About a month and a half
ago I spent two weeks in Cambodia with my friend Stef, a 23 year-old from
England. We spent the first week between Siem Reap (where Angkor Wat is
located) and Phnom Penh, where the main killing fields are, as well as the
former torture prison Tuol Sleng (S-21). We spent the second week
relaxing on the beach down south in Sihanoukville.
Before I can really talk
about the things we saw and their significance, I have to give a bit of a
historical background on the Khmer Rouge. “Khmer” is an extremely common
word in Cambodian, as it simply means “Cambodia.” They still use this
word to describe their food, language, and country in general. It is the
second word, “Rouge,” meaning “red” (obviously) that tells what the Khmer Rouge
really was: a communist organization. In and of itself, that wouldn’t necessarily
be problematic. I’m not 1950’s Hollywood, and I’m not going to expound on
the evils of communism because really that wasn’t the issue. The issue
was how they tried to implement communism, namely by murdering
almost all of the country’s previous government officials and their families,
as well as the upper classes and intellectuals. So that’s… not
great. The Khmer Rouge was led by Pol Pot. Pol Pot claimed that he
was inspired by the farmers of the country, by those who worked with their
hands and dug in the earth. He posited that they were the truest citizens,
oppressed heavily by the government and intellectuals in large cities such as
Phnom Penh. He called for a re-ordering of the country, a supposed
equalizing. However, nearly all of the middle management-type power was
given to the former farmers, most of whom had little or no experience in
leading others, and even less education. Society was indeed reordered, as
the wealthy citizens in large cities were herded out in to the country.
At first many people stayed with family or friends in the country, but soon people
were shipped to camps where they were ordered to build their own shacks.
The whole family lived within these sorts of homes, regardless of how many
members the family had. The able-bodied were sent to work camps, where
they spent their days in slave labor, most often planting or harvesting crops.
The vast majority of the people doing these jobs had never done them before and
didn’t know what they were doing. They were fed very little, but these
camps were sometimes preferable to the non-work camps for small children and
the elderly, where there was often no food at all.
Within this new society,
everything was supposed to be equal, and the only thing that mattered was
“Angkor” which just translates to something like “the organization.”
There was no longer a true family unit. In “When Broken Glass Floats,” a
memoir by a woman named Chanrithy who grew up under the Khmer Rouge but now
lives in Portland, she discusses this shift. Children weren’t allowed to
call their parents “mother” and “father” (Mak and Pa), but were ordered to
instead refer to them as “comrade.” All people were supposed to be
referred to as “comrade,” regardless of age, position in society (either the
old or the new), or former relationship. Families were often torn apart,
as children over the age of seven or eight were often sent to the work camps,
leaving younger siblings and parents behind in other camps. Often, one or
both parents were killed. For example, in “When Broken Glass Floats,”
Chanrithy’s father was ordered to leave the family and return to the city to
help out in offices. He went willingly, and they never heard from him
again. A few weeks later, Khmer Rouge officers asked the women whose
husbands had gone back to the city if they wanted to join their husbands and
help out in the offices. All the women in that group said yes except for
Chanrithy’s mother, who opted to stay in the country with her children.
They later found out that everyone who had gone to the city had been taken to a
field, forced to dig, and then killed and buried in the mass grave they
themselves had just dug. Her father had been dead for weeks and they’d
had no idea.
In addition to the
dissolution of the family, the Khmer Rouge went about systematically destroying
all religion, mostly though the destruction of temples and statues of Buddah.
In truly Queen-Of-Hearts-esque fashion, they most often destroyed statues of
Buddah by be-heading him. Religion was forbidden, and if there was one
thing you didn’t want to do it was get caught disobeying Khmer Rouge
orders. Education was also forbidden, and any schools that were run
through the camps educated children in the Khmer Rouge’s propaganda version of
Cambodian history, and other basic things that they would need to work in the
fields. Anyone demonstrating that they were previously participants in
academia was punished severely for being from the upper classes. Often
this demonstration of knowledge needed be nothing more than a single word
spoken in a foreign language. Chanrithy’s sister merely said “Bonjour,”
to a neighbor, but another person living in the camp reported her to the camp
leaders. She wasn’t sure how they would punish her, but she was extremely
frightened. In order to convince them that she had gone insane and
possibly discourage them from punishing her transgression, she shaved her head
and cut her skin. Miraculously, it worked. Still, having to do such
a thing to yourself out of fear of reprisals for saying “Hello,” is completely
unimaginable to me.
