The Vacant Prayers.

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Humanity. Such a strange word to ponder after spending a day touring one of the many numerous Killing Fields (344 found so far) in Cambodia. If truth be told it was the Genocide Museum of Tuol Sleng that really brought a sharp slap to my sense of humanity. I suppose backing up some however might give the reader a better sense of what I'm talking about. For those unfamilair with the Khmer Rouge or this dark period of history you'll need to gather more information as there is simply too much history to cover in my blog.

In brief however, here are the basics.

On April 17, 1975 communist rebels rolled into Phnom Phen thereby ending a 5 year war for control of Cambodia. These rebels known as the Khmer Rouge systematically set about ripping apart the very fabric of Cambodian culture and civilization as they reigned supreme. In the interest of establishing an agrairan society they killed millions, evacuated and destroyed Phnom Phen, and basically drove Cambodia into starvation. They forced millions into labor camps around the country side for the production of rice. In which they later traded the rice to China for weapons thereby starving thier own population while gaining weapons for control. In the end they did themselves in by purging or killing tons of thier own soldiers due to parnoid fears along with picking a fight with Veitnam. Veitnam eventually got sick of the Khmer Rouge crossing the border and killing off thier villagers, so by 1979 Veitnam invaded with an army and drove the Khmer Rouge out to the safety of Thailand. Shame on Thailand, China, and yes, even the U.S. for supporting Pol Pot's guerrillas at this stage of the game! I felt quite embarassed and horrified to learn that the U.S. spent millions of dollars supporting Pol Pot's regime when he fled to Thailand.

We arose early and headed out to the Killing Field of Choeung Ek. Along the way you can't help but get a disjointed feeling as your Tuk Tuk weaves through the hordes of motorbikes and cars. Phnom Phen is a city without sky scrapers and fast food joints. Almost sounds like a relief at first but as you glance about to the piles of trash and the hordes of traffic going in every known direction (motorbikes even go ripping along the sidewalks when they are open) you find that there is no relief. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Khmer Rouge evaculated Phnom Phen in 1975 and turned the capitail into a ghost town of 40,000 people. Perhaps it's because Phnom Phen is trying to rapidly catch up to a world of industrialization in a much shorter peroid of time then most.

Upon arriving at the Killing Field of Choeung Ek we found ourselves instantly wrapped into a silent blanket of horror and puzzlment. As you walk into the gates of the Killing Field site you approach the Bone Monument. It's basically a monument tower with glass windows in which lies around 8990 skulls. You can slip inside to stand right before the skulls that are stacked row upon row. They leave one of the window panes open so air goes in and out of the rows of skulls. Cambodias have the belief that spirits killed wrongly will want to return to thier bones from time to time and thus it's important not to encapsulate the bones without any air.

Moving on from the monument we wandered around the fields in which there lies many small earthin pits from which bodies were excavated. It's completely surreal. You glance about to see all these earthin pits now covered with blue morning glory flowers and grass. There was an abundance of butterflies moving about and everything was green and soothing. Standing there in the heat I looked over to see a sign that brought it all home. "198 victims found here, all missing their head. 123 victims found here, all naked women and children." Even slipping under some of the gorgeous large trees proves to be unreal as again I'd glance to the sign that read, "small children were beat until killed against this tree. or "A loud speaker was hung from this tree to drown out the sounds of the dying victims."

After a bit Clover tapped me on the shoulder and whispered that we were walking over bones, literally! It's not readily apparent, but if you look closely you'll see weathered bones buried in the packed soil of the pathway. Tatters of old clothing litter the ground and poke up from the soil. Rolling around my head at this point was the constant question of "WHY."

Moving on from the Killing Field we headed back into town to visit Tuol Sleng, otherwise known as the Genocide Museum. When the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975 they turned an old school into a prison otherwise known as S-21 (station 21). In basic form it's nothing more then an old walled school with a 2 small courtyards and several multistory concrete buildings. But from the moment you step into the first room your greeted with a large empty room with an old rusting bed. Lying on the bed is a set of iron rust pitted shackles. Along the wall a picture, I believe of the last person they found on the bed when Vietnam drove the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Phen. Needless to say, there along the wall is a very large black and white picture of dead tortured person who had his last moments here. This scene repeats itself many times again as you wander down the hallway of the first large building.

