Hello all,
So those of you who read my blog regularly know that I like to keep things entertaining. A little silliness here and there, pictures of puppies, a lot of joking around. I like to think that I slip in some interesting information in between the random jokes, but I try to keep things amusing.
There is none of that in this post. This is about one of the most deeply moving, terrifying, and traumatizing things I have ever witnessed. This is about a descent into hell.
So, if you're looking to read something lighthearted, you might want to skip this post. And any younger readers (Matthew and Caitlin, I'm looking at you) really should not read this.
I'm serious kids, don't.
Well, might as well get started.
The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, came to power in Cambodia on April 17, 1975 and ruled until January 7, 1979. During this time the Khmer Rouge killed between 1 and 3 million Cambodians out of a population of 8 million.
On our second day in Cambodia, we visited the Choeung Ek killing fields. The Choeung Ek killing fields are the site of the murder of approximately 20,000 Cambodians from between 1975 and 1979.
Choeung Ek is only one of hundreds of formerly active killing fields spread around Cambodia, and the memorial at Choeung Ek commemorates victims of the genocide.
We took a tuk-tuk from the city, arriving in about half an hour.
When we arrived, one of the first things warning us that this would not be a happy day was the simple sign outside the entrance.
When you pay for admission to the killing fields, you also receive a free audio guide. The audio guide is fantastically done, and very tastefully handled. Kate in particular was worried that things would be lightened, that it would become "genocide tourism." But the guide was very good, constantly keeping us rooted in the tragedy that happened here.
We walked a little further and discovered the first of the mass graves
A nearby tree is possibly the most horrific thing I have ever seen. There is a large tree next to the grave for women and children. When it was found, the tree was smeared in dried blood and brains. No one could figure out why until the nearby grave was dug up, and the bodies of children with smashed heads were excavated.
The executioners would take children by their ankles and smash them against the tree, then throw the bodies into a nearby pit. The child would be buried on the body of its naked mother. Jesus. Just...I don't. What the hell. What the actual hell, man. That's messed up.
We lit some incense for the victims at the front of the stupa, then headed back out.
I think the most harrowing thing about the whole experience was the bare knowledge that any of this was possible. That Cambodians could kill Cambodians, without any history of ethnic conflict like the Turks and Armenians or the Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus.
That it was possible for an entire nation to self-destruct under the pressure and fear of one crazed, charismatic man. That in the span of four years, everyone surviving in Cambodia was either a murderer or a survivor.
There are lessons to be learned here, about hatred and tolerance, understanding and humanizing the enemy. About ignorance and blind obedience. But for me, the biggest takeaway from the killing fields was a prayer for strength.
Please, if someone asks me to murder innocent people, to slit someone's throat with a palm frond and throw them in a mass grave. If someone asks me to kill a child. Please. Give me the strength to refuse. Even if it means my death. I would rather face death than have my soul darkened. You go to the killing fields, and you see how dark someone's soul can truly become.
Wow.
Well, that was a lot.
Next post will be on a cheerier topic, the marvels and wonders of Angkor. So you know, a lot less depressing. See you guys there!
Signing off,
Jefferson
So those of you who read my blog regularly know that I like to keep things entertaining. A little silliness here and there, pictures of puppies, a lot of joking around. I like to think that I slip in some interesting information in between the random jokes, but I try to keep things amusing.
There is none of that in this post. This is about one of the most deeply moving, terrifying, and traumatizing things I have ever witnessed. This is about a descent into hell.
So, if you're looking to read something lighthearted, you might want to skip this post. And any younger readers (Matthew and Caitlin, I'm looking at you) really should not read this.
I'm serious kids, don't.
Well, might as well get started.
The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, came to power in Cambodia on April 17, 1975 and ruled until January 7, 1979. During this time the Khmer Rouge killed between 1 and 3 million Cambodians out of a population of 8 million.
On our second day in Cambodia, we visited the Choeung Ek killing fields. The Choeung Ek killing fields are the site of the murder of approximately 20,000 Cambodians from between 1975 and 1979.
Choeung Ek is only one of hundreds of formerly active killing fields spread around Cambodia, and the memorial at Choeung Ek commemorates victims of the genocide.
We took a tuk-tuk from the city, arriving in about half an hour.
Sign welcoming us to the killing fields
"11. Bones and other items may not be taken out of the center"
When you pay for admission to the killing fields, you also receive a free audio guide. The audio guide is fantastically done, and very tastefully handled. Kate in particular was worried that things would be lightened, that it would become "genocide tourism." But the guide was very good, constantly keeping us rooted in the tragedy that happened here.