The Khmer Rouge also
wanted to erase everything that had come through the country before them.
To do this, they attempted to destroy historical structures, such as Angkor
Wat. Around Angkor Wat there are often headless statues. In fact,
there are probably more headless statues than ones that still have their
heads. Many of these statues were of Buddah. Some, however, were
merely statues of soldiers. The Khmer Rouge came through and destroyed
everything, pulling stones from the roof, beheading statues, and knocking down
whatever they could. This was done in an attempt to erase everything
other than Angkor, to start new with Angkor and the Khmer Rouge as the only
thing that people might follow, worship, and know. And yet, Angkor Wat is
still an absolutely incredibly sight to see. To anyone reading this who
might someday have a chance to go to Cambodia, GO, and see Angkor Wat.
Small tangent to talk about Angkor Wat: it is absolutely incredible. The main structure is set in the middle of a large field surrounded by palm trees and beautiful ponds. The walls are all carved and etched with reliefs of many different things, from famous battles to Buddha to dancing girls. There are a lot of different sections of the complex, and you have to take a tuk-tuk to get from one to the other. If you ever go, one thing to know is that you should NOT hire a tuk-tuk through your hotel. Stef and I did this, and we learned from our driver that he has to pay to rent the tuk-tuk from the company and gets paid no wage at all by them, surviving only on tips (because we paid the company directly). Rather, walk out onto the street and find one of any number of tuk-tuk drivers. Haggle with them and, at the same time, check out their English. The first time I went to Cambodia our tuk-tuk driver spoke great English and he took us to a lot of places that most other people don't go because they don't know about it. Back to Angkor Wat, though, one section that was interesting had faces carved on the sides of each tower, smiling pleasantly down at visitors. My favorite section, however, was a bit of a hike into the trees. The jungle had completely retaken the structure, and much of it was falling down after having been attacked not by the Khmer Rouge, but by trees. Several trees were even growing right out of the top of the roof. It was an incredible sight that makes you wonder whether man will ever truly destroy nature, or if nature will retake whatever we leave behind. Tangent over, back to the Khmer Rouge.
By erasing the past, the
Khmer Rouge aimed to focus all of the country’s attention on the future, which
was, in their eyes, agrarian. They left fields that had always grown
yucca and other foods to fallow, and started entirely new fields. They
forced people who didn’t know how to plant properly to do the labor and had the
people who knew what to do act as slave drivers, giving instructions and
forcing people to carry them out. Still, even with the agrarian focus,
there was never enough food, because many of the leaders didn’t really know how
or where to grow food properly. People were starving to death left and
right. On the audio tour at the killing fields, one woman told a story of
her newborn son. She survived in the long run, but she was starving to
such a degree that her body could no longer produce milk, and her son couldn’t
eat. She went to the leaders of her camp, and they refused to give her
any more food. As a result, she held her son and watched helplessly as,
over a few days, he slowly starved to death in her arms.
This was far from the
worst of what the Khmer Rouge did. We visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum,
which is located in what was previously S-21, a Khmer Rouge torture
prison. Built before the Khmer Rouge outlawed education in what was
formerly a high school (side note: a high school converted to a prison… is that
irony? It sort of feels like irony…), the prison’s purpose was less imprisonment
and more torture. Of the thousands of people who were brought in to S-21,
it is guessed that only seven people survived, five of whom were young
boys. These only survived because they were some of the last prisoners
left as the Khmer Rouge’s control began to fall apart and because they were
extremely lucky. Within the prison people were held in cells that weren’t
long enough to lie down or wide enough to comfortably sit. Some rooms
were larger, but these were generally used for torturing *ahem interrogating
prisoners. If parents were arrested, their children were also taken
into the prison. Most were only held there for three to four months,
during which time they were tortured until they confessed to whatever crimes
they were accused of committing, and often until they also implicated family
members and friends. After this time they were told they were going to be
released and taken to a nearby field in trucks. At the field they were
checked in while music played loudly. After being checked in to make sure
everyone was present, they discovered why the music was really playing (from
speakers in a large tree referred to as the “Magic Tree”): to cover the screams
and groans of those who were being murdered or who lay dying. People were
murdered there using machetes, hammers, and other farm tools, mostly because
bullets were too expensive to waste. They were then dumped into mass
graves.
