I vaguely remember hearing reports about Cambodian Boat People on Good
Morning, America during
my childhood in the 1970s – and from my mother about how these children were
increasingly appearing in her first-grade classroom in Brooklyn.
And, growing up, I knew one or two people who had visited the Angkor temples
and I was told about the extreme poverty and utter lack of infrastructure in Cambodia. In my
professional work in Washington
State I had a few young
Cambodian-American clients over the years and began to become familiar with a
pattern of struggles that seemed to include withdrawn fathers, over-protective
mothers, intense pressures toward family cohesion, identity struggles with
their Cambodian and Buddhist heritage -- and an attraction to violent gang
life.
And at some point along the way I learned that a horrific genocide had been
committed in Cambodia
in the name of extreme communist ideals. A genocide that had spawned the
refugee crisis and Boat People I remembered from my childhood. So it wasn't
like we entered Cambodia
without awareness that visiting here would deepen our understanding of the
Khmer Rouge regime and its after-effects. But, when we arrived, I was way too over-focused
on my mission of getting to the Angkor temples
within two days for my birthday. I wasn't thinking about “the Years of Trauma,”
as some here call them. I wasn’t ready for how they would define our first
weeks in the country – and how the continuing day-in, day-out anguished trials
and tribulations of this otherwise joyful country would hit me. I wasn't ready
for Cambodia.
But as Stephen Asma writes in his book The Gods Drink Whiskey, “...you
can never really be ready for Cambodia.
It's sort of like seeing a really good punch coming at your face, bracing
yourself as best you can, but getting knocked senseless anyway.”
But it is a different book, not Asma's, that began the process of waking us
up – that began helping us to piece together the deeper layers of meaning in
our daily interactions and observations in Cambodia. At every tourist
book-shop here – staring out at customers from a patchwork of black and red
covers with names like Pol Pot's Regime, The Killing Fields, and The
S-21 Torture Prison is a book sporting a black-and-white photograph of the
befuddled and clearly numbed eyes of what appears to be a six-year-old girl
(but is actually a chronically malnourished ten-year-old), holding her name in
front of her chest as she is processed into a Cambodian refugee camp in
Thailand in February 1980. Obscuring her face to various extents, depending on
the version of the book, is the title of her story -- First They Killed My
Father. I realized that I would not understand this country until I better
understood the look in those eyes.
The story is of Loung Ung's descent from a post-colonial middle-class Phnom Penh family – one
that eerily resembles many average American families today – into a hell of
enslavement, illness, starvation, torture, and murder. Along with the rest of
the nation, her family was forced to leave the city and march into the
countryside, subjected to endless days of forced agrarian labor in communal
concentration camps, provided only rice gruel and no medical care, and exposed
to a terrifying propaganda machine violently re-training allegiance away from
one's family and toward the central government of The Angkar, offering
empty promises of a return to the glories of Cambodia's agrarian past. Over a
few short years, this hell brutally stole the lives of several beloved members
of her family...the lives of so many beloved members of so many families. 1.7
million people in all. 25% of the population of Cambodia. Loung Ung's stunningly
child-like story is simply an excruciating and unthinkable nightmare. There is
no other way to say it. Her story leaves searing and scarring images bubbling
in the mind. The kind of images that are most familiar to us in the West from
films and stories about Nazi concentration camps. Between our time attending
the Rwanda Genocide Tribunals in Tanzania
and, now, here in Cambodia,
this year has included a harsh reminder that, despite a tendency to think
otherwise, genocide most definitely did not end with the Holocaust. If for no
other reason, this book should be read by Westerners at least as often as the
Diary of Anne Frank and Ellie Weisel's Night.
We did what we could to add further layers to our understanding of the Years
of Trauma. We visited the S-21 prison -- known as Tuol
Svay Prey
High School in earlier, more innocent
days -- where the Khmer Rouge brutally tortured its “political prisoners,” that
included people with any history of education, intellectualism, or urban
living, or with ties to nations other than Cambodia. Their blood still stains the
mustard-yellow and white tiles of the place. Much harder to stomach, though,
are their faces, in the form of black and white mug shots satanically cataloged
by the Khmer Rouge, that fill bulletin boards that line the rooms. Faces of
everyday people like those walking the streets of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap today. Faces of
people whose last days of life were filled with the absolute worst of what
humanity can do, often inflicted by people forced against their will to do the
harm. Men. Women. Small children. Hollow ghosts with eyes that look directly
into yours asking, “How can this be happening?” leaving you staring back
through watering eyes and gasping for an answer that, photo after photo, never
comes.
