If you were Cambodian and educated, a teacher/doctor/wore glasses, you would undoubtedly be arrested, tortured, made to confess all your wrong doings and then hacked to death – not even a quick death with a gun.
One in four of all Cambodians died like this or of starvation in the fields – millions were forcibly removed from Phonm Penh over just 3 days and dispersed to the villages to work in the fields with hardly any food for 3 years (2 bowls of rice a day). Hospitals were emptied in those 3 days and staff taken away to be questioned and killed and the injured, pregnant women, dying were just left on the streets to die, if they couldn’t make it to the countryside.
The questions of how, why, what for, were only partly answered by the guide (who lost a brother and cousins) and the museum – but there are no real answers and many of the perpetrators now even hold office here. Some were put on international trial, some in prison (no death penalty) and Pol Pot died in his eighties after a comfortable life. Amazingly (or not) many of the Western nations (including Britain) supported Khymer Rouge – all pretty complicated though and look at Syria and elsewhere – who is right and who is wrong? But the massacres still go on.
"When will they ever learn"
This looks like a school doesn’t it? – it was, in early 1970’s. Now it is the Genocide Museum and is where thousands of Cambodians were tortured and then sent to their brutal deaths. You and me would be included.
The barbed wire that prevented suicides
One of the cells still with chain in the floor – other cells have also been left as they were found with beds, shackles and batons lying around the sparse rooms.
Just one board of many with the photos of those who passed through centre – the documentation of the prisoners is being kept to remind us all of the atrocities. The most moving boards told the tales of the few survivors – just horrific.
How does a country recover after losing all its teachers, doctors and professionals ? and with a population with deep pyschological scars – it takes years to rebuild and educate again.
And people on the trip still complain that the coffee/breakfast/traffic/rubbish isn’t like home!!
KILLING FIELDS
These lay a few miles outside the city in an ordinary countryside area and an excellent audio programme led us around so that individuals could contemplate alone at the different scenes that were presented to you.
The place where the trucks unloaded the bound prisoners, the checkin desk that recorded every person to make sure the list matched the list as they left the prison (hence the detailed records of the individuals – although many are still unkown), the new building that houses thousand of skulls(all carefully documented as they were discovered), the areas of mass graves where bones and remnants of clothing still come to the surface after rain and are collected, the tree where children were banged against it to kill them before throwing into the pit, the tree where music blared out to cover the screams, so that locals did not know what was going on.
Endless horrific thoughts and stories of victims and perpetrators made it an unpleasant experience – but
“Lest We Forget”.
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