Walking into the next building we found large glass incased free standing boards with hundreds of pictures. It seems the Khmer Rouge would take a picture and detail all sorts of information about it's victims when they first entered the prison. It's estimated between 1.7 to 2 million people were brutally killed in a country of 7 million during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. I can't even begin to understand why they would take photo's of people they know they were going to kill. Or why they would even bother to write thier biographies. None the less there it is. You walk from room to room looking at the faces of people that were about to be tortured for 3-4 months and then sent on to the killing fields. They estimate around 15,000 people went through S-21 during the Khmer times. Out of that only 12 people survived!

Some faces were bruised, some faces were horrified, and we even found a face or two that had a smile. But by and large most faces had a completly vacant look about them. It's almost as if any concept of hope had fled, as if the anger and sadness and been dried up, and all that remained was an empty shell. As if all thier prayers had fallen to the wayside, vacant and lifeless.

Again I found myself wondering about the WHY of all of this. Not finding an easy answer to that I moved on to asking the HOW. I can understand the concept of a mad man (Pol Pot or Brother #1 was the leader of the Khmer Rouge), or even a gang of mad man. But how can someone who has a family, who loves and in turn is loved, wake up each day to head to the prison of S-21 to condem, torture, and murder innocents. How could this happen to a whole country in which the government turned upon itself devouring without thought or question. Killing without qualm or morality. Pitting farmer against farmer as all aspects of life were made new under the new teachings of the Khmer Rouge (they called themselves the Angar which means orginization).

Perhaps they were enemy combatants, perhaps they were foreign spies, perhaps there was some reasoning behind this. But as we explored each hallway it become more and more apparent that it just wasn't intellectuals, students, and foreign influenced people that we saw as victims. It was people of all walks of life. From farmers, to doctors, to followers of the Khmer Rouge themselves. And there on the wall was a quote by the Khmer Rouge summoning it all up.

"It is better to arrest 10 innocent people then it is to let one guilty person go free."

What's truly disturbing is that just recently in 2006 has the U.N. and the government started to address issues such as war crimes. That's almost over 30 years since the Khmer Rouge was displaced! I instantly wondered how many people had walked down the street to glance over into the face of one of thier old guards, one of thier tortures, one of those who commited terror. To see the person dressed in very day clothes going about there way. One of the last photo's we glanced out was a room full of former Khmer Rouge combatants who are alive today and have statements accompaning thier pictures. The one that stands out the most, is combantant declaring that he wants to come forward to the trials, that he wants to tell all of it, so those who are guilty can be brought in.

Does the ends truly justify the means? In Pol Pot's attempt to rip Cambodian society of all traces and vestiges of western capitailism he systematically put in it's place a government of terror and horror. The only equality we could find in this madness seemed to be that of killings. In this paranoidal system of delusion it became more apparent that combatants (soldiers) reported on combatants, that village turned on village, and that children turned on parents.

Returning back to the concrete Clover and I thought It very odd when the Taxi guy wondered if we wanted to go shooting with him.

"Have many guns, AK-47, many guns if you want to go shoot. You want to throw hand grenade, we can go and throw grenades into the river if you want?"

Being from the states guns really aren't anything special but when he mentioned hand grenades both clover and I raised our eyebrows. That being said, neither of us had the urge to throw grenades let alone tossing them into the river where I cringe to think what that means for the local fishies. It seems this wasn't an isolated occurence however, since we've seen several other signs around Cambodia aimed at getting tourists to go to shooting ranges. Perhaps in one sense it's them turning old weapons of destruction into a viable tourist economy that brings in money. But shaking our heads we decided that this wasn't our cup of tea.

I wish there is some kind of conclusion or moral of the story to pull from what we observed but in reality we're not sure what it is. Other then the simple fact that truly terrible things do happen.

I pondered over whether or not to add pictures to this blog. In the end I felt they continued the life story of all these people who had thier life snuffed out needlessly. As long as the bones are open to the breeze then we were told the spirits can find their way back. I can only wonder where the vacant prayers went?

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[The Gate Keeper]

Sorrows of mankind
You've seen the beauty of mother nature, beachs, mountains, in all their wonder. The beautiful sunsets, perhaps love and laughter, and now a time for mourning the horrors our society inflicts upon each other. Look around and see the destruction, all through our history, and for what worthy cause. If we could but learn from all that is lost, the souls of so many might ease their passing. Mankind, hell bent on destruction, with greed as her teacher marching throught eternity, leaving tears and broken hearts to mourn, there is a cruelty beyond all comprehension. Take a moment, and then tuck away some small piece of wisdom that will bring hope for a new begining.