Hello again , so today we had our first full day as an entire group in all we have 3 students from New York, and 2 students from Hawaii as long as me, Jacob, and flor of course along with teachers and members of the East-West center. The first thing we did today was visit the E.C.C.C to view a testimony that was given by a witness who admits to be involved with the Khmer Rouge genocide. The court set up was very unusual. Firstly Cambodia does not run their own judicial system for this matter, the country has made an agreement with the United Nations to help give the accused a fair trial. Second the way the judicial system is set up is very unlike the U.S. In the U.S. we use the common law system to put people through trial, but Cambodia uses the civil law system which includes a civil party "the peoples voice", and the prosecutor and defendant like normal, as well as 7 judges, 2 of which who's only job is to investigate the case. After we left the trials we got to meet with individuals from the prosecution, defense, and the civil party. Each person gave a brief overview of the Khmer Rouge and how their role effects the entire justice process. So after hearing about the Khmer Rouge, and the killing fields and prisons from these individuals we went to go visit them. Our first stop was the Killing fields. Here thousands of people were killed, and this was just one field. The people that were sent here to be killed were Men, Women, Children, Suspected spies for the U.S or Russia, and anybody Pol Pot felt was going to turn on him, or that committed treason towards his regime. These people were brought in by the truck loads and either killed right away on arrival or kept overnight at the fields and killed later the next day, and the bodies were then dumped into mass graves that contained as little as 4-5 people to 2000 people in one single grave. In the middle of the fields there is a large, beautiful, building that could have been tribute to the people, but as you look through the doors of the building you notice that all that is inside are the skulls of the people who were buried assorted by age with oldest skulls on bottom and the skulls of children on top. One more disturbing thing out there was this tree. This tree was known as the killing tree, and it is where the solders of the Khmer Rouge would beat infants and small children against this tree until they were dead. The last thing we did today was visit the prison, which use to be a school, where people were sent to be investigated by the regime. The Khmer Rouge was only interested in getting information from these people then sending them to the killing fields, and when one member of a family was arrested the entire family was arrested. Every on who ever got sent to the prison died in the killing fields except 7 people who were able to escape the killing fields due to conflict going on against the Khmer Rouge and the liberals. Here at the prison we got to see what the cells looked like, the rooms they were interrogated in, and got to meet one of the 2 remaining 7 survivors of the prison and killing fields. He told in what ways he was tortured such as electric shock, pulling out his finger nails, wiping him with wire, and even make the prisoners eat their own waste if the missed the small box they were given to do their business. Today was exactly a bunch of happy news about Cambodia, but I feel as though I understand more about the horrible history of this country, and not just the media washed version. Again thank you for following my trip, if you haven’t yet please visit jacob's and flor's blogs to see their own personal insight on the things we are doing. You can find their links in my summary.
