Quiet reflection on being human

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We spent a couple of hours at the 'Killing Fields' in Choeung Eck 15km out of town this morning.
I knew to expect quite an emotionally challenging time, which it was. What i didn't expect... there were bits of cloth sticking out of the ground all over the footpaths around the mass graves - at first glance you'd think it was just rubbish trodden into the mud (/dust at the moment, dry season), as I did. Linds and Craig had to point it out to me - appears to be bits of the victims clothing 'sticking out of the ground. If it really is, I can't say how its still there, or why - they do say they're still finding new bones in the area, maybe uncovered by the rains. I can't quite explain what i felt, but these bits of clothing - more than the photos and accounts in the museum building, the sight of rows of huge grass-covered holes around the stupa and even the skulls of the victims inside the stupa - was quite moving. May be because they're just there, not in a case, not fenced off or sign-posted? Almost as if we're looing at the bones in the ground or the blood on the trees...

It's a very peaceful place though, except for the sound of kids singing and laughing and (one or two probably crying) in a kinder-garten (?) nearby. I think we were all crying a little bit inside. What happened at Choeung Ek and elsewhere(this is only one of many sites they discovered) is now history but knowing that shit is still happening in a fucked up world where people's minds can be manipulated to the point they forget what it is to be human...it's scary. All pretty quiet on the tuk-tuk back into town.

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Photos

japanese paper cranes
There's lots of these at the Hiroshima A-bomb museum - mark of respect for dead children.

flowers and incense
just outside the Supa where all the bones are kept

Comments

[saffia]

reflections on history
Marx said history is farce - by that he meant that we need to learn from mistakes but as we don't historical events which repeat themselves become farcical. No need for political rant - cept to say anyone thinks this was communism needs their head read. Or a diatribe from me! The Vietnamese went in and defeated the Khmer Rouge in 1975, thank goodness for that. Except the US and the world knew what was going on just like in the Nazi death camps, Rwanda, Bosnia and now Palestine - FARCE that's what I say bloody FARCE