Well…. This is going to be a rough one.
I had no idea how messed up things had gotten in Cambodia, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around how I could have completely missed this part of history until now. It falls squarely into the same category of human darkness and ideological catastrophe as the recent genocides of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and Armenia, and it seems that I should have heard SOMETHING about this at some point. At least I know now.
When I was talking off to the side with our tour guide at Angkor Wat, he mentioned that he was a child during the Cambodian civil war. He told us that he lived in a refugee camp in Thailand after his family fled Cambodia to escape the violence. During their time in the refugee camps, they decided to try to move to the United States. However, on the bus to Bangkok from the camp, his uncle changed his mind and they all had to turn around and go back to the camp. He was 12 years old when the war finally ended in 1993, and they could return to Cambodia. It's just incredible to think how recent all this was, and that this 35-year-old Cambodian man in front of me had spent his childhood in a refugee camp. I had already planned on learning more about the Cambodian civil war and the Khmer Rouge by visiting The Killing Fields and the S-21 prison/museum, but now, all that brutality can't be contained in "the past" or in the abstract like it might have been if I hadn't heard the tour guide's personal story.
I am equal parts horrified and fascinated by these tragic and violent episodes of human history. It just blows my mind that such large groups of human beings are capable of treating each other with seemingly zero empathy, able to mentally disregard or disbelieve the shared humanity between themselves and the people they are subjecting to such intense psychological and physical pain. The occasional sociopath/serial killer here and there is understandable; sometimes the part of the brain that intuits how people are inherently connected and dependent on each other, the part that makes compassion possible, just doesn't develop properly. Genocides, on the other hand, are only possible because LOTS of NORMAL people with healthy brain chemistry have become willing participants in a mass murder scheme. I don't suppose I'll ever understand fully how this happens. If experiencing it firsthand is the only way to know, then I don't ever want to.
Okay.
*deep breath*
No more procrastinating.
Read on if you're ready to hear about some truly horrific human suffering. (If not, just skip to the end for the "Psychological Palate Cleanser.")
Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge Genocide:
A History Lesson
After I wrote everything in this section, I found this website, which explains everything in a much better, still very concise way. Please feel free to read this account instead of the one below: Khmer Rouge History - Cambodia Tribunal Monitor
As with all history, the events leading to the Cambodian civil war -- and the Khmer Rouge genocide that occurred during it -- were not a series of straightforward, linear, cause-and-effect occurrences involving a few well defined participants divided into "the good guys" and "the bad guys." It was a messy situation involving a lot of players with complicated relationships and motives, and it's hard to know how far back to go to adequately explain how the genocide ultimately became possible. I've watched a YouTube documentary, read a few Wikipedia articles, and listened to lots of audio guides as I toured the sites that commemorate this awful period in human history, and I still don't fully understand "the cause" of it all. Here is what I've been able to gather, and it's a start.
The Cambodian civil war lasted from about to 1967 to 1975 according to the internet. (However, the tour guide said his family didn't return to Cambodia until "the war ended" in 1993, so maybe they were just waiting it out for a while to be on the safe side before returning home?) In any case, these were, roughly, the two sides of the war:
VS.
Communist Part of Kampuchea* (i.e. Khmer Rouge) Kingdom of Cambodia (government)
Allies: Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) Khmer Republic (supported by U.S.)
Viet Cong Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam)
*Kampuchea used to be the name of Cambodia .
In the 1960s, the political climate in Cambodia (Kampuchea) allowed for the uprising of communist ideology. Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk had progressive policies and although they were allied with the United States, Cambodia was managing to stay out of the conflicts in Laos and Vietnam. However, in its pursuit of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese who were hiding in Cambodia, the United States had dropped more bombs on Cambodia than they had dropped during all of WWI. This led to 100,000 Cambodian casualties, mostly farmers. Survivors were forced to move to cities, and many became revolutionaries. They saw the United States as the enemy, and whoever was against the U.S. (such as Ho Chi Minh and Mao) was seen as a hero. Widespread inequality and oppression in Cambodia was probably the more immediate contributor to the people's growing attraction to communism, but being caught in the crossfire of the Vietnam War didn't help matters.
