Khmer Rouge

OK, I'll admit it: prior to coming to Cambodia, all I really knew about the country was that there was an abundance of places to get cheap massages.  And yes, I'll also admit that inexpensive spa treatments are really all that is necessary to get me pretty darn excited, which is why I incessantly pestered Jeff about adding Cambodia to our list of destinations despite being unable to name a single other reason why I wanted to go.  But I guess that is why this trip is so amazing: the world has become our classroom. 

I knew the name Pol Pot prior to this trip, but to be honest I probably would not have known which country he came from.  Over the past several weeks, however, I have learned a great deal about the Khmer Rouge, the four years of terror during which they were in power, and the hell the people of Cambodia have been going through during the last several decades as a result.  Estimates vary on how many people died during this reign, but two million is the most common number used.  Virtually everyone with an education was marked for death (although, of course, many of the high ranking Khmer Rouge were highly educated), along with anyone else who was thought to pose a risk to the regime.  It's no wonder the medical system is so bad here.

Embarrassed by my dearth of knowledge about the Khmer Rouge, one of the first things I did when we arrived in Siem Reap was purchase the book First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung (I have inserted a link to Amazon so you can buy yourself a copy.  Kiersten, this is mandatory summer reading for you).  I had seen the book recommended in a couple travel books and thought it might give me a better idea of what happened during those years.  The story is written by a woman who was five years old when the Khmer Rouge first took power, and details what she and her family went through during those years.  I cannot recommend this book enough.  It is a powerful story - if it does not leave you in tears, I question whether you have a soul.  Poor Jeff had to console me when I burst into tears on our bus ride to Battambang.  I have been especially thankful that I read the book during our last couple days in Phnom Pehn as we have visited a few sites that were important during those bloody years. 

Though the Khmer Rouge turned Phnom Pehn into a virtual ghost town, it was not left completely uninhabited.  A couple days ago Jeff and I visited the prison camp located in the city known as S-21, now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.  A high school in the years preceding the Khmer Rouge, it was turned into a place of terror from which very few people survived.  Thousands of people believed to have posed a threat to the government were taken here to be tortured and starved prior to being carted off to the killing fields of Choeng Ek, located about 16 kilometers outside of the city, where they were executed.  Walking the halls of the school, we both had goosebumps covering our bodies as we looked upon these areas where such gruesome acts of terror took place.  We did not need to use our imaginations, as there were plenty of bloody pictures that will probably haunt me for some time to come.

 Bed to which prisoners were chained in order to be tortured

Repeated to the prisoners by the prison guards

Classrooms were outfitted with small cells in which prisoners that were considered particularly "dangerous" were kept. Other prisoners would be kept chained together in larger rooms

This afternoon we took a tuk-tuk out to see Choeng Ek, where most of S-21s prioners went to die.  After the war, almost 9,000 bodies were recovered from the some eighty mass graves at this site.  So many bodies were buried here that each rainy season more bones and tatters of clothes are revealed.  As we walked around the site, we were constantly aware of the pieces of cloth and bone on the ground.

 Erected ten years after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in order to honor the victims that died there. Inside were 17 levels of bones that had been exhumed from the mass grave sites (the picture at the beginning of the post was taken inside)

Mass graves on either side of this walkway

Whole families were often killed if one member was thought to pose a threat

More clothes and bones of the victims are revealed every rainy season

Though I have learned a great deal about the Khmer Rouge, I have yet to understand how something like this could ever happen.