Tears for Cambodia

The children handled Tuol Sleng Prison and the Killing Fields pretty well.  I didn't.  As I'd been told by others, there was not a lot to see.  Unlike a US museum, there were no clever graphic dispays or recreation of the events, just what was found after the Vietnamese invading forces conquered the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot.  As you walk through, you hear either an audio description of what happened or read simple displays on the walls.  It is your imagination that transforms these audio and visual images to the the seemingly unimaginable nightmare suffered by the Cambodian people between 1975 and 1979.  When the Khmer Rouge won the civil war in Cambodia, Pol Pot was allowed to impose the communist ideology he had learned from studying Mao Tsu Tung during his student years in Paris.  His dream was of a communist society built entirely out of agrarian workers who worked in common and shared everything in common as well.  To fulfill this dream, it was necessary to tear down what was already in existence and remove all those who stood in the way. The cities were all evacuated and everyone became a peasant working in the fields.  The existing peasants were called "base people" and were glorified by Pol Pot.  The doctors, lawyers, shop keepers, teachers, intellectuals, government officials and former regime soldiers were "new people" and must work to become like the base people.  The work was backbreaking and food was scarce since most of the rice was exported to China to pay for the arms needed to prepare for war with the Vietnamese who Pol Pot hated and distrusted.  From the beginning, possible threats were dealt with by lethal force.  The Khmer Rouge had a saying that, "when you remove a weed, you must take out the root as well." As their paranoia grew, they started systematically exterminating all the above classes of "new people."  Anyone who could potentially divert loyalty from the new regime was killed.  I listed classes of people and asked the kids how the Khmer Rouge treated them.  The Village Chiefs? They killed them. The doctors? They killed them. The lawyers? They killed them. The teachers? They killed them. And so on. And yet that was not enough.  Once they killed a person, they must kill his entire family as well, for they were the roots of the weed and might seek revenge.  Wives, children, babies, none were to be spared.  At least 1.7 million innocent human beings were murdered, died of starvation or died of the harsh working conditions or disease in the rice fields.  Tuol Sleng Prison was a location where primarily soldiers and government officials were taken for torture and death. Following months of torture they "confessed" and implicated others who were in turn arrested and taken to the prison where the process was repeated. The Khmer Rouge took photos of each prisoner and kept records of their confessions. Thousand of photos of them are on boards throughout the prison.  As you walk through these horrid cells, you see their last sights and can feel the terror they experienced. Their stories are told by former guards and the relative few who survived.  After their confessions, they were blindfolded and taken on trucks to one of the killing fields.  Bullets were too precious to use.  Instead, they were forced to kneel before pits dug by other forced labor. All must have sensed their doom at that moment.  The guards struck them with heavy objects on the back of their heads as another guard slit their throats with any object that was available such as machetes or the jagged edges of palm fronds.  They were then tumbled into the pit. Those who survived the assault were soon dead from the lye that was poured over each group of bodies to stifle the stench and ensure they were all dead.  Babies were executed by swinging them by their feet against what they called the killing tree where their skulls were smashed and brains spattered on the tree.  Their cries and screams were muffled by the martial music that was amplified during each night's gristly work. We toured the field used for the Tuol Sleng Prison. Over ten thousand bodies were excavated from these pits when they were dug up.  As we walked the grounds, you can still see bones and remnants of their clothing emerging from the ground.  There is a memorial in the center where the recovered skulls of the victims are preserved and can be viewed on 15 different levels. Although the resiliency of our children and the Cambodian people has allowed them to move on, I cannot.  I cannot shake the visual images in my mind of the terror they felt as they were trucked to their brutal execution.  The sad looks on their faces in their booking photos is imbedded in my mind as I know what awaited them.  Their torturers and executioners knew the same fate awaited them if they did not support the regime.  It is tempting to blame the Cambodian people for allowing this to happen.  I wonder if many of any society would have the courage to resist under these circumstances.  All we like sheep are led astray . . . God have mercy on the Cambodian people.