The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng

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At the time of this entry, I have been back in Vietnam for just over a week where I’ve found myself immensely occupied with meeting many new people, going about logistics such as acquiring cell-phones, setting up interviews, so forth, and of course teaching English every day to a wonderful group of young adults. But I will hold off on all that for a later entry because I feel that I need to properly wrap up my Cambodia experience before I go any further or else it will never get written. I’m going to dedicate this entry to our last day in Phnom Penh and our visits to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

To begin with, a brief history. In the 1970’s, the Cambodian National Assembly reversed their policies of permitting Vietnamese to traffic weapons through the country and build Vietnamese bases on Cambodian soil. This was seen by many Khmer as a pro-U.S. stance and with much support countrywide, the Khmer Rouge (“Red Khmer”) party, led by Pol Pot, seized the capitol in 1975 and gained political control of the country. Under Pol Pot’s orders, the Khmer Rouge regime began the process of “wiping the slate clean”, arresting and executing anyone suspected of having connections with the former government; professionals, intellectuals, and ethnic minorities were also targeted. Those who were sentenced to “re-education” were either sent to prison or driven out to one of several designated fields and brutally executed. The Killing Fields at Choeung Ek are the most well known of such fields and our group spent an exhaustingly hot afternoon walking around the site our last day in Cambodia.

Near the entrance of the site, a large stupa stands to commemorate the victims and is actually filled with thousands of skulls that were unearthed from gravesites just a few hundred yards away. It was chilling to look at real human skulls knowing that they were once flesh and blood drawing quick, panicked breaths, terror-filled eyes in the now empty sockets, dying in ways too horrible to imagine. Standing face to face with the dead, I wondered if any of them had a last moment’s thought that perhaps one day their remains would be on display to remind us of the terrible things people are capable of.

The gravesites themselves are fairly unspectacular, just crater-shaped holes in the ground, overgrown with vegetation and a puddle at the bottom. I walked around with Tricia and we both tried to imagine what they must have looked like when first uncovered, filled to the brim with bones upon bones; it was a surreal image that I couldn’t quite conjure. Informational signs are posted here and there around the site and provide details of the executions that often left me wishing I had not stopped to read. Many times the Khmer Rouge forced victims to dig their own graves before execution; this resulted in the graves being less deep than they would have been otherwise. To save ammunition, many times victims were stabbed or bludgeoned to death with makeshift weapons such as spades, axe handles, and bamboo sticks. More often than not those who carried out the executions were in fact not soldiers but rather young rural peasants, men and women, boys and girls.

As we left the gravesite and wandered over to a more shaded area of the site I tripped over a tree root on the path. Looking down I saw that the root was enshrouded in weathered, dilapidated clothing, what appeared to be an old checkered shirt. Then, upon closer examination, Tricia made a discovery. It wasn’t a tree root at all. It was a bone. Elements and time had stained it a dark yellowish brown but once recognized, it was unmistakable. No one was around so I dug up the ends and eventually unearthed the whole piece, unraveling the shards of cloth as it came out. Directly beneath where the first bone had been buried was another one, also covered by moldy fabric. I gently pulled that one up as well and cleaned off both pieces. Crouching down looking at the two bones that had been entombed just five minutes earlier, neither of us said a word. It was one of the eeriest feelings I’ve ever had knowing that in all likelihood the last person to touch these bones was a Khmer Rouge member as they arranged bodies for mass burial over 30 years ago. Evidently, we were not the only visitors to have recently discovered artifacts at the site; we found a glass case full of teeth and a small pile of freshly uncovered bones and old clothes beside a nearby tree. Looking around, we saw more and more bones that lay half submerged, gradually exposed by the wear of tourists’ footsteps on the path. When the graves were excavated, the pathways in between were left untouched and as a result, many bones that for whatever reason drifted out of graves were only now surfacing. Seeing, feeling the physical remains of execution victims was strangely empowering; it's almost as if uncovering fragments of lives ended so senselessly might provide in some way a sense of vindication for those souls, wherever they may be, no longer trapped in the blood-stained soil that held their terrible secret.