A man named Pol Pot began to guide the Khmer Rouge communist party (Khmer = native Cambodians who make up 90% of Cambodia's population; rouge = red) in Cambodia. His vision was to return Cambodia to the days when it had more power and simplicity, the days of Angkor Wat. He created this idea called Angkar, symbolized as a god who intended for Cambodia to change its ways. He wanted Cambodia to become purely agricultural and nationalized, and to be rid of anyone who was educated and modern. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, nuns and monks, anyone who spoke a foreign language, had soft hands, or wore glasses (signs of being an intellectual) were considered enemies of Angkar.
(SIDE NOTE: The thing is, I kinda understand the desire to have society go this route. Like, sure -- let's just grow what we need to feed everyone, and live as equals and lead simple, sustainable lives in harmony with the earth. In many ways, modern life generates inequalities and pulls us away from our connection to the land we depend on. So I get it. I don't agree with forcing anyone, let alone an entire country, to live that lifestyle, and I will never approve of "education deprivation" or genocide as a justifiable means to anything, but I see value in the original vision and intent. The irony or hypocrisy of it all is that Pol Pot was pretty highly educated himself. Moreover, it clearly took education and innovative thinking to construct Angkor Wat and the other temples that represented the glorious era of Cambodian history Pol Pot wanted to return to. One of the temples near Angkor Wat -- the tree-covered Ta Prohm -- was even used as a school of architecture for a while. It just bothers me a lot when people can't maintain consistency within their destructive, fearful, violent ideologies, because it serves as evidence that the motive is destruction itself rather than the ideology behind it. I guess systematic, predictable evil is easier to stomach than chaotic, undiscerning, nonsensical evil. <end rant>)
In any case, the Khmer Rouge ultimately defeated the Cambodian government and took power on April 17, 1975. As early as April 19, urban dwellers were being forced from cities into the countryside and made to do agricultural labor for up to 19 hours a day. Millions of people died in these labor camps.
Tens of thousands of people were taken to secret prisons and tortured (The S-21 Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh alone tortured somewhere between 14,000 - 20,000 people), and then killed at a mass grave site, also known as a "killing field." (More on the Tuol Sleng prison and The Killing Fields later.) From 1975 to 1979, during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, in the state of "Democratic Kampuchea" they'd created, approximately two million Cambodians were killed. No one was untouched by the genocide. Even those who professed allegiance to Pol Pot and Angkar could be turned on, tortured, and killed, for no other reason than Pol Pot became paranoid and suspicious.
The Khmer Rouge was overthrown in 1979 by Vietnamese troops. No country in the world could be found to file a case against them in the World Court. The Khmer Rouge even held on to the Cambodian seat in the United Nations, representing their victims for another fifteen years even though they were openly accountable for their crimes. Pol Pot lived into his 70s. Basically, no one was held accountable for this atrocity on any level. (At least not in this life. One can only hope that karma provides some justice in the next go-around.)
The S-21 School / Prison / Museum
In the middle of Phnom Penh, there's a school that was converted to a prison and used as a place of torture during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Now it is a museum where tourists can walk around and learn about the atrocious things that happened there. When you enter the facility, you are given an audio guide to listen to as you explore and learn about what occurred in the different buildings and rooms. Most of the rooms still contain the iron beds prisoners were chained to and ammunition boxes (which were used to collect the human waste of the prisoner) that were found there, and some include a photo on the wall of the body of the room's final victim. (When the Khmer Rouge realized they were being pushed out of Phnom Penh in 1979, they killed the remaining prisoners and left the bodies there.) There are only 12 known survivors of this prison.