We visit the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where an
average of 100 S-21 prisoners were sent each day to be unceremoniously murdered
– using blunt force to the head to save precious bullets -- and dumped into
mass graves. Seventeen thousand in all. Scraps of their clothing still lay
buried in the earthen walkway around the now-excavated pits. We touch pieces of
bone still blending in with the dusty dirt to which they have returned. Rising
up more than 200-feet above that dirt is a stupa – a traditional monument to
the teachings of the Buddha. A stupa not unlike the ones we have now seen
throughout our time in Asia. Except for the
fact that this one encases in glass nearly 9000 human skulls piled atop one
another. That this one is a place for Khmer (Cambodian) people to come and silently
contemplate what no mind should ever have to contemplate. That this one was
specially blessed by Buddhist monks to help comfort survivors wrenched by the
competing need to give these remains a proper Buddhist cremation and the need
to have these remains preserved to cry out to humanity. That this one, just
weeks before we visited, was the site of a traditional water-sprinkling
ceremony to honor the dignity and utter bravery of a group of survivors who
dredged up their nightmares – thirty years after the fact – to be witnesses at
tribunals finally now just beginning with hopes of bringing some of the Khmer
Rouge to some form of justice.
Since neither of us had ever seen it, we borrowed a copy of the film The
Killing Fields and sat at a Siem Reap internet cafe watching it.
Ignorantly, it wasn't until the empty cafe began to fill with young customers –
some foreign, but some Khmer -- that I wondered what they would make of the
images on our screen and these two foreigners so publicly digesting them. We
found out when we stopped the film to deal with a skipping DVD and a Khmer
teenager sitting next to us admitted he was watching along with us. With a
shaky voice emanating from a clearly warm heart, he told us a little about
himself and explained that he grew up hearing horrible stories from his mother
who had survived the Khmer Rouge. Shaking his head and averting his eyes, he
told us that he has never been able to fully understand what happened. And he
told us that seeing the images we were watching made him very sad. But he sat
staring at our screen almost until the end of the film – somewhat glazed and
occasionally letting out loud sighs – before hiding behind a wide smile as he
waved good-bye to us.
And that is what is most haunting about the Years of Trauma now. Not S-21 or
the Killing Fields. Not even Loung Ung's story. But the fact that every
Cambodian face we see that is older than 35 is a face that witnessed what
happened – a body that starved for adequate nutrition, a mind that became beset
with images of death, a set of nerves forced to rattle with worry about
survival and by mistrust of everyone and everything, and a heart crushed by the
sudden and violent disappearance of loved ones. And the fact that most every
Cambodian face we see that is younger than 35 was raised by someone – whether
it be parents or relatives or neighbors or orphanage workers – with a face that
witnessed what happened. As a research study we later review details, this next
generation responds to the stories told by the Khmer Rouge survivors with
painful feelings of responsibility and their own pathological levels of
anxiety. Whether first-hand or second-hand, Cambodia is a nation of collective
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. In one way or another, every face we see – every
Cambodian we meet – suffers from what happened.
At dinner one evening, a Jewish-American we have just met expressed surprise
that the scars of the Khmer Rouge have not yet healed. After all, he said, it
was over thirty years ago. As Mi explained the havoc that a generation of
traumatized people can wreak on their children, he began to nod. “Oh, it's like
the children of Survivors,” -- referencing Holocaust survivors. Yes, those of
us who are Jews know all too well how the Holocaust has affected, now, four
generations of Jews. How painfully difficult it has been for us, as a people, to
recover a healthy sense of self, healthy sense of purpose, and healthy sense of
security. And our recovery included a new homeland to escape to and from which
to begin again. Our recovery was helped by a Western world (finally) extending
open and compassionate arms – and a huge amount of financial and military
support. With Nuremberg
trials that brought Nazis to justice. With the backing of world opinion that
what happened to the Jews should never happen again. With centuries of virulent
antisemitism showing signs of ebbing.