Interestingly, the man
who ran S-21 prison is, to this day, the only leader in the Khmer Rouge who has
officially confessed to any crimes or shown any remorse, and he only did so
when he was taken to the killing fields and shown something called “The Killing
Tree.” Which, incredibly, is FAR worse than it sounds. During his
trial he had kept his cool, much like the other Khmer Rouge leaders who were
tried for their crimes. When he was brought to the killing field near his
prison he was shown bones, skulls, and bodies, but it wasn’t until he reached
the killing tree that he broke down, not only admitting to ordering the murder
of these people, but taking full responsibility, admitting that if any of the
men he had ordered to murder had refused, he would have had them murdered as
well. He didn’t want his men held responsible for what he had done.
He showed immense remorse and is, amazingly, the only leader who has done so.
At the killing fields
(the main one for tourists is the one nearest to S-21 prison, just outside of
Phnom Penh) there was an AMAZING audio tour that gave incredible amounts of
information and context for everything around. There are approximately
20,000 different mass graves, though many of them are inaccessible because they
are deep in the jungle or surrounded by mines. This one was the size of a
professional baseball field and contained over 20,000 bodies. The tour
said “each indentation in the field is a spot where there was once a mass
grave.” The entire field was nothing by small hillocks and
indentations. Some spots were roped off and had signs saying, “Please do
not step on the mass grave” in multiple languages. Some of the graves
hadn’t even been dug up because they wanted to let the people rest in
peace. Some graves held as many as 400 bodies, though the hole looked
only big enough to fit perhaps 4 in both length and width. However, the
graves were dug to a depth of up to 16 feet and clearly no respect was given to
body positioning or spacing. The entire space is surrounded by beautiful
trees and plants, and does not look as though it could have been a part of the
horrors that were perpetrated there. And yet, truly terrible things have
happened there. Every year, more bones teeth, and clothing wash up with
the fresh rains. Around the field are glass boxes filled with the things
that have washed up, and it happens so frequently that there are even more
pieces stacked on top of the boxes. In the center of the whole field is a
large tower, which is a monument that serves to remember those who were killed
all over the country during the genocide. Really the tower is just a
large rectangle, and the inside is filled with shelves in the center that rise
up seventeen levels. The first fifteen levels are covered in
skulls. The top two levels of shelves are covered with other kinds of
bones that have been dug up (shins, arms, etc.).
All of that is clearly
unimaginably awful and yet, it gets worse. The aforementioned Killing
Tree is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever heard of. At first no
one understood what it was, though they found blood and human tissue all over
it. Then they realized that it played into one of the many Khmer Rouge
propaganda mottos: To kill the grass you must even kill the roots. They
didn’t want anyone coming back for revenge or for any of the ethnic groups they
were trying to wipe out (Khmer Muslims, Khmer Christians, ethnic Thais or
Chinese, etc.) to survive. At the prison, parents and older children were
held and later killed at the fields. But there were also babies.
The Killing Tree was where Khmer Rouge soldiers would hold the babies by their feet
and ankles and swing them, smashing their heads into the tree until they
died. There was a designated spot for baby brain smashing.
Cambodia is a country
that is still healing from what happened in those years, during which it is
estimated that, of a population of around 8 million, 2 to 3 million people were
either murdered or died from the lack of food and medical care. The four
main organizers directly below Pol Pot (who died and was buried, though it
doesn’t seem like people really know where), are still on trial for war
crimes. They claim no knowledge of any violence and that they did not
order any murders, only that they were trying to introduce communism to
Cambodia. It was a political and social change that they were bringing
about, not a fatal one, or so they claim. Many of the lesser officers
have already been tried and imprisoned. Interestingly, though the Vietnamese
drove the Khmer Rouge out of Cambodia in 1979, it remained a voice at the UN as
a “government in exile” until 1993, and was widely regarded and treated as the
government of Cambodia, though they were obviously no voice of the
people. Even the United States, United Kingdom, and other world powers,
thought of the Khmer Rouge as the leaders of Cambodia, in spite of the fact that
they had not retained a presence in the country in over ten years.
