The Missing Generation

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The Holocaust is well docummented and nearly 65 years after the end of the second world war, we still mourn the losses of the estimated 6 million or so people who lost their lives. In more recent times, I doubt if there's one person you could mention the words 9/11 to without them shaking their head in disbelief that such an atrocious act could have been committed. Therefore, it is quite unbelievable that within the past 30 years, Cambodia had sustained casualties in magnitude to that compared to the Holocaust and arguably in many ways more horrific than any of the events that happened on that day on Sept 11th, 2001 and yet very few people outside of South East Asia are aware that anything bad has ever happened over here.

First, a little history

As the Vietnam war was drawing to an end in the early 1970's, the civil unrest of conflicting political views in Cambodia was strengthening. By 1975, the revolutionary force of the Khmer Rouge (KR - called so because of the red and white checkered scarves that they wore on their heads and around their waists as part of their military uniform) had overtaken Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. At first, the new occupation by Khmer Rouge forces was seen as a positive by many Cambodian people as it would seem to indicate the end of the ongoing war that was raging between Cambodian and Vietnamese forces and hopefully years of peace and rebuild after being war-torn for many years (although not directly involved in the Vietnam war, Cambodia and neighbouring Laos were constanting being bombed and attacked in order to try and flush out any Vietnamese communist forces that may have been taking refuge there). This facade was very quickly realized as a farce when the first order of business of the KR army was to completely evacuate the capital city of every one of it's 2 million or so residents and force them into living in the rural countryside. This would be comparable to trying to evacuate all of Toronto and forcing all of the residents to live in the surrounding farmers fields! No one was spared the move and even elderly and people in critical condition were evacuated (they told the people it was for their own good because the Americans were going to come in and destroy the entire city by bombing it) and it's estimated that most of these people died in the move; the first few thousand of millions to succumb to the Khmer Rouge regime in the next 3 years.
The "lucky ones" (perhaps unlikely would be more suiting) who managed to survive the move (not that the move itself was docummented as being particularly violent) would go on to be placed under a new communist rule over the next 3 years of the KR's regime that would far surpass the extremes experienced by any of the Chinese, Russian or Vietnamese revolutions within recent history at the time. The underlying theme to communism and the new KR motto is that everyone is the same and nobody should be any better off than anyone else. Consequently, usually the people of higher social stature (educated people, former government employees, teachers, religious figures or followers and even those who wore glasses since this supposedly represents a higher intellect) or different ethnic backgrounds were seen as threats to the new communist regime and were "dealt with" in order to keep the status quo. Someone looking to read between the lines may have picked up on the fact that "being dealt with" is obviously a euphanism for the atrocities that may have actually occurred to individuals; unfortunately, this is exactly what it was, a euphanism. Most often fathers or mothers were torn away from their families to be "reeducated" only to never return. The reality of what was happening was mass genocide of innocent people (are any casualties of genocide ever really guilty of anything?).

Are you depressed yet? I wouldn't blame you. It's not a happy topic and unfortunately the sights in and around Phnom Penh are very real and very freshly portray the hideous acts instituted by Khmer Rouge forces under the leadership of Pol Pot.

As a warning, the next few paragraphs contain details about the unthinkable means that the KR army carried out their executions and may not be for the squeemish.

Killing Fields

Less than 15 kms outside of the city's core our tuk tuk driver announced that we were there. The infamous "killing fields." Looking at our surroundings, this could have been just another farmer's field on the outskirts of a large city. In reality, we were standing in the middle of 146 mass graves that contained the remains of all of those who had been taken away to be "reeducated." To the untrained eye, the uncovered graves could have just as easily been mistaken for large bomb craters left over from the massive carpet bombing escapades that the Americans were famous for during the Vietnam war, easlily swallowing Lindsay and I if we stepped into the divots. The truth is that some of these graves held over a couple hundred men, women and children who were often brutally tortued to death using shovels, axes or any other inhumane tool to "get the job done" in favur of sparing the use of their highly cherished ammunition. After all, ammunition was expensive and meant having to purchase more from China. A lot of the time, they would line up whole families and forced their family members to watch, anticipating their turn next.
As unbelieveable as it is, this is only one of many such places around Cambodia that have been discovered. By the end of their ruling, the KR have been blamed with the murder of anywhere between 1-2 million of its own citizens by means of tortue, execution and starvation. The saddest part of it all: until just last week not one of the Senior KR cadres (highest ranking officials from the KR regime) have ever been held responsible for any of their actions. In fact, the Leader of the Khmer Rouge Pol Pot, continued to live out his life for 20 years after the fall of the KR ruling, dying of natural causes in 1998. The KR even continued to hold a seat in the UN throughout the 1980's. Currently, the highest ranking monk in Cambodia used to be a high ranking KR cadre. Forgive me for possibly opening up a whole other can of worms, but it seems a cop-out to me that turing to religion can immediately forgive the murder of 2 million people.

