The Killing Fields

Warning:  This is not the most uplifting post I've ever written!

One of the most satisfying parts of travel for me is learning about life in other countries, previously not open to Westerners.  Some of what I’ve learned is beautiful and inspiring, and some is shocking and heartbreaking, which is the case with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.  “Khmer” is the name of the ethnic population of Cambodia which represents 90% of the 14 million+ people of Cambodia.  “Rouge” is French for Red, ”Red Khmer”, a regime led by the infamous Pol Pot.  A French educated Khmer, his vision was to create a radical communist, agrarian based society, free of western influence.

When he fully came into power in 1975 he proceeded to clear the entire population out of Phnom Penh, which was close to 2 Million people at the time, and send them to the countryside to work in the rice fields.  The city became a ghost town.  Anyone considered a threat to the Khmer Rouge was killed, including supporters of the old government, ethnic Vietnamese, and particularly intellectuals.  Wearing a pair of glasses was enough to get you killed. 

A former school in Phnom Penh called Tuel Sleng became a prison and place of torture for those considered a risk to the Khmer Rouge.  The site was left much as it was when liberated by the Vietnamese in 1979 and is now a museum.  The site was truly horrifying and the level of torture the prisoners of Tuel Sleng experienced speaks to the paranoia and fear of Pol Pot and his followers. 

The rules for the prisoners at Tuel Sleng.  In addition to these rules, if they did not follow the rules they would be electrocuted, and if they disobey the guards at all during their imprisonment they will be lashed or electrocuted.

A bed used for torture in Tuel Sleng.  There was actually a dead body on this bed when the prison was liberated by the Vietnamese.  The pillow has a bullet hole.

Doors to the tiny prison cells with very little air or light

Barbed wire lined the outdoor hallways of Tuel Sleng so desperate prisoners could not kill themselves by jumping to their deaths

The contrast of jungle bars and other play things within the former school turned prison could not be missed.  Playground items were sometimes used to torture the prisoners as well.

Part of a poem written by a Cambodian who lived under the Khmer Rouge and later immigrated to the US.  They had absolutely no freedom whatsoever and were forced to even eat in a "common" area, separated from their families, which is horrible for people whose lives previously revolved around family.

Of the 20,000 prisoners at Tuel Sleng, 7 survived.  One of the most disturbing things for me was that the guy in charge of Tuel Sleng, the mastermind of many vehicles of torture, was a math teacher in his previous life.In fact, most of the Khmer Rouge leadership were highly educated, some receiving their degrees from the Sorbonne in Paris, and yet they feared intellectuals more than anyone.

Once the torture of the prisoners was complete, they sent them to a field outside of town to be executed.  This site is now known as “The Killing Fields” and holds a very moving memorial which we visited as well. Not only were prisoners from Tuel Sleng executed there, but anyone else considered a threat to the Khmer Rouge, including the prisoners' families. The theory was that anyone associated with an executed prisoner posed a risk to the regime because they would eventually seek revenge, so they were killed as well, children included.  In order to save ammunition, most were beaten to death.

8,000 skulls found in the Killing Fields make up a part of the memorial at the site.

The area surrounding the Killing Fields is quite beautiful, but there are reminders scattered throughout, marking the mass graves

All told, it's estimated that 1.7 - 2.2 Million people lost their lives during the 4+ years of the Khmer Rouge regime, about 20% of the population at that time.  But that's just an estimate as many deaths are undocumented because they resulted from starvation and disease since they couldn't produce enough food and most hospitals were closed.

It is truly appalling that Pol Pot led a genocide of his own people when he claimed to be "a man of the people."    In 1979, the Khmer Rouge was thrown out of power by the Vietnamese.   However, I was stunned to learn that Pol Pot lived in exile on the Thai/Cambodian border until his death of natural causes in 1998.  Until that time, he still led various insurgencies into Cambodia and the reality is that this beautiful country was not free of him until 1998. He even ordered the execution of one of his administration members in 1997...along with their entire family.  The fact that he had the power, nearly 20 years later, to execute an entire family makes me absolutely sick.

Even more shocking is the fact that Pol Pot represented Cambodia in the UN until 1994, a position supported by the US despite the fact that we knew genocide occurred during his time in power.  (The movie "The Killing Fields" which follows a Cambodian and American photo journalist as they attempt to escape the Khmer Rouge came out in 1984,so we had to have an idea!)  After a bit of research, it appears that, although Jimmy Carter called Pol Pot "the worst violator of human rights in the world" in 1978, we would not intervene and in fact supported Pol Pot for two reasons.  First, with a bruised ego after the Vietnam War, we did not want to support Cambodia, who was liberated by Vietnam.  Second, we were just beginning a new relationship with China who supported Pol Pot and didn't want to upset that tenuous relationship.

If you're interested, Frontline did an interesting story on the Khmer Rouge in 2002, which you can read a summary of here:  http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/cambodia/tl03.html

I'm glad we didn't directly support the Khmer Rouge during their 4 years of terror, but the fact we didn't call for Pol Pot to be ousted from the UN while simultaneously placing an embargo on the new government of Cambodia, greatly stunted their recovery from this horrific regime.  The Khmer Rouge left a country of uneducated, untrained and unprepared people that were 70% women by the time they were through.  People from my generation, those near the age of 40, never had the privilege of going to school and have struggled to find a way to support their families.

I'm once again bewildered by the cruelty that some human beings posses and realize that it takes an incredibly complex series of events to enable a tragedy of this magnitude.  I know the world is complicated and I'm far too simple to understand the implications of its intricacies, but I do know that I'm glad I wasn't a politician that supported Pol Pot during the 90's.  After what I've seen and what could have been prevented, I don't think I'd feel very good about myself.

The good news is that the Cambodian people are some of the kindest I've met. They are resilient and determined to move forward.  Every single person that was alive during the 70's lost at least one loved one during that time.  There's something special about this country and know I want to come back again someday.