Darkest Hour

Less than thirty years ago, a man named Pol Pot had a dream. It became a nightmare. In a word, genocide. 1.75 million were killed and tortured at his command, and the prison Tuol Sleng remains standing as proof. No one in our group was prepared for the shocking stories upon visiting the compound. By training uneducated teenaged boys from the countryside, the Khmer Rouge created one of the most ruthless armies the world has ever known. The high school transformed prison still holds the photographs of prisoners upon entry, and many upon brutal, bloody, merciless execution.

We continued to the Killing Fields, where prisoners were brought to be executed and buried in mass graves. Many of the remains have been excavated, with skulls relocated to a memorial monument for display and reflection. Even so, the graves continue to be washed up during the rainy season, and bones and clothes find their way to the surface. It isn't much vindication for the dead, but it is strong evidence for the five subhuman Kampuchean leaders still on trial for genocide.

The Khmer Rouge believed that people and their ideas are like grass, therefore, must be destroyed from the root. That was their justification for killing babies against trees and the other unspeakable acts that brought about a terrifying, unimaginable hell for everyone living here. For the first couple years, they even managed to keep their dictatorship secret.

I was shocked, moved, and grieved. Even in the recesses of the sickest imagination, I can not believe someone could have dreamed this into being.

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