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Published: December 12th 2006
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Holiday in Cambodia About ten years ago, when I was a freshman in high school, I took an English class that required us to do a poetry reading. My reading ended up being the lyrics to a song by the Dead Kennedys called, "Holiday in Cambodia."
The lyrics to "Holiday in Cambodia" embody the rage of a sarcastic punk rocker in the late 70s, levelled squarely at the era's up-and-coming California yuppies who had no conception of the real suffering and struggle going on in their own world. The song is a fantasy that sends the sheltered sons of the Western elite into the depths of the planet's worst human suffering. Somehow, to a listener, this song has the effect of leveling everything out: the bastard rich kid gets his eyes opened, and he gets his just desserts.
Jello Biafra might have been trying to make his listeners more aware of the situation with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, but he may just have been using the place as a symbol for a living hell to which he might send the willfully-ignorant sinners of California's upper crust. Either way, the song highlighted some of the awful realities of
one of the twentieth century's most brutal and genocidal regimes.
I've kept a poster from the song on my wall ever since that freshman year. It used a famous picture of a hung man being beaten with a chair by a member of the Khmer Rouge, emblazoned with the logos of the Dead Kennedys. The thing was shocking and uncouth, but it was also a reminder of the horrors that people and their governments can be capable of. It came down for the last time just before I left on this trip.
And now I'm here, on an actual holiday in the modern Kingdom of Cambodia.
The place is rapidly cracking open as a tourist destination, with casinos and resorts, bars and whorehouses, over-priced boat rides, mini-bus tours, and day trips. But, I didn't come here to party. I couldn't do that in good conscious even if I wanted to. Two-and-a-half decades ago, people were slaving for soldiers 'til they starved, and if I'm gonna wander through the place, I'll need to find some understanding of what that was like--and of what that did to the people here.
Choeng Ek Killing Fields Cambodia's most
iconic post-Khmer Rouge site is probably the Killing Fields at Choeng Ek. I could only manage about 24 hours in Phnom Penh, so this was where I started.
In the midst of a commune just south of the capitol, Choeng Ek was the place where thousands of prisoners from the Toul Sleng S-21 detention center in Phnom Penh were taken to be executed. Before the rise of the KR, the detention center had been a high school. The Choeng Ek Killing Fields had been part fruit orchard and part Chinese cemetary.
Sadly enough, it is a very beautiful place. Lush green grass grows where teenage KR soldiers once beat women, children, monks, and school teachers to death with garden tools. Half of the fields are flooded from the monsoon rains, leaving shimmering pools and enchanting swamps. Birds chatter in the trees and simple farmers can be seen grazing cattle beyond the trees. Tourists definitely aren't pouring into the place.
I walked where the tin-walled detention building had once stood. I hovered over the spot where the instruments of murder had been kept, and I read a sign where the poisonous chemicals were stored that hid the stench
of rotting flesh from the nearby farm workers (and ensured that the not-fully-dead stayed dead).
They'd once hung speakers from a tree here that would blare out loud music to overpower the screams. They didn't want their dutiful communist brothers to know that thousands of people were being buried headless, right in their own backyard.
I saw the mass graves. I saw the bones and rags of dead children. I saw a monument containing several thousand human skulls.
I'll still couldn't make any sense of the place.
Song Lyrics "So you been to school
For a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car
Thinkin' you'll go far
Back east your type don't crawl
Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin' that you know
How the niggers feel the cold
And the slums got so much soul
It's time to taste what you most fear
Right guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear
It's a holiday in Cambodia
It's tough, kid, but it's life
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Don't forget to pack a wife
You're a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leach
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you
Well you'll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
'Til you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake
Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son
Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack
(Chanting) Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot...
And it's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul"
- The Dead Kennedys, "Holiday in Cambodia"
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karen johnson
non-member comment
I had a difficult time remembering..
Nic, after reading the last entry on the reflections in song on the killing fields my respect for you increased many times over. I do remember the images on TV. They did allow reporters to veiw the process of killing. I remember seeing the young kids shooting at the people. I sthink I could not view this if I were there. It is good you have this experience. I am enjoying the blog very much.