The Killing Fields
July 7th, 2006
If the ruins of Angkor represent the high point of Cambodian civilization, than the “killing fields” most certainly represent its low point.
A brief history: Cambodian communists, the Khmer Rouge (“red Cambodians), came to power April 17, 1975, after wining Cambodia’s civil war. Led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia for about three and a half years. In 1979, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and drove Pol Pot into hiding and out of power. The Vietnamese stayed for about ten years. They left in 1989 and the United Nations assumed temporary authority over the country. It midwifed a constitutional monarchy and returned King Norodom Sihanouk to the throne. (Sihanouk has since abdicated. He is in ill health and lives in China where he is receiving medical care.) Cambodia held free elections in 1993.
POL POT
Three years of communist rule left Cambodia a shambles. Pol Pot emulated Mao Zedong of China. He pushed millions of city dwellers into the country to work the fields as “new people.” His regime slaughtered Cambodia’s educated professionals, specifically targeting teachers. The Khmer Rouge ultimately committed auto-genocide, slaughtering their own people. No rational person can explain why.
During the short reign of the Khmer Rouge, between one million and two and a half million Cambodians died. Some were killed outright, while others died from disease, malnutrition, or mistreatment. Many of the dead were dumped into various “killing fields.” We visited the killing field at Choeung Ek where more than 17,000 men, women, and children were dumped.
The Cambodians have erected a memorial stupa at Choeng Ek. It is filled from bottom to top with the skulls of people who died there. This is a difficult but good thing to see. I’d be happy to admit that I cried, but I didn’t. It just left me kind of empty.
In one of life’s great ironies, the Killing Fields have become a popular tourist destination, bringing badly needed money into Cambodia. Property values along the road to Choeng Ek have risen dramatically the last couple years and the road is now being improved. This was the only roadwork I saw while in Cambodia.
Many of the people killed at Choeng Ek were detained and tortured at the S-21 (security office 21) Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. The “Tuol Sleng” prison first served as a high school before the Khmer Rouge turned it into a prison camp in May of 1976. It opened as a museum in 1980.
Our local guide showed us the camp. He first brought us into the rooms reserved for high-ranking prisoners. The rooms have been cleaned and sanitized over the years. They are silent and still but still bear witness to the awful things that occurred there. (For those who lack imagination, museum officials have posted poster-size photographs in each of the cells showing detainees chained to their bed.) Our local guide lost family members to the Khmer Rouge. He gave an emotional account of what the Khmer Rouge did.
Ordinary prisoners faired worse than the VIPs. They were chained to the floor in tiny cells measuring two and a half feet wide by six and a half feet long. The Khmer Rouge punched small holes through the exterior walls, which prisoners then used as toilets.
Prison guards were barbaric. You don’t need to know the details, but here at least are the rules of the road:
The S-21 museum includes an exhibit of prisoner photographs, which is quite affecting — at least, it affected me (even more so than the pile of skulls at Choeung Ek.) There are just so many photos. One section is reserved for children. Thousands of photos and not one smile. Everyone looks so hopeless, so helpless.
A picture is worth a thousand words:
In another of life’s ironies, a place where people once dreaded to go is now a place that can’t keep people out. Squatters have taken up residence. Museum officials are seeking donations, so that they can build a perimeter fence around the camp. In the brochure they distribute to visitors, museum officials list this as their top priority. They want to prevent “the now increasing number of unauthorized house constructions by squatters in the compound.”
Pol Pot fled into the mountains of Cambodia after the Vietnamese invasion. Authorities found him many years later living with his wife in a small jungle village. He was put on trial for his crimes and sentenced to house arrest. He died of natural causes in 1998, unrepentant to the end.
Most of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge escaped punishment. (Many of the country’s current leaders were members, at least nominally, of the Khmer Rouge.) However, Pol Pot’s accomplices may yet be brought to justice. Cambodia and the United Nations are preparing for war crimes tribunals, which they will oversee jointly. Judges taking part in the proceedings were sworn into office July 3, 2006, the day that we visited Cambodia’s Documentation Center. The trials are very limited in scope. The will try only the most culpable members of the Khmer Rouge regime — the top leaders, perhaps a dozen or so men — for crimes committed during their time in power. (Update: Pol Pot’s right hand man, Ta Mok, died of natural causes July 21, 2006, a couple week after we returned to the United States.)
The Documentation Center in Phnom Penh (www.dccam.org) was created to establish a record of what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia. Researchers sift through prison records, interview victims and perpetrators; and publish a small magazine in Khmer (and later a compilation copy in English). The evidence they uncover is part of the public record and will be available to both prosecutors and defense attorneys in the upcoming trial.
It’s not entirely clear that the Cambodian people want these trials to take place. Some people just want to forget the Khmer Rouge and move on with their lives. Workers at the Documentation Center, however, told us that most Cambodian’s support the effort. One of our Thai hosts told us that activists in the West want the trials more than the Cambodians themselves. (Western governments will finance the trials, which are expected to cost between $60 million and $100 million. The United States government is not contributing to the cost of the trials —the current administration has some philosophical problem with the tribunals, I believe — but it has contributed generously to the Documentation Center.)
One of the workers at the Documentation Center, Osman Ysa, interviews former members of the Khmer Rouge regime, people who allegedly took part in vicious crimes. They are always reluctant to talk, so he explains to them that prosecutors put on trial on the regime’s most senior leaders. I asked Ysa how these men and women explain themselves. They give the response that you would expect: We were only following orders, they say. If we didn’t obey, we’d be killed ourselves. We were victims, too.
OSMAN YSA (ON THE RIGHT)
Kill or be killed.
The law of the jungle.
That was Cambodia from 1975 to 1978.
Entry Filed under: Freeman Fellowship
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