Does April 17, 1975 ring a bell to anyone? I clearly wasn't in the picture, but my parents were in school, my grandparents were probably at work. In Cambodia, however, it was the start of 3 years of living hell. The Khmer Rouge regime, headed by the radical Communist dictator Pol Pot, entered Phnom Penh with cries of peace and the end of years of political unrest. Hours later, they ordered the evacuation of the city with threats of an American bombing of Phnom Penh. In reality, they were clearing out the city to send its inhabitants to rural work camps. There, any educated people, innovative thinkers, or those with connections to western ideas were slaughtered; the rest were worked to death. They were forced to work on farms to triple the rice production; in blazing heat and receiving only two bowls of watered-down rice porridge per day, this was essentially a death sentence.
Over the course of 3 years and 8 months, over one quarter of the country's population was killed, an estimated 2 million people...and all killed by their own people. Pol Pot rounded up young, uneducated boys and girls from the rural countryside and brainwashed them with his radical ideas. 15 kilometers from Phnom Penh lies the killing fields, where 20,000 Khmers were brutally slaughtered using the cheapest methods: hoes, axes, hammers. After being hit, they were thrown in large pits of bodies, sometimes up to 500 full. DDT was spread over the bodies to mask the smell of death and decay. Back in the city lies an old high school turned prison and torture camp called Tuol Sleng. Here, prisoners were tortured until they confessed to false crimes and were then sent to the killing fields to be killed. Out of all the prisoners held in Tuol Sleng, only 12 survived. The atrocities are unimaginable. Can you imagine eliminating one out of every four Americans? And, perhaps the most disturbing part of all is that so many people still don't even know this happened, and all so recently.
Although I've already visited both of these sites, going back to the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng was still a heavy experience. As I wandered through the rooms of the prison camp, I was overcome with sadness that humanity could be so cruel and misguided. I was filled with anger toward the regime that destroyed a country and devastated a city once called the Pearl of Asia, a city that was the Singapore of its day. At the Killing Fields, I thought of all the lives that were lost, of lives never lived, of experiences never had, of contributions never made. But then, I thought of the people who have overcome this mountain of an obstacle. I thought of their ability to get up from the ashes and keep smiling. Their resilience. Their optimism. Their strength. And I was inspired.
With all the terrible repercussions from the Khmer Rouge, I think it brought the Khmer people together, and I think there's something we can learn from that. While listening to the audio tour at the Killing Fields, the narrator said this: "I treat all of the people in my country as my family because at one time, they were the only family I had." As I pondered that, I thought about America. There is so much of a culture of division and contempt in America, and it's so frustrating to me to see people who lose family members and friends solely due to differing opinions. How can we ever move forward if we can't respect the ideas of one another? I surely hope it would not take a disaster-- man-made or natural-- to bring us together. Rather, I learned from the Khmers (a phrase I find myself using all the time) that treating others like family will lead to healing, love, and progress, and those are things we desperately need everywhere!
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| A memorial stupa of 17 levels holding the skulls of many of the Killing Field victims. The roof is a Buddhist symbol of peace. |
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| The depressions in the ground are where the graves were. Many used to be deeper but have been filled due to shifting in the ground. |
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| A high school classroom turned into cramped cells for prisoners. There are still blood stains on the ground in many places. |
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