Going into every room gets a little redundant and emotionally taxing; pretty much all of them were used either for torture or as a cell for prisoners to wait in between torture sessions, which they could be subjected to up to three times a day. Some of the rooms mix it up with historical information or displays such as photos of the victims' faces and key political figures, torture tool and devices, and paintings by an artist, Vann Nath, who was one of the 12 survivors.
People targeted by the Khmer Rouge were blindfolded and brought in a truck to the prison, where they were held either in single cells or shackled in rows by the ankles with tens of others. Once the Khmer Rouge was done torturing someone, that person would be taken somewhere else to be killed. Those mass graves became known as the Killing Fields. As of 2011, over 300 killing fields had been discovered throughout Cambodia. If someone was killed in the prison, it was on accident, and the person responsible would be punished.
One time in the Tuol Sleng prison, a typewriter broke down and the prison guards had to get one of their prisoners to fix it, because none of them were educated enough to know how to repair it. On one of the walls of the prison, you can see where they hung keys to the cells, which are numbered from 1 to 12 or so. To the left of the numbers is the "first attempt" to label the keys by one of the less educated guards, who had used tally marks to indicate the numbers for the cells since he was not literate and didn't know how to write numbers. These stories are so frustrating to me -- I just want to shake the Khmer Rouge and scream, "THIS IS WHY YOU NEED EDUCATION!"
The Khmer Rouge / Angkar had some brutal slogans to support their extreme tactics. For example: "Better to kill an innocent by mistake than to spare an enemy by mistake," and "When you dig up the grass, you must remove even the roots" (used to justify the killing of infants and children).
Photos were prohibited for most of the rooms (understandable), but I took a few outside, and I was able to get images of some of the Vann Nath paintings from Google.
Ok guys...who the hell played Pokemon Go here and made this necessary??
With rules like the ones below, I imagine they had a pretty high success rate for getting the "confessions" they wanted to hear.
(The language in #3 is a sure indicator that a proper Englishman was probably involved in the translation for this.)
A "holding cell" at a time when prison capacity must have been reaching its peak
A schoolyard play structure converted into a torture device. After being lifted by their wrists tied behind their backs, prisoners were dunked into a bucket full of water containing human waste.
There were several other examples of torture and awful prison conditions that I haven't covered.
Torture -- aside from being horrific and unethical -- is not even an effective method for gathering information and it needs to JUST. FUCKING. STOP. When you inflict intense pain and suffering on someone, they'll say anything to make it end. (I know I would, anyway). It seems to me that if you know you're going to kill someone anyhow, you may as well just skip the humiliation and torment and let someone die while their own sense of humanity is still intact. Of course, I'm sure the people doing the torturing were aware on some level that their tactics weren't meant to be productive, and they were just looking for an excuse -- however flimsy and transparent -- to make their perceived enemy suffer. I want to say that "no one deserves to suffer like that," but when I think about what they did to innocent people, I want the torturers to suffer just as horribly. I don't think I'd be able to actually do it myself or that I would let it happen if I could stop it (which is what we all like to think, isn't it?), but I would want to at least scream FUCK YOU in their faces and maybe punch them a couple times before breaking down in tears and letting them go.
Revenge is such a powerful impulse, and with the constant conflict in the world and the inter-connectedness of everyone and everything, all violence seems to be motivated by revenge on some level. Sometimes this may manifest as revenge against an idea or ideology rather than a person, but it's still revenge -- still an effort to restore things to a state of justice, back to how they "should be" to make things right. I guess this means that forgiveness could be a pretty powerful violence prevention strategy.
The Killing Caves
The Killing Caves are located in the province of Battambang, and served as another site for killing "enemies of Angkar." There is an extra level of offense to be taken by the murders carried out here, since this is a holy site, containing a Buddhist temple (notice the reclining Buddha below).
To the right of the reclining Buddha is a structure containing the remains of victims who were killed here.
