In Phnom Phen now. And I will worn you to pour yourself a glass of wine and maybe have the bottle next to you whilst reading this. I warn you, it will bring tears to your eyes but this experience needs to be shared.
On my first day in Phnom Phen, I went to the Killing fields and the Sleung Toung Museum (Prison S21 of Khymer Rouge days). Extremely powerful place and amazing exhibitions but a very emotionally draining day. The exhibition was very graphic with photos of the torture occuring and of deceased prisoners, only 7 people ever survivied their time in S21. They also had an enormous collection of mug shots that had been taken to keep records of the prisoners who entered the prison so that it could be reported back to Pol Pot.
An exhibition of paintings was also featured in some of the prison cells. The artist who painted the simple scenes of the prison days was employed by the Khmer Rouge to again to keep records to report back to Pol Pot. Please note that 'employed' is used here in a lose sense becasue the Khmer Rouge worked without a money system due to communist ideas, his payment was that painting enabled him to keep his life and not be murdered.
A video was shown and it featured the artist talking with a exguard from the prison. During this the artist was getting the guard to confirm that the pictures that he'd painted were a true representation of the treatment of prisoners. It was just horrifying but I am so glad that I took the time to go and gain a better understanding of what the people went through and it now enables me to acknowledge how hard they have worked to start from scratch again and to also overcome the emotional terror that they went through. When you walk the streets it is very rare to see people older than 40 becasue millions of the population were murdered less than 40 years ago. If you had ever gone to school, spoke another language or had a proffesion you were murdered. The leaders believed that the country would start again from ground zero and that meant that the population should be equal. They should have the same knowledge, eat the same food and work the same fields all in the hope to allow khmer Cambodia to be reborn for the good of the country. However somehow, it escaped the minds of the leaders that they too were highly educated. Some had been to study in France or were teachers or doctors and many spoke languages other than khmer. The leaders used children to build the new country. Their minds were fresh and not littered by the thinking of the old ways. They were brainwashed to murder as if it was a game, with no regard for life. Children were trained to lay land mines and in turn grew up without recognising the horrible pain that they were inflicting and that they were littering the land that their children would play on in years to come with explosives that would take many lives and limbs. Instead these children valued the land mines as they provided them with food and ensured that they slept safely at night.
Now please, have a sip of wine or four, there is still more.
I also visited the Killing Fields; the mass grave site of the Khmer people between 1974 and 1979. With this I can not say to much but a tear comes to my eye. A very siorrowful place. The first thing that you see is a monument. The monument stands about 15metres tall and has glass walls. It is the final resting place to over a thousand skulls belonging to the Khmer people. The owners of the skulls saw their last minutes of life looking into a ditch which they had dug themselves before they were kild by a child. And it is hard to read this, I know because I am writing it but I think it needs to be told so that it is never forgotten. The people now burried here had so much courage. But I dont think the most confronting thing about this place is the monument, its when you walk through the field, along the well worn path. This is the most confronting. You see the remainder of clothes that belonged to the people. And as you walk with your head down it is not uncommon to see the human bones that have slowly become uncovered as their burial site is weathered away. At this point I decided that I was definitely ready to leave. And I left having truely acknoledged the strength of the Khmer people.
When you acknowledge how many people were murdered and how many young minds were tortured by the leaders of their own country, you definitely need to wonder. How on earth have these leaders escaped going before the UN tribunal for crimes against humanity up until this last week? And still some of these leaders will never see a trial as death gave them a path to escape as free men.
But not only this, the hardest thing to come to terms with is that no one helped this country when all the terror was occuring and all the while the USA were secretly dropping thousands of tones of bombs on Cambodia as party of the vietnam war, but I wonder when will these leaders face the tribunal??
Many people do not go to S21 or the killing Fields as its too confronting. It is. But this is reality and people lived through this. I believe that any person who did not live here during the Khmer rouge time of terror must see this. Not as a tourist attraction but as a point of reference to show respect to these peoples past and to develop a true understanding and appreciation of the strength that the Khmer people hold.
