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Published: July 19th 2009
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It's practically impossible not to feel at least a little weighed down by the heavy history here in Phnom Penh.
That said, it's also a city that is so easy to appreciate. While the government in power right now (the Cambodian People's Party, mostly corrupt and includes many defectors from the Khmer Rouge) does little to help, this city is in overdrive right now. People are at work everywhere, few people are ever begging for money. There's a clear vision here, and though the recent past is the subject matter of many sights and activities in this city, it does not distract anyone from moving on.
This was overall a pretty depressing day though. The morning started with a quick breakfast and visit to the internet cafe, then afterward a trip to a nearby ATM, which I decided I didn't trust. Turning around at that moment who else do I see but Saki from two days before! Want to go see the genocide museum and Killing Fields, he asks, to which I reply: do I ever!!
Of course, first stop along the journey is to find a legit looking bank and the Nokia store so I can finally
Genocide Museum
Interrogation room with bed remaining... picture on the wall of final victim to die in this room before Vietnamese takeover in 1979 get another phone, which I did... for $30 I got myself a functioning unlocked cell phone, so I'm back on the grid baby! Phnom Penh rocks!
So now we're off to the Genocide Museum, also known as S-21, the name of the detention center at the time, also previously known as Chao Ponhea Yat High School. Yes, this was once a school, and that made it incredibly eerie when viewing the images on the walls of people tortured and killed in what used to be classrooms in which children learned. Outside in the former playground area were 14 coffins for the 14 final victims found in the interrogation rooms by the Vietnamese when they captured the city in 1979. You find these rooms in the first building, still with the beds and shackles used. On the wall in each room you find a picture of the final victim who was left dead in there. Outside is an equally bone chilling set of instructions for the prisoners to live by, including probably most notably "Don't try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me". No one was any longer innocent once
Genocide Museum
Rules & Regulations they became prisoners of the Khmer Rouge.
This was a place they sent many of Phnom Penh's educated and skilled population which the Khmer Rouge sought to exterminate in order to eliminate all Western influences from Cambodia as well as any potential uprising against the regime. Many were supporters or workers for the former government, but probably most were people without strong allegiances but doctors, teachers, lawyers... if you had money, education or any special skill, you were as good as dead. If you spoke a foreign language or wore glasses, it was also in your best interest to keep that secret. Yet more weren't any of these, yet still ended with the same fate. I can't imagine the horror of living in this kind of world, where even the slightest suspicion that you don't conform to their strict template of the ideal Cambodian could put your life into jeopardy. That is to say, practically all Cambodians were transformed into rice farmers, wore entirely black uniforms, forced to give up all possessions and family ties. Joy was lost and everyone lived and starved to work for the Angkar, the "organization", Pol Pot and his circle.
Building 2 kept
on depressing. It included pictures of all the victims, taken as they were being processed on arrival to the prison. Building 3 was where the makeshift cells were, also in classrooms, made of brick and wood no bigger than 4 ft by 10 ft. Building 4 had more photos and text about the background of the revolution, including profiles of people who lost their lives here and of those who joined the Khmer Rouge as soldiers. There was even a photo essay from a Marxist Swedish photographer who visited Cambodia during those years, and how he describes that looking back he was looking back at staged propaganda scenes for his shots. The guilt he seems to feel now is quite evident.
The Killing Fields was a shorter visit, but no less disturbing. Here you find holes in the ground everywhere where mass graves once were, with some marked for some particular reasons. In the center was a stupa housing now the skulls and bones of the victims, another chilling reminder of what happened here. You can tell by the skulls that most never were even killed by a gunshot to the head - they were instead broken open with
Genocide Museum
Pictures of victims repeated blows with a shovel or some other hard object, just for the sake of saving bullets. Only visiting Dachau in Germany can compare to the sickening feeling you get walking through these two sites.
So that was my day! After the grim tour I asked to be dropped off at the Royal Palace in town as I didn't get a chance to view it yesterday. The architecture again was spectacular, and I made a few rounds around the main buildings including the temple of the Emerald Buddha... wait, they're copying off the Royal Palace in Bangkok! That's not allowed, is it!?
It's now the day after and I'm sitting in my guest house in Sihanoukville on the coast of Southern Cambodia, and while the guest house bungalows are as nice as advertised by Lonely Planet, the weather has been miserable. The downpour doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon, which in effect eliminates my potential plans to check out the beach front and maybe even find a dive shop to help me get my fix. I'm busting out of this joint tomorrow and going up to Siem Reap a few days earlier than planned, so by
Genocide Museum
Building 1 again the next time I blog, I'll be getting down with the ancient kings of the Khmer Empire at Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples! Sweet, I'm looking forward already!
Best to all!
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