The memorial stupa
The memorial stupa is the first thing you see at the killing fields. We would return to it later on in the tour.
The Khmer Rouge came to power in April 17, 1975. The war in Vietnam had been raging for many years, and North Vietnamese forces had been using Laos and Cambodia to smuggle troops and weapons into South Vietnam. The U.S. demanded the expulsion of the Vietnamese, but King Sihanouk was either unable or unwilling to stop the NVA from using Cambodian land. The U.S. launched a series of bombing campaigns into Cambodia, and backed a coup by general Lon Nol to expel King Sihanouk.
In exile, King Sihanouk joined forces with the radical Marxist Khmer Rouge. Led by Pol Pot, and with the King's support, the Khmer Rouge rallied huge numbers of poor, rural, uneducated Cambodians to their banner. After intense fighting, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, driving out Lon Nol's U.S. backed government.
King Sihanouk was immediately sidelined, forced into a symbolic position as Pol Pot and his men took over running the country. Pol Pot dreamed of returning Cambodia to a rural state, where the "Old People"--the farmers in the country--were free of oppression from the "New People"--the bankers, lawyers, merchants, artisans of the city.
The Khmer Rouge brutally executed whoever stood in the way of this new world.
The original structures of the killing fields have long since been torn down for their materials. All that is left is a placid scene totally incongruous with the horrors that happened here.
Wooden signs mark the locations of various buildings, and describe what happened there
The first thing the Khmer Rouge did is they forcibly evacuated the cities. Cities were the hub of the various evils that oppressed society, and so hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were forced out of their homes and deported to collective farms. Their quotas were set so high that famine set in almost immediately. Conditions were incredibly harsh, and work hours were long. Anyone who slowed down or objected was executed immediately, and deaths from starvation were commonplace.
Secondly, the Khmer Rouge executed anyone who they felt would obstruct their new society. That was the purpose of the killing fields. Persons under suspicion would be taken to prisons such as Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh. There they would be tortured until they signed confessions, possibly implicating others as "traitors" as well. Then they would be taken to the killing fields to be executed.
These "traitors" were:
- Educated people. Anyone who had gone to university, or who was a teacher. Anyone who spoke a second language was suspect, as was anyone who wore glasses (considered a sign of being literate)
- Religious people. Monks and nuns of all faiths were rounded up and exterminated
- Ethnic minorities. Anyone not considered 100% Cambodian was under suspicion, and ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, Cham Muslims were especially targeted
- Khmer Rouge members. In the later years of the Khmer Rouge reign, purges of Khmer Rouge soldiers and leaders became very common.
- Anybody who disagreed with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge
Signs describe the casual horrors that happened here
I think one of the most horrifying things to hear on the tour was the nature of the executions. Condemned victims were never shot. Bullets were expensive.
Instead, victims were forced to dig pits that would serve as their own graves. Then they were clubbed to death with shovels, hammers, crowbars, whatever farming tools were available, and kicked into the pits. Many of them were still alive as they were buried in these pits, with DDT thrown on the bodies to mask the stench of decay.
At one end of the camp is a sugar palm tree. The fronds of this tree are very sharp and very sturdy. Sometimes, Khmer Rouge guards would use these fronds as makeshift weapons, using the sharp edges to slit a victim's throat.
The sugar palm
Fronds of the sugar palm
These were Cambodians killing other Cambodians. To shoot a helpless, unarmed person in cold blood is psychologically damaging and vile enough. But to do it standing an arms length away, feeling the impact through your arms as you hack away? To hear them screaming, over and over again, as they are kicked writhing into a pit of warm bodies? To have their blood splatter on your arms and face as you kill them?
Christ almighty, it makes you pray for the soul of the human race.
We walked a little further and discovered the first of the mass graves
Each pavilion shelters a mass grave
Sign for a mass grave
The grave now
The killing fields were first discovered in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge's fall. The Khmer Rouge were ousted by the Vietnamese on January 7, 1979. The Khmer Rouge had been targeting ethnic Vietnamese in their purges, and they had begun to launch a series of raids along the Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta was originally Cambodian territory, and the Khmer Rouge wanted to reclaim it.
The Vietnamese launched an invasion of Cambodia, overwhelming the Khmer Rouge and forcing them out of Phnom Penh. However the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot escaped to the jungles, where they would fight the Vietnamese established government for another fifteen years.
What the grave looked like when it was originally excavated
When the graves were first excavated, mounds of human bones and skulls were found. Now, major bones have been excavated but there are still many minor bones that remain buried in the pits. During the rainy season, the flood waters cause buried bones and rags of clothing to rise to the surface.
