Why do so many male backpackers think that backpacking provides them with a reason to look like they've been living in a hedge for most of their life?
I am sitting in a WiFi-enabled bar (WiFi is more readily available than running water or healthcare here), surrounded by a multitude of the men I describe. It is a beautiful thing to be a lone female traveller. I don't meet many. I met one in Ghana in 2002; I think that's the only one I've ever met on the road. Travelling alone, whilst it can be lonely at times, opens up new doors which cannot otherwise be opened. If you're travelling with someone, you chat to them; you eat with them; you see things with them. This is all fine. If you're alone, it's a completely different ball-game - you chat to anyone; you do exactly what you want to do; no discussion required. You eat when you're hungry, you sleep when you're tired.
Yesterday, I met a tuk-tuk driver called Ston. He spoke good English. We arranged that he would take me to the places I wanted to visit today. Bargaining a price - they think in US dollars here - was amusing, but we compromised, and he was duly waiting for me outside the guesthouse this morning at the appointed hour, after I'd had breakfast with one of the aforementioned hedge-dwelling idiots (whose best line was, 'I saw, like, the temples, yeh? But they're, like, all the same, 'cos it's, like, the same religion? D'you know what I mean?)
As arranged, Stom drove me 15km to the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, otherwise known as The Killing Fields.
Eighteen months ago, I couldn't have envisaged that I would find myself visiting the memorial sites of two 20th Century genocides, one of which was in my lifetime (Rwanda - see here for more) and one which was just a few years before.
It's impossible to sum-up what started here in 1975, without writing a book. There are many books available on the subject - I bought a couple today; I can lend you them when I've read them. I'm going to attempt a summary here.
I just want to warn you that this won't be easy reading; but it is part of the history of this country, part of the fabric. Whilst it's fun to people-watch in bars, collect Coke lids and sip beer whilst travelling, it's crucial to get a sense of the history of a place, particularly when it has welcomed you (i.e. the border control was very straightforward - see yesterday's entry).
Pol Pot had a vision. His vision was of a peasant-led, agro-communal society, where education was un-necessary; anyone who was considered a threat to this was deemed an enemy of the state and had to be killed. The peasant-led society which Pol Pot envisaged was threatened by anyone who was living in a city; academics; anyone who spoke another language; foreigners; people who wore glasses; people who had soft hands. City dwellers were considered to be selfish, evil and responsible for suffering. Pol Pot, who had become Leader of the Khmer Rouge campaign, having gone to Paris to study and devoted his time to the Communist Party he had joined, decided that these 'parasites' had to be killed. On April 17th 1975, the bloodshed began. It is estimated that 25% of the population lost their lives in this bloody period of Khmer history.
A school, now Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which I visited this afternoon, was turned into a hideous prison. Prisoners, who had been rounded up and forcibly taken there, were shackled to the ground in ordered rows in what had been classrooms. Those considered to represent a particular threat were forced into tiny brick built cells, built within a large classroom, and shackled. There are rooms and rooms of photographs of the men, women and children who were detained and tortured here. There are exhibits of the equipment used to torture them, to extract false convictions. Those arriving were systematically photographed and numbered. The haunting faces stared back at me today. I was furious with other tourists for pointing their cameras at every conceivable thing, be it a piece of former gym equipment which was last used as an instrument of torture, or a room full of photographs of young children, who were systematically tortured here. What are these tourists going to do?! Upload the pictures to Facebook and wait for people to 'like' them and write stupid comments? There is a time and a place for photographs, and a site of a hideous attack on humanity, is not it.
This is why I don't take photographs at places like this. It is insensitive and wrong, in my humble opinion. But I know that others may disagree; perhaps it helps some people to process the horror. Maybe they are going to use the photos to tell others about what happened here, to educate. Let's hope so.
There were some shocking Khmer Rouge phrases displayed at the school - renamed S21 by the Khmer Rouge - 'Study is not important. What's important is work and revolution'. It is estimated that between 14,000 and 20,000 people were held here and executed; most of them were falsely accused of acts of treason.
'To keep you is no gain. To lose you is no loss'. This was a Khmer Rouge mantra, used by the regime to remind their victims of their worthlessness.
City dwellers were evacuated to the countryside and forced into slavery - planting rice, tending crops. Pol Pot built an army of people from the peasant class - those living in rural areas - and they became the guards at Choeung Ek, who were trained to systematically torture, maim and execute people. They did not discriminate - men, women, pregnant women, breastfeeding women, children, even babies were slaughtered. There is a tree at Choeung Ek, which tiny babies' heads would be smashed against to kill them instantly. The idea was to kill all members of a family, so that there could be no revenge attacks in the future. Today, that tree is covered in bracelets and flowers. A tree is such a poignant symbol of life, of growth; the Khmer Rouge called this tree 'The Killing Tree'.