After leaving the Killing Fields, we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The structure used to be a high school before the Khmer Rouge transformed it into Security Prison 21 (S-21) in 1975. During the four-year regime of Pol Pot, the prison was used to interrogate and torture those left from the previous governing party such as soldiers, government officials, and academics. Prisoners were beaten, burned, hung and worse in attempts to coerce them into admitting false allegations and naming family members and associates who would in turn be tortured and killed. The conditions of S-21 were squalid at best; if prisoners did not die from interrogation, they often succumbed to starvation, disease, and exhaustion.

Walking the hallways and entering the prison chambers of Tuol Sleng was a harrowing experience. The bed frames were still in the center of the room, oftentimes the springs dented beyond repair. Shackles with long poles used to lock prisoners’ ankles in place were on the floor, as were waste boxes that guards would throw towards prisoners who needed to relieve themselves. But the most stomach turning feature of each room was the black and white photograph mounted on the wall; room after room, photographs of tortured prisoners lying in the same beds that we stood next to. Each image seemed more gruesome than the last; in almost every photo the prisoner’s facial features had been beaten to a dark mush, pools of blood covering the floor on which we now stood. After walking through several hallways of such rooms, I was not alone in the group when I had to step outside for a few minutes to ease the nauseating stone in my stomach.

In the opposite wing of the prison, a gallery had been set up displaying hundreds of photos of victims, headshots from first arrival. Some had already been beaten but most were fresh-faced, solemnly eyeing the camera, not quite sure what they were in for. It was striking how many of the photos were of children. Some looked to be in great distress but others were smiling, completely oblivious to their world falling apart around them. I think those were the hardest images to look at, and I found myself growing incensed at the absurdity of it all. An estimated half million people were executed by the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979; factor in deaths from disease and starvation due to Pol Pot’s policies and the number climbs to 2 million. In a country of around 7 million people, over one fourth of them were destroyed. Walking around Cambodia today, one might notice that there is a significant shortage of elderly people. They’re all gone. Thirty years ago, an entire generation was wiped clean, erased, and for what? For all the great things humans have contributed to this world, we sure drop the ball sometimes.

I didn’t intend for this entry to be such a drag but it’s been one week since our last day in Cambodia and I can still recall with clarity the queasiness brought on from walking around the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng. The whole afternoon presented a display of the mysterious evils of human nature and I couldn’t help but find myself questioning what I was seeing: How does this kind of thing happen? Can we learn from our mistakes? How can we ensure that all those lives weren’t lost for naught? It really is a fascinating episode of history and I purchased two films (bootlegs - $0.30 each) afterwards that, having now watched, I would both recommend for further exploration into the topic. The first is the British film The Killing Fields that centers on three journalists in Cambodia at the time of the Khmer Rouge regime. The cinematography throughout the film is fantastic (it was fun to see parts of Phnom Penh that I had visited) and I recently learned that the film was in fact nominated for Best Picture of 1984. The other film is a documentary titled S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and is predominantly set in and around the Tuol Sleng prison grounds. It is a fascinating look into the psychological mindset of the Khmer Rouge and focuses on several former party members who were only teenagers when they were assigned to be guards at S-21; it is clear from the way they re-enact their duties that the experience has had a profound impact on their lives. Also interviewed are two of the seven prisoners known to survive Tuol Sleng; their accounts are gripping and at times hard to watch.

Finally, for friends and family in the Seattle area, I was surprised (and honored) to read in the tour booklet that there is in fact a Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial in Seattle. It looks as if the galleries feature lots of stories, pictures, and personal accounts of the genocide - I don’t know of anyone who has visited but if someone here on the other side of the world took the time to mention it in a booklet, it must be good! Anyhow, if anyone ends up going, let me know how it is.

That’s going to do it for now. Again, much thanks for all the nice comments, it’s great to read what everyone has been up to. And here’s to everyone back home who contributed to a Palin-free four years; maybe we’ll get this thing turned around after all.

As they say here in Vietnam, Cháo!

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