Bones and scraps of cloth can be seen around the entire killing fields, even away from marked sites. Visitors are asked not to touch or disturb anything. The casual sight of a human bone lying on the ground like a fallen leaf was enough to make my stomach turn.
Bone fragments
Cloth
More bone fragments
At a certain point during the tour you have the option to listen to the stories of survivors. The stories are all heart-rending and moving, but one in particular stood out to me.
A woman got back from the fields, and she had two bananas in her hand. An overseer demanded to know where she got them from. She claimed another overseer had given them to her. The overseer screamed at her that she was lying, and hit her again and again. The narrator watched, unable to do anything. The woman fell down, and the overseer picked up a nearby hoe. He brought the hoe down on her head, splitting her skull.
Then he dropped the hoe and told the fellow workers to throw the body away. Death was a casual thing in this time.
A peaceful lake in a corner of the fields, isolated from the scenes of violence. At the bottom of this lake are suspected to be another few hundred victims, whom archaeologists have decided to let rest in peace.
As the Khmer Rouge madness started to unfold, Pol Pot began purging the Khmer Rouge. Many Khmer Rouge soldiers, executioners and torturers for the first wave were killed in the second wave of purges. Of particular concern was the Khmer Krom, Cambodians living very close to or across the Vietnamese border.
One of the Khmer Rouge guards explained in chilling simplicity why he was able to execute his former comrades.
"If I didn't kill them, I would be executed with them."
The Khmer Krom were considered "Vietnamese head on a Cambodian body." So these Khmer Rouge soldiers were killed by decapitation, their heads still nowhere to be found.
Around the mass graves are bracelets left on almost every pole. I have no idea what they mean or who left them.
Ornamental bracelets left for the victims.
Display cases contained the clothes of the victims
Others contained the bones of the victims
Another mass grave contained the bodies of women and children. Almost all the women were naked, and had almost certainly been raped before being killed.
Sign for the women's mass grave
The bracelets, with bones scattered around
The executioners would take children by their ankles and smash them against the tree, then throw the bodies into a nearby pit. The child would be buried on the body of its naked mother. Jesus. Just...I don't. What the hell. What the actual hell, man. That's messed up.
The killing tree
The Khmer Rouge kept fighting a guerilla warfare against the established government for years, well into the 1990s. During this time, the Khmer Rouge were considered the official government of Cambodia, instead of the Vietnamese-installed government. Cambodia's borders were almsot entirely closed, so no one in the international community knew about the genocide.
The Khmer Rouge held a seat at the U.N. until 1993. Pol Pot died peacefully in his sleep in 1998, at the age of 82.
War tribunals are currently being held for the most senior members of the Khmer Rouge. Leaders are tried through the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a tribunal set up with the U.N.'s assistance with both local and foreign judges. Comrade Duch, who ran Tuol Sleng Prison, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2010. This was shortened to 19 years after appeal, and then lengthened to life in prison after a second failed appeal.
Trials for three other Khmer Rouge leaders began in June 2011. Many Khmer Rouge leaders and soldiers who defected at the end of the conflict will go without trial at all.
The tour of the killing fields ends at the memorial stupa.
The stupa
A naga and a garuda hold up the balcony
Inside the stupa are the major bones of the 20,000 victims of Choeung Ek killing fields.
A glimpse inside the stupa
The skulls
There are ten floors of skulls alone
You can see where the skulls have been fractured by blows to the head
Skulls missing their front teeth, probably knocked out during torture
The clothes of the victims
Broken jawbones that could not be reassembled
We lit some incense for the victims at the front of the stupa, then headed back out.
I think the most harrowing thing about the whole experience was the bare knowledge that any of this was possible. That Cambodians could kill Cambodians, without any history of ethnic conflict like the Turks and Armenians or the Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus.
That it was possible for an entire nation to self-destruct under the pressure and fear of one crazed, charismatic man. That in the span of four years, everyone surviving in Cambodia was either a murderer or a survivor.
There are lessons to be learned here, about hatred and tolerance, understanding and humanizing the enemy. About ignorance and blind obedience. But for me, the biggest takeaway from the killing fields was a prayer for strength.
Please, if someone asks me to murder innocent people, to slit someone's throat with a palm frond and throw them in a mass grave. If someone asks me to kill a child. Please. Give me the strength to refuse. Even if it means my death. I would rather face death than have my soul darkened. You go to the killing fields, and you see how dark someone's soul can truly become.
How we felt after seeing the killing fields
Wow.
Well, that was a lot.
Next post will be on a cheerier topic, the marvels and wonders of Angkor. So you know, a lot less depressing. See you guys there!
Signing off,
Jefferson
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