4th oct 2009
The first night in phnom penh we ate at a fantastic restaurant called "Friends"- a social project/restaurant. it involves teaching children to cook and serve their food to customers. The kids would otherwise be on the streets. it had a tapas theme but included traditional khmer food also. I was a veggie that night and shared a scrumptious selection of dishes with another veggie on the tour. the smoked eggplant dip with crostini, zucchini and cheddar fritters and homemade ravioli were to die for. Honestly this was one of the best meals i have ever had. it felt even better to know that I was contributing to a worthy cause.
The previous night's meal and peaceful night's sleep was highly necessary for the next day's activities. We visited the S21 museum and killing fields- a very emotional and long morning.
Cambodia's captial was moved to Phnom penh from Angkor in 1430s. As some of you may already know, from the French colonial period (1863- 1953), to it’s tentative relations with the US and to its war with Northern Vietnam, Cambodia has faced incredible hardship and disruption over the last few centuries. The occupation of the Khmer Rouge, a communist regime headed by Pol Pot, was arguably one of the most bloody and gruesome times for the Cambodian people and their country. Pol pot was the Secretary-General of the Cambodian Communist Party in 1963. In 1975 chaos tore the city apart when he led the khmer Rouge to force all of the city's residents into the countryside as part of a radical social restructuring program. Pol Pot has been referred to as “a more fortunate Hitler”, namely because unlike his fascist counterpart, he was a man whose troops were responsible for the deaths of about 2million fellow Cambodians and managed to get away with it.
First stop on our tour was the Tuol Sleng Museum. In 1975, with the arrival of the Khmer Rouge, Tuol Svay Prey hugh school became Security prison 21 (S-21). it was the largest detention center in the country in which (between 1975 and 1978) over 17000 people were detained and tortured before being taken to the extrermination camp at Choeung Ek. Many were also buried in mass graves within the prison grounds. Each prisoner was photographhed and today the rooms are covered from floor to ceiling with thousands of photographs.
There was a wooden pole in the yard that was once used for physical education of students but had been turned into an interrogation and torture machine. The interrogator tied both hands of the prisoner behind their back and liftred the prisoner upside down. This action was repeated a number of times until the prisoner lost consciousness, then the interrogator dipped the prisoner’s head into a barrel of dirty water. This shocked the victims back into consciousness so that the torturer could continue with questioning. We also saw many of the tools used by prison guards to punish and discipline prisoners, many of whom were innocent young men and women. It is beyond belief how any human being could bring themselves to treat another fellow human being and countryman in such a way. As an estimate, roughly 20,000 children were killed by Khmer Rouge. The imprisonment in S21 lasted to 2-4 months.
It was so heart-wrenching to walk around S-21 and hard to even begin to imagine how the prisoners coped. It was no wonder when our tour guide explained how many women who were repeatedly raped, would throw themselves out of windows when they had a chance, regardless of the barbed wire that lined the compound below. Although this all sounds depressing, there was a silver lining to it also. The museum actively promotes the awareness of these terrible atrocities that were committed on Cambodian soil in such a way as to create a new, strong and just state. They are keen to reiterate that by making the Pol Pot regime’s crimes public they will prevent a new Pol Pot from emerging in the lands of Angkor or anywhere else in the world. We were so lucky at the end of our tour to meet 1 of the 7 remaining survivors of the era. He was an old frail man on his way to a nearby school to read children an excerpt from his biography. It was incredibly inspirational to see that a man who had gone through such an unimaginable ordeal still had the strength and conviction to help others and remain positive. He was smiling, posed for some pictures with us, and left us with a message that he repeated again and again to our tourguide to convey to us: “please please don’t walk away from this visit and forget what us Cambodian’s have gone through. Spread the word and help us lift our country out of its darkness.” Truly inspirational.
Next stop:
Choeung Ek killing field was the second most important part of the larger Secruity Prison, S21. In 1988, it became a significant center to show the brutal and barbaric activities of the UCKRR. It was used as a national center for the consecration of the spirits of over 3million people who had lost their lives in this regime. In 197901980, 129 mass graves were found, 86 of which were excavated, 8985 corpses were exhumed. The largest mass grave contained 450 corpses. Many prisoners were bludgeoned or stabbed to death to avoid wasting bullets. Bone ragments are scattered in the pits and over 8000 skulls are arranged in the Memorial Stupa, erected in 1988. As we were walking along the paths, we were uncovering old bones and teeth. It was very eery and quite emotional at times to think we were walking amongst the dead. We saw a grand Banyan tree, so typical of Asia, but what was initially a pleasant sight was soon blackened by a description of what it was used for during the regime. Babies would be swung against the tree and their heads smashed. The remains of young children were uncovered and visible at the foot of the tree. Local people believe that the souls of the troubled dead still reside in the vicinity.
Evening of Day 5:
After the morning’s emotionally intense activity, nobody was really keen on doing anything particularly straining for the rest of the day. We took a cyclo tour around the city. This is basically a tuk tuk but seats one person. I then,as the passenger,, was sat at the front whilst my driver rode his bike from behind me and pushed me forward. The driver was elevated above my seat and the contraption looked similar to the Victorian pennyfarthing. The tour was nothing to write home about (yet I am!) and so I wont dwell on what we saw. It was just a pleasant and alternative way to see a city. After the tour, the group stopped for eers but at 4pm, I was still eager to explore. So my roommate and I walked around the city, raomed the central market- an art deco building supposedly a Phnom penh landmark- but like India- this once beautiful building was hard to view in all its splendour underneath all the pollution and rubbish.I grabbed an icecream before heading to the foreign correspondent’s club- something of an institution in PP- for a cocktail at sunset overlooking the bay from the roof. We met some cool guys from Panama and Peru, played some pool and had a yummy pizza and some more drinks. A nice end to a lovely and informative, albeit sad, day.