At the top of the stairs that lead down to the cave, there is scene of all kinds of torture inflicted by the Khmer Rouge: someone pulling out a victim's tongue with a clamp, two women being forced to climb a tree of nails, someone being dunked headfirst into a pool of god-knows-what, a woman with a circular saw blade cutting through the top of her head... It's pretty overwhelming to look at, and a part of me wonders why this even had to be made. It's one thing to create a monument to honor those who died a tragic and violent death, but why would you want to recreate a scene of such specific and explicit suffering??
This is a difficult image to absorb, but I was really struck by this child's complete, beautiful ignorance of the scene he was playing in. I wonder who in his family will be alive to explain what it was like to live through the era of the Khmer Rouge by the time he's old enough to hear it.
If/when you visit the Killing Cave in Battambang, be sure to stick around until sunset and watch a zillion bats fly out of a bat cave. I was there watching them come out of the cave for at least 15 minutes, but it started to downpour and I didn't want to keep my tuk tuk driver waiting in the rain, so I left before I knew how long it lasted. Pretty cool to see, and admiring nature is always a nice way to soothe heavy emotions.
The Killing Fields
The same day as I toured the S-21 prison, I visited The Killing Fields. (It was an emotionally heavy day.) This one is in Phnom Penh, and was the primary place that people were taken to be killed (about 30-45 minutes from the prison), though there are over 300 others throughout Cambodia. There is a memorial monument here, as well as informational stations that correspond with an audio tour, similar to the S-21 prison.
Bullets were expensive, so rather than being shot, people were beaten over the head and then their throats were slit to make sure they were really dead before being thrown into the mass grave. To mask the screams and moans of the people as they were executed, a loudspeaker was hung by the tree below and played national songs so give the impression to people in the surrounding area that there was simply a political gathering occurring.
One of the stations was a glass box filled with articles of clothing that have been pushed up over time from the graves below. Just a few feet away from the glass box display, this piece of purple cloth was spotted emerging from the ground. The audio guide indicated that collection of bones and clothing is an ongoing process expected to last a long time, and one which suggests that the victims' spirits don't want to be forgotten.
What happened at this tree made my heart ache more than anything else the entire day. This is where the Khmer Rouge would kill the infants of their prisoners by holding them by the feet and swinging them against the tree. I imagine that the suffering was minimal for the babies themselves as their death was (presumably, hopefully) immediate, but I really can't think of any greater suffering a person could experience than to witness the murder of one's innocent child.
Bracelets were left at many of the stations, presumably as an act of prayer or a gesture of solidarity and/or mourning.
This is the memorial monument, a Stupa, at The Killing Fields. It contains thousands of skulls and other bones of victims who died here. They are organized in different levels according to age and presumed cause of death (e.g. "by machete").
What Now?
So often, we learn about these horrific events in history and we think, "never again." We think that if we were there, we'd have done something to stop it, or we wonder how everyone who WAS there could have allowed it to happen. But gruesome levels of violence and injustice happen all the time -- it JUST happened in Aleppo, and we didn't do anything. (I mean, some people did something, but we didn't collectively do enough to stop it.) So I don't know. At this point I don't really believe we'll ever reach a point after which this kind of thing will NEVER happen again. At best, maybe we'll last a generation without some genocide occurring somewhere in the world, but even that seems hopelessly ambitious. At this point in time, the only thing I feel I have enough power to do is to pray for the peace of all the victims' souls, to try at least a little bit to forgive the people of the Khmer Rouge for what they did, and spread as much love to as many people around me as I can. It's also important to remember that the grand, vast, overwhelming majority of people do not want to kill each other -- genocide is not really something we can pin on "human nature" when most of us are repulsed by it and have difficulty understanding how it happens. So remember that. Most of us (99.999999%) just want to be healthy, achieve something of value, love and be loved in peace.
I wonder if I can get involved in political violence research and prevention as a career... is that a thing? If so, I want in.
Psychological Palate Cleanser