My informative audio-guide explained the route that victims arriving would take, on the way to their own certain death. Bullets were expensive, so most people were hacked to death or had their throats slit. They would be forced to kneel next to an open grave, so that they fell right in once dead. These systematic executions happened at night, with local music pumping out from a huge loudspeaker, to mask their screams. The guards would sprinkle the chemical DDT over the bodies, to mask the smell and to kill off anyone who may have survived.
As Pol Pot became more and more paranoid, even more people were rounded up, forced into slavery, and killed, if they weren't worked to death first. Another haunting Khmer Rouge setting is this: 'It is better to kill an innocent by mistake than to spare an enemy'.
Pol Pot's vision was for a self-sufficient society, living off the fields. Money and personal possessions were banned; thousands died of starvation or disease. The guards were scared of not meeting their quotas for killing, so would kill as many as they could to ensure they met them; every death was recorded systematically. These mass graves were only discovered in the 1980s, and new mass graves are still being unearthed across the country. Many are surrounded by landmines, so the truth of who is buried there may never be truly known. Many Cambodians today do not know the truth of what happened to their own family members.
The audio guide narrator said that 'Pol Pot destroyed the Cambodian family, the day he ordered communal living'.
But how did this all end? In 1979, the Vietnamese army liberated Phnom Penh. I suggest you read more about this here: www.dccam.org and www.yale.edu/cgp
There is a 17-floor monument at Choeung Ek, filled with human skulls which have been un-earthed here. They have been categorised according to their marks, hence, how those to whom they belong, were killed.
I walked around the site, which was again, beseiged with tourists intent on snapping everything in site. Why would anyone take a picture of a glass container full of the clothes of children who were massacred? Or a picture of a glass container full of the bones, bone fragments and teeth of those hacked to death? It is beyond me. But they did.
Around the perimeter, in a quite moment, my audio-guide was telling me about some survivors' stories; I heard a voice: 'Madame, please, one dollar?' - I looked to see an old man behind the perimeter fence, begging. His face was haggard and drawn; I saw that he had a wooden crutch and only one leg; 'Please, landmine, it took the leg'. I was flooded by thoughts - who was this man? Why was he here? Could he be a survivor of this awful place of execution? Could he even be a perpetrator, responsible for some of this? I thought to myself - what would Jesus do? In the unlikely event that Jesus was doing an audio-tour at a genocide site, I think he would give him a dollar, regardless of who he was. The last time a beggar came up to me was at Victoria Station a few months ago; he wanted money, so I brought him a Krispy Kreme donut and some coffee - surely the next best thing? I went up to the man at the perimeter fence and pressed a dollar into his hand. He's been in my mind the whole time since. Who was he and why was he there? Maybe he just knows it's Tourist Central. Maybe there's more to it.
Finally, in 2007, the Royal Government of Cambodia worked with the UN to create 'Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the period of Democratic Kampuchea' (as it was then called), or the ECCC. As at 2009, these trials are still ongoing. One leader of the Khmer Rouge admitted that he ran S21 and accepted blame for the extermination of 15,000 people.
There are complications with the trials, in that, whilst it was mass murder and the extermination of huge groups of people, it was not technically 'genocide' because whilst it felt indiscriminate, genocide is defined as wiping out a 'gene' pool; targeting people against national, ethnical, racial, or religious groups. This mass extermination was a 'crime against humanity'. There are ambiguities relating to the trials, to do with whether or not the country was 'at war'.
Pol Pot died in April 1998. The cause of death depends on what you read - suicide; heart failure; poisoning. He was quickly cremated. History will never know for sure.
Well, congratulations if you made it this far. I commend you. Some more hedge-dwellers have just arrived; and a mosquito or three have been nibbling away at me whilst I've been writing this. My plan to bamboozle the mosquitoes with a healthy concoction of Clinique Happy and Deet seems to have failed, but the anti-malarials should keep me safe. There seem to be an un-nerving number of dogs wandering around this bar, one of which just defecated on the floor - nice.
I'm going to go and pack for tomorrow, as I'm off to Siem Reap - Ston is taking me to the airport at 5am. Tomorrow will be quite different from today - Buddhism, hope, peace; rather than anger, execution and bloodshed.
Goodnight all.
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