Phnom Penh Diary Day 6
During the four years of Pol Pot's rule in Cambodia, nearly 25% of the population were brutally killed by the Khmer Rouge regime. The people of Cambodia were starved, tortured, and murdered by the increasingly horrific tactics of the Khmer Rouge. Today, the monument at Choeung Ek Genocide Center - commonly referred to as "The Killing Fields" - just outside of Phnom Penh is a testament and a reminder to the country's tragic history.
I admit, I didn't necessarily want to visit the Killing Fields, but I had visited Phnom Penh twice before without making my way here. While it's not exactly a fun place to see, I think that if you are going to spend a few days in Phnom Penh, it's important to visit. It's like visiting a concentration camp in Europe. It's not exactly an enjoyable experience, but I felt like I owe it to those who died here to learn and remember their stories.
I hired a round-trip tuk-tuk to take me the 17km along a dusty road out of the city to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, arriving around 9am. I was greeted at the entrance by a man who offered to be my guide.
I can't really do justice to his story, but I will definitely try my best. If you want to know more, I recommend the book When Broken Glass Floats by Chanrithy Him. It's one of those books that will stick with you forever. I've only been able to read it once.
My guide told me that both of his parents and his uncle were executed by the Khmer Rouge. He and his sister escaped to Vietnam with the help of a policeman, and were not able to return to Cambodia until after the Vietnamese invasion in 1980. He has been working as a guide at the Killing Fields ever since to make sure that the story is never forgotten.
The Khmer Rouge wanted to create a fully self-sustaining and purely agrarian society. All money was outlawed, and anyone who was not a farmer was seen as useless to the new regime. Western medicine was outlawed. If you couldn't work in the fields, you were killed. If you could speak English or French you were killed. If you were a teacher, doctor, pharmacist, lawyer, or had an education of any kind, you were killed. If you wore glasses, had any physical or mental disability, or were overweight, you were killed.
The Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh are just one of some 300+ killing fields in the country containing an estimated 20,000 mass graves. Exact numbers are still unknown.
While many people died of starvation and preventable disease, or were simply worked to death, many others were executed in increasingly bizarre and sickening ways. After internment at Tuol Sleng Prison (a former school converted into a brutal concentration camp), prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields for execution.
But bullets were valuable, and were to be used to protect the newly created Democratic Kampuchea from foreign invaders and insurrection. Instead, the Khmer Rouge executed civilians using poison; electricity; farming tools like scythes, hoes, and pickaxes; bamboo clubs; starvation; and would even cut people's throats with the sharp saw-like fronds of the large palm trees that grow natively in the fields of Southeast Asia.
As we walked through the fields in the cool morning sun, my guide - wrapped in a krama, or traditional Khmer scarf - would point out different areas and tell me what happened there.
"I saw", he would say, then mutter, almost to himself, "it's crazy, man". It was crazy. It really makes no sense. He pointed out a certain tree where the officials of the Khmer Rouge would smash babies to death. "Why would they kill babies?" he asked me.
Visitors had hung daisy chains of Buddhist prayer bracelets and even rosaries upon the rough bark of the "killing tree".
"There are many ghosts here", my guide whispered to me. "I know. You can hear them at night".
I'm not a superstitious guy, but I can't help but believe him. Some places are so tragic, so dark that you can feel it; a pervasive aura of sadness. I've felt this only once before, at the concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. Like there, there was a noticeable silence hanging over Choeung Ek.
Cambodia has developed in the most remarkable way in the past 50 years. It's almost unbelievable how safe, prosperous, peaceful, and happy the country is. However, there is undeniably a deep generational trauma which will last decades, if not centuries.
There was a huge storm the other day. As we walked through the fields, my guide pointed to the ground, where a small pile of human teeth had been unearthed by the rain. "When it rains, we find new bones." he told me. As we walked, we saw many more teeth and bone fragments.
I've heard of many people who did not take any photographs at the Killing Fields. I was hesitant to do so as well. After all, it's a somber memorial, not a tourist site. However, my guide would point out things like the teeth and the pile of skulls within the stupa. He asked me to take photos to help the world remember. I did so in honor of his request. That's why I'm sharing these photos on my blog.
Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial, marked by a consecrated Buddhist stupa in which 9,000+ human skulls are interred. That's just a fraction of the estimated human remains buried at the Killing Fields. I paid 2000 riel (about $0.50) for a lotus flower and some incense to offer at the stupa to pay my respects. We removed our shoes and solemnly climbed the steps up to the monument.
In the 90s and early aughts, forensics specialists and anthropologists from the United Nations worked to catalogue some of the remains which had been unearthed at the killing fields.
The interior of the stupa is made of a glass container holding some 9,000 human skulls. The skulls are all color-coded according to manner of death. Among them are the remains of 9 foreigners; reporters who lost their lives trying to cover the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Every one of the skulls is missing teeth. My guide told me how teeth and fingernails were removed as a form of torture before execution.
I left the Killing Fields with a heavy feeling in my heart. It was very difficult to visit this place, but in the end, I'm glad that I did. It is important that we never forget what happened.
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