Sunday, December 10, 2006
Visiting the site of The Killing Fields, a dark chapter in the history of genocide
On the first day, I decided to visit sites associated with The Killing Fields, the notorious place outside of the city where thousands of Cambodians were tortured and executed by the Khmer Rouge in its attempts to impose an extreme form of Communism in Cambodia. It is estimated that two million people were murdered in an attempt to purge intellectuals, capitalists, and educated people and build a country based on agriculture. Some extreme measures taken: people who wore glasses were executed as it was assumed they were intellectuals and Muslim Cambodians were forced to eat pork and those who refused were executed. It was so eerie to visit The Killing Fields. Years ago when I worked for the New York Times, I met Dith Pran, the real person behind the movie, The Killing Fields, who was dating a friend at the time.
The actual Killing Fields, called Cheong Ek, used to be a fruit orchard which the Khmer Rouge converted into a concentration camp where they brought people to be tortured, executed and dumped into mass graves. Horrible. The Cambodian government has erected a huge pagoda containing the skulls and clothes of some of the victims unearthed from these graves. There is a short walking tour where you can visit the sites of some of the graves as well as the tree where children were beaten and the tree where they mounted a loud speaker to drown out the screams and moans of those being tortured. After this, I toured the Toul Sleng detention centre which was used by the Khmer Rouge to torture and kill 'enemies of the state'. Before being a prison, Toul Sleng was a high school. It is a very poignant place, more so because some of the rooms were left as they were found when the Khmer Rouge fled. Torture chambers containing metal bed frames, hundreds of shackles and torture instruments laying around. What is most disturbing are the hundreds of photos of the victims ranging from small children to the elderly. The Khmer Rouge meticulously photographed all of their victims, not caring that some of them showed visible signs of torture, some were holding their babies and others had chains and rope around their necks. All I could do was shudder and that day, I just went back to my hotel room and spent the afternoon and evening alone. It's so hard to imagine that this happened so recently (1975 - 1979).
The repurcussions are still being felt. If you look around in Cambodia, there seems to be a total lack of people over the age of 50 years old. It is an incredibly young population, with the vast majority seeming to be under 15 years of age. Cambodians are a resilient people. The country is very poor. I've seen a lot of beggars, land mine victims, children running around naked and malnourished people. But everyone has been kind and polite, always smiling. We from the West are so fortunate to live peaceful, prosperous lives, especially when many Western governments have used places like Cambodia and southeast Asia to wage senseless wars and power politics.
The actual Killing Fields, called Cheong Ek, used to be a fruit orchard which the Khmer Rouge converted into a concentration camp where they brought people to be tortured, executed and dumped into mass graves. Horrible. The Cambodian government has erected a huge pagoda containing the skulls and clothes of some of the victims unearthed from these graves. There is a short walking tour where you can visit the sites of some of the graves as well as the tree where children were beaten and the tree where they mounted a loud speaker to drown out the screams and moans of those being tortured. After this, I toured the Toul Sleng detention centre which was used by the Khmer Rouge to torture and kill 'enemies of the state'. Before being a prison, Toul Sleng was a high school. It is a very poignant place, more so because some of the rooms were left as they were found when the Khmer Rouge fled. Torture chambers containing metal bed frames, hundreds of shackles and torture instruments laying around. What is most disturbing are the hundreds of photos of the victims ranging from small children to the elderly. The Khmer Rouge meticulously photographed all of their victims, not caring that some of them showed visible signs of torture, some were holding their babies and others had chains and rope around their necks. All I could do was shudder and that day, I just went back to my hotel room and spent the afternoon and evening alone. It's so hard to imagine that this happened so recently (1975 - 1979).
The repurcussions are still being felt. If you look around in Cambodia, there seems to be a total lack of people over the age of 50 years old. It is an incredibly young population, with the vast majority seeming to be under 15 years of age. Cambodians are a resilient people. The country is very poor. I've seen a lot of beggars, land mine victims, children running around naked and malnourished people. But everyone has been kind and polite, always smiling. We from the West are so fortunate to live peaceful, prosperous lives, especially when many Western governments have used places like Cambodia and southeast Asia to wage senseless wars and power politics.