For the most part,
however, it is a country unlike any other. If you can forget that anyone
over the age 35 has known a horrible kind of genocidal war, it’s pretty easy to
see life there as it is. I loved sitting by the window on the bus from
Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville (the beach in the south where we spent the final
week of our vacation). Out the window I could see normal country life
taking place: a large sow suckling fifteen piglets, for example, or a man
sleeping in a hammock under his house. Houses in the country are often
raised on stilts for two purposes: during the rainy seasons there is often
flooding, and this protects the homes, and during the summer, when it is
extremely hot, it provides shade. Under another house a father and son
were asleep, the boy (only about three) sleeping on his father’s stomach, both
with one arm thrown carelessly over their head and the other holding their
stomach. In front of one home a father was giving his son a haircut,
while the rest of the family stood in the yard and watched, possibly waiting for
their turn. Cows and goats, calves and kids, wandered around munching
grasses and plants by the roadside at their leisure. One boy stood
nude in a basin in his front yard. As I wondered what he was doing, his
slightly older sister walked forward holding a bucket full of water. She
threw about half of the water on him and then went after him vigorously with a
bar of soap, saving the other half of the water for rinsing off. In front
of a small food stall a man and a monk sat, sharing a meal and talking as they
sat on small plastic stools. In front of another stall, a family of about
fifteen people ate together at one table, grabbing food from the dishes with
their bare hands and squabbling over the best bits. Little boys stole
candies from a little shop and ran away, the ladies who owned the shops yelling
and waving after them. As soon as the boys were gone the women would
smile and shake their heads, clucking their tongues. Clearly they knew
the boys and were accustomed to their thievery. Over all, in spite of its
harsh recent history, Cambodia is a beautiful country, filled with friendly,
helpful, fun-loving people. Plus everything is really cheap, which cannot
be excluded as a good factor in a vacation location.
We spent the last week of
vacation at the beach, which was a little too long for me. One of the
things about traveling with a companion with whom you have never travelled in
the past is that it often changes and colors your vacation. Stef is a
great girl, and one of my best friends in Thailand, but she only wanted to
spend time at the beach. We hurried through Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in
order to get to the beach, which was pretty boring to me. Don’t get me
wrong: I LOVE the beach, and the beach in Sihanoukville was pretty nice.
However, a week is too long to spend somewhere where you only lay around, and
it was too much sun for me.
One great thing about
Sihanoukville, however, was one of the bartenders/ fire jugglers that I met
there: Lee. Lee was born in Phnom Penh and lived there most of his
life. While some Cambodians go to school from age five until age
seventeen, many drop up. Lee was one of those that dropped out when he
was ten years old, in order to sell things on the street and support his
mother, stepfather, and half-siblings. His English was near perfect,
which he admitted was because he had spent almost every day of the last eleven
years speaking English. He also admitted that when it came to other
things, such as history, reading, writing, or math, he was “stupid.”
Which, I can tell you, he wasn’t. He was an extremely smart guy, just
uneducated. His job when I met him was as a bartender at one of the beach
bars, but at a certain time of the night he and his friend Monster (another
Cambodian, though the majority of the bar workers were Westerners) would put on
a fire show, where they spun chains equipped with flaming balls on the ends, or
a bar that had both ends lit with flame. A lot of what I know about how
life is in Cambodia comes from talking to Lee and Monster, whose English was
not as good because he stayed in school until he was fifteen. In other
words, his street education (which consists of a LOT of English) didn’t begin
until later in life. He was also younger, only nineteen years old.
Getting to know the two of them made me regret other vacations a little bit and
the fact that I had never really tried to get to know the locals in other
places (other than countries where I’ve lived). You get to understand and
know so much more about a place when you know and understand its people.
All in all, the trip to
Cambodia was great (minus too much time at the beach and a stolen purse that
was more inconvenient than costly to replace). I would absolutely
recommend traveling to Cambodia to anyone that can do so. It’s a great
place to visit because it’s both fun and educational, entertaining and
illuminating. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to carry cash because
debit and credit cards aren’t accepted anywhere other than your local ATM.
