Toul Sleng prison now known as the Genocide Museum. The Russian Market had lifted my spirits after the minor dip from the Killing Fields, but I soon crashed hard at this old prison where so many people had been tortured and killed. The human aspect missing at the Killing Fields was now inescapable. One building is simply rooms with the metal cots and their chains plus a photo on the wall depicting someone in that cot. The folks running the prison took photos of everyone including morbid photos after interrogations were complete. Another building’s rooms display wall after wall of the prisoners’ entry photos. Each prisoner had a number for their family and the photos were grouped by the same numbers – or in family order. Grandparents, children and grandchildren – all were murdered. The museum contains a very good history of the genocide and Pol Pot reign of terror. Photos of Phnom Penh being emptied of people right after celebrations for the arriving liberators were quite amazing to see.
The stories were all difficult to read. By time I was at the overall history building I was deadened. Then I looked at a wall that lists all of the mass gravesites found… all of the killing fields… and then it struck me how what is known as The Killing Fields really is nothing because there are hundreds of the same and LARGER. The creepiest part of the museum is the building with the prison cells still erected. This facility was a high school before Khmer Rouge decided with ultimate irony to do away with schools and eradicate the country of about 25% of its population. One could argue that it was the best 25%. The rooms divided into tiny cells were quite spooky to be in.
In Rwanda, they basically had two tribes that the French and Belgians did a nice job of cultivating hate between. I don’t know if any of them really thought of themselves as Rwandans instead of Hutu and Tutsi. But in Cambodia, everyone was Cambodian. The split was more between the educated and city-dwellers versus the uneducated and rural people. Pol Pot had an insane idea to get rid of the well-to-do and it seems that a lot of people followed. Cambodia is moving past its past because of time. They never tried anyone for the atrocities although there is now a tribunal working slowly on the matter. Rwanda dealt with their genocide head-on. I believe they will move much further and faster than Cambodia. Some of the last few rooms in the museum showed recent photos of people that suffered and people that perpetrated the crimes. Their included stories showed that there is suffering on both sides.
I left the museum totally drained. I was as low as I was the day I left the Genocide Museum in Kigali. All I could see outside the museum is smiling, happy people and my mind had a difficult rectifying this issue of gentle Cambodians torturing each other. (Aside – Just remembered that one of the torture scenes depicted in the museum was that of the now infamous water-boarding technique. I think W is the only one on this planet that is unclear on this matter.) After some lunch, I went to the Royal Palace. I did not enjoy the visit at all. The place is big and hollow with no life in it and it bothered me after going to the museum. I should have saved it for another day.
What I do know is that I am already falling in love with this country and I learned from Rwanda that hitting the atrocities head-on right up front will work out. Tomorrow is a brighter day and I know Cambodia will not be about genocide once I spend a few days here. I would not miss what I saw today for anything and I also never care to visit these two sites again.
Tags: Cambodia
vagabondrick
Hi Rick,
It sounds like a very painful day. It’s so difficult to imagine humans doing these things to humans. I do hope I get a chance to visit Cambodia before I leave this world, it was really a place that many of my friends liked from the voyage. Happy travels. Love, Julie