Phnom Phen, Genocide Museum, Killing Fields

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

This was one of those very long days. We were docked at Sihanoukville, on the west coast of Cambodia, but the excursions today were based out of Phnom Penh, the capital – a two hour drive to the northwest. We would do the drive, stop for lunch, do the activity, and then drive back. Our groups departed the ship at 7:15am. The ‘included’ excursion was a trip to the National Museum, Royal Palace, and the Silver Pagoda. We chose the optional trip to the Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields.

We had learned much of Cambodia’s ancient history earlier in visiting Siem Reap and the Angkor area where the magnificent temples are located. Now, during much of the trip to Phnom Penh, our guide detailed Cambodia’s history over the past century, highlighting the recent 30 years of incessant civil warfare and focused on the Khmer Rouge period from 1975 to 1979.

The people of Cambodia are called Khmer and their language is Khmer. When dissident groups fought against the French occupation, some became communist and so were called Khmer Rouge. Their soldierly ranks consisted largely of young boys (10-14 years old) orphaned or ripped from their parents. When the ‘liberating’ Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh in 1975, the people were initially jubilant – the war was over! The exhilaration was short-lived, however, because people were immediately told to pack up and leave their homes to be relocated into the countryside and turned into farmers. The capitalists and intellectuals would be exterminated. The population of Cambodia at the time about 10 million; by 1979, 4 million of these had been murdered or had succumbed to starvation or disease. The Khmer Rouge set about to cleanse the country and start from scratch. Intellectuals, professors, doctors, engineers, anyone with an education was murdered; if you could read or write, you were killed; if you wore glasses, you were an intellectual and you were executed.

Our visits today took us first to the Tuol Sleng Museum, also known as the Museum of Genocidal Crimes. This was previously a high school, turned into the heinous Camp S-21. It was used for processing and interrogation of ‘high- value’ prisoners – men and women who had been persons of stature, government officials, and former Khmer Rouge members. Each prisoner was photographed as he/she arrived; many have biographies too. There were individual holding cells (a whole classroom), big enough to accommodate the prisoner, a couple of torturers, an interrogator, and someone to take notes. All that’s left here is a metal bed and usually a picture on the wall of how the room was found when the Khmer Rouge left – most often there is a body in the photo. Other classrooms had been portioned into tiny cells with crude bricks. Other classrooms had housed 50-60 prisoners at a time. There were 167 prisons of this type throughout the country although this was reputed to be the worst of them. There was barbed wire on the balconies of the 2^nd and 3^rd floors – to stop the prisoners from jumping to their deaths to escape their torment.

I’m not going to go into detail about torture techniques; details are available elsewhere if you want to know. Torture sessions were usually 3 times a day for 3 hours at a time. Then, when there was no more to learn, the prisoner was taken away …

Next stop for the prisoners and for us today was the Killing Fields of Cheung Eki, 15 kilometers south of Phnom Penh and commemorated in the film of the same name. Groups of prisoners were brought here in small trucks at night (no need to advertise to the local population what was happening here). Large mass graves had were dug in the ground. Prisoners were taken one-by-one to the edge of the pits, hit on the back of the head with a hoe or a long stick. They fell into the hole, where another soldier was waiting with a knife to cut their throats. No gunfire, no bullets because that would have made noise. What happened here, occurred shrouded in darkness.

It is thought that between 17,000 to 20,000 victims perished at this location alone. You can still see the holes, together with signs admonishing visitors not to walk on the graves or to step on bones. A large stupa has been erected on the grounds to commemorate and house the skulls of victims killed here. During the rainy season, as dirt is washed away, more bones and pieces of clothing work their way to the surface – remember, this is 40 years later and they are still finding bones! There are glass cases like aquarium tanks on the grounds where people can put recent ‘found’ bones and clothing.

I remember hearing about the Khmer Rouge atrocities back in the 70’s. We are hearing the same kinds of things coming out of central Africa today – about the very young boy soldiers, orphaned when their parents are murdered, drugged and brainwashed with violent propaganda, encouraged/forced to fight, maim, and kill or to be killed themselves. Only these days, the small soldiers are provided with machine guns and rocket launchers instead of hoes and machetes.

OK, deep breath! Back to the bus. A two hour drive back to the ship waiting at the dock in Sihanoukville, where we arrive at 8:15pm. Dinner on board as the ship departs to the south, headed for Vietnam.