S-21: aka Tuol Sleng - the interrogation and torture center of the Khmer rouge regime

For those who were not immediately taken to the killing fields for execution, they may have been brought to a former local high school turned interrogation/tortue centre. Tuol Sleng was no longer needed as a school since the KR abolished any learning under the new ruling (not to mention that all doctors, educated as they were, were usually killed off, meaning that medicine and hospitals also became obsolete). The 3 dfferent buildings of this site have been virtually untouched from how they were left after the fall of the KR ruling other than the addition of pictures of former prisoners added to the walls in order to give the empty prison-like buildings an identity. At least 15,000 people were brought to S-21 where they were chained to beds, tortured into making false confessions about actively trying to overthrow the KR regime, and executed in a nearby field. Only 9 people were siad to have survived being in this prison. It is the comandante that was in charge of running this centre, best known as Duch, that only just last week officially went on trial for crimes against humanity; marking the first such case. Coincidently, Duch was another of these former mass murderers-turned-Christian who roamed the earth freely for over 20 years after the fall of the KR. What sentence could possibly be given to a 67-year-old man who directly signed off for the execution of over 15,000 people that would justify his acts? I wonder what the bible would have to say about forgiveness in his case?

Okay, so now you're up to speed with your modern Cambodian history which detailed the insertion of perhaps one of the worlds most brutal and devastating revolutionary regimes in history. I wouldn't blame people for feeling bummed out. In fact, i wouldn't blame people for wanting to skip over a lot of what i wrote here. Hell, I've done that before. It's easy to turn the channel when somethig devastating is being reported in the news or an ad for 3rd world country asking for donatins comes on. I'm sure that we've even turned down a begging child or adult that was directly affected by the atrocities over here some how(again that is a whole other issue that may even warrant another blog of its own). But at least by documenting the details of the events that took place here in Cambodia between 1975 and 1978, we are giving a voice to the atrocities that took place for those that can no longer voice it themselves. Hopefully by being aware of what humans have been capable of doing to one another in the past and recognizing how truly horrible it was, we can help prevent another such incidence of repeating itself.

By the way, for those of you that were wondering about the titel of this blog and how it fits in, it is said that the average age in Cambodia, much unlike the current trend of Canada's aging population, is only just slightly above 20 years old! Very rarely do you see a Cambodian above the age of 50, unless they were a former KR comrade. What happened to all of the people who would be on their way to earning their gold watch and entering their retirement years? Well, with almost 2 million people estimated to be burried around Cambodia in mass graves, you do the math.

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Photos

S-21 Prison
The black and white depicts the mood appropriately I think

Memorial
Inside this memorial are the skulls of hundreds of Cambodians who lost their lives at Tol Sleung Killing Fields. It is the first thing you see as you approach the area and immediately creates a sombre mood.

Tree at the Killing Fields
They hung loud speakers from this tree to hide the screams of pain from the torture.

Mass graves
You can see the indentations from where thousands of bodies were piled together then dosed with a chemical compound to kill anyone who was buried alive and to mask the smell of decaying bodies

S-21
A pole for hangings and the graves of the last 14 people who were killed at the prison

Pol Pot
The man behind it all and who was never prosecuted for his inhumane crime.

The other houses on the lake
In the next couple years they have plans to completely fill in this lake within the city to make room for infrastrcuture development

Comments

[Ashwith Fernandes]

Life
Hey LandM, reading your bolg... what can i say. No words as i have know of these autrocities for long. Its difficult for the other part of the world to understand torture as it is beyond imagination. So thankful that we grew up in lovely surroundings and had every opportunity to plan our own lives. You guys are really having a good time, i can see that and it has been 3 months and over since took this journey. How long more to go.... its a pleasure reading your blogs always. Love ya ash

[Suhail]

Who can forget the 'Killing Fields'
Lindsay and Matt: I am sure that walking in the 'Killing Fields' must have been eerie. I saw the movie long time ago and was taken aback by all the violence. I had hoped that humans learned something from this sad saga in southeast Asia. Your tips are great. This is the edu-tourism / historical tourism at its best. Very nicely reported indeed. Please keep posting.

[Kati]

You have captured this really well. I am impressed with not only your photo's but your ability to describe this disaster from your own point of view and reflection. Kai Pai, From the New Zealanders xo