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Published: March 30th 2010
Phnom Penh, March 2010
Today we went first to a former High school, which the Khmer Rouge turned into the "famous" torture prison S-21 (Tuol Sleng) when they came into power. The pupils were expelled from school and the Khmer Rouge put everywhere razor wire. Schoolrooms, where once someone could hear laughing children, were divided into small prison cells and torture chambers. From 1975 to 1979 about 17000 to 20000 people were imprisoned here and only 7 survived. At any time the prison held 1000 to 1500 prisoner, who were repeatedly tortured. On one floor you can see thousands of small pictures of the victims, among them also babies, young mothers with their babies and some foreigners. They were all tortured and on the Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh killed. And this was only one of so many torture prisons that existed in Cambodia and there are many more Killing Fields than the one in the Outside of Phnom Penh. Although it was Sunday there were only very few Cambodian visitors, maybe more than 90% of all the visitors came from western countries.
After the prison we went to Choeung Ek, one of the many Killing Fields,
which is about 15Km out of Phnom Penh. Choeung Ek has the size of a football playground but it has many holes from the excavations.
We would not have noticed it by ourself but what looked like the roots of trees are human bones. You don't even have to dig for it to to see the bones in the earth. When someone walks around he can actually not avoid stepping on these human bones. Under some trees you can see pile of human bones as if no one would know what to do with them. What looks like rubbish are the remains of the clothes of the victims, very often only a part of a cloth appear on the surface, the other part is still kept by earth.
To save munition the people were killed with a big stick and babies and small children were killed by smashing there head against a tree.
It makes a huge difference if you read about the Killing Fields or if you finally walk around on the Killing Fields and try to avoid to step on the bones in the earth. It is moving and it leaves someone speechless behind.
It is interesting to watch the other visitors. Some just can't stop moving their head, as if they were constantly asking : "Why" or "How was this possible ?" But there is no one, who is going to answer their question.
You don't find very much background information neither at Tuol Sleng nor on the Killing Fields. Someone might think, that the Khmer Rouge must have come from a different star. All of a sudden they were there and soon they were in power. Teachers told me, that at school the pupils don't learn anything about this time of Cambodian history and people don't talk about it.
In the torture prison S-21 we read, that a big part of the older generation suffer from trauma. In one book the author was more precise and mentioned the figure of 75%, who are suffering from trauma. I deeply hope that the author is wrong and has overestimated the scope of the problem. But I also think for many older people the time of the Khmer Rouge is still like an open wound. Does a wound get healed when someone tries to ignore it ?
On the
beach of Sihanoukville I met a Cambodian Lady, who escaped from the Khmer Rouge 1979 and lives now for more than 20 years in the USA. Somehow she was very American. She was loud and spoke with a strong American accent too much about having fun. But all of a sudden her mood changed and she no longer talked about having fun. The fun was over. Without having asked her, she started to tell me, how she saw the death of so many people, people of all ages including babies and children. She also mentioned, how she was scared, when she came 5 years ago the first time back to Cambodia again.
I asked her, if she often has to remember her experience with the Khmer Rouge.
Her answer came only with a whisper: "All the time"
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