Yes, some Cambodians escaped the country after the Khmer Rouge – either on
rickety boats or with the help of Western sponsors – to begin anew. But most
did not. And, yes, tribunals against the perpetrators are now beginning to be
held. But this is after thirty years of wondering whether there would ever be
any justice and after Pol Pot, the Hitler of the Khmer Rouge, died of apparent
natural causes. And, yes, Cambodia
seems to be showing signs of enough stability that it is beginning to be cast
in a favorable light by the West. But this is after so many insults – like the
fact that the United States,
in its unending contempt for the Communist regime in Vietnam
to which it lost its “police action,” disgracefully supported the Khmer Rouge with
arms and money to fight the Vietnamese who invaded Cambodia and chased the Khmer Rouge
out of power and into hiding. Like the fact that the United States also imposed devastating
economic sanctions against this Vietnam-backed government despite knowledge
that the infrastructure needed to feed the nation had been completely destroyed
by the Khmer Rouge. Even after it was clear that the Khmer Rouge had committed
genocide, the United Nations insisted on seating Khmer Rouge representatives as
Cambodia's
delegation – and not members of the Vietnamese-backed government that had
ousted them. (This is all, of course, not to mention the covert bombing of
Cambodia by the United States from 1969 to 1973 that killed countless civilians
and caused a refugee crisis that was part of the chaos that allowed the Khmer
Rouge to come to power in the first place!)
Whereas Jewish healing was nurtured, at least to some extent, within its
new-found Land of Milk and Honey,
Cambodia's
search for healing has literally occurred amidst a never-ending mine-field. The
country was taken over by the Vietnamese – a people who compete with the Thai
for the title of Most Hated in Cambodia
due to a long history of land grabs and generations-old fears that Cambodia would
be swallowed up into these countries. The Khmer Rouge regrouped, maintained a
strong-hold in Northwestern Cambodia, and
fought a Civil War that raged and ravaged the country until 1998, killing
thousands. Having lost nearly all of its educated citizens in the genocide,
there were no teachers to teach the next generation – and few doctors to heal
the physical (not to mention mental) scars. People swarmed to the cities, which
stood abandoned and decaying during the Khmer Rouge years, to escape the
farming villages where they had been enslaved. With little in the way of
infrastructure, the economy faltered – leaving most of the nation unemployed
and impoverished. Those with jobs have been massively overworked and paid with
great variability. Homelessness, wandering, and begging became rampant. An
inept and corrupt government fed the rich at the expense of the poor. Democracy
has struggled to get any sort of foothold. A corrupt and inept justice system
bred lawlessness and terrifying street violence. Pollution of every kind choked
the people. A country with no history of orphanages, was overwhelmed with the
massive numbers of parentless children it needed to raise, leading to awful
child-care conditions and ugly adoption scandals. The orphans contributed to
the national plague of child sexual slavery. And, then there are the mine
fields. Millions of land mines laid by various entities still dotting the
countryside, rendering precious farmland unusable, maiming and killing sixty
Cambodians every month, and causing a national epidemic of limblessness and
sensory impairments. Our days in Cambodia are peppered with sadly
awkward “No, thank you”s to land-mine victims trying to eke out an existence by
selling books or flowers on the street. We find ourselves trying to digest
these more recent elements of Cambodia's
tragedy, too. We meet with counselors and representatives from Non-Governmental
Organizations to hear about their work. And we wrestle with the complex web of
struggles poignantly documented by Karen Coates in her book Cambodia Now.
This is decidedly not the kind of conditions that assist recovery and healing.
But there may be some signs of improvement in Cambodia. There are NGOs abounding
here trying to help with healing and with development (but probably creating a
national dependency on outside entities and infusing the country with foreign
values, good and bad). And there are more hopeful tourist-fueled opportunities
and comforts growing in Phnom Penh
and Siem Reap (but limited appreciation for the problems this tourism also brings).
But not unlike the absolutely radiant smiles the locals so famously wear,
NGO-led programs and tourism opportunities are a thin veneer over what is still
happening at deeper levels. The constant human struggle still palpably fills
the air here. Thicker air than I felt in India. Throbbing feelings of
unworthiness for the inexplicable blessings of my life still haunt me here. A
more painful throb than I felt in Africa. The
beginning of our journey into Cambodia
unfolded into a time to digest the background story as preparation for the few
weeks we will spend volunteering at a Siem Reap school. But some experiences
just can't be prepared for. Some stories just can't be digested
