PHNOM PEHN

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

I started my day with a moderately painful trip to the Vietnam Embassy. You need a visa issued before hand to visit Vietnam. I applied for one in Canada from the Embassy in Ottawa back in November. It cost me close to $150 after visa fees, fed-ex and money order bank fees. So I am sitting on the plane a couple days ago thumbing through my passport and notice that the visa they gave me has the wrong passport number on it....Did I mention I'm flying there tomorrow? I couldn't do anything about it yesterday as it was a holiday and the Embassy was closed so first order of business today was to go to the Vietnam Embassy in Phnom Penh and fix it. Of course, it cost me $20 for them to fix their mistake, but I was really in no position to argue. I should have just waited until I got here to get the visa in the first place....it only costs $30 here for same day service. Anyway, I am now with a proper visa and will hopefully not be turned away from Ho Chi Minh City and sent back to Cambodia tomorrow.

Today I hired a driver to take me to all the sites. I only have one full day here so went hard. I went to the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, Choeung Ek(the killing fields), The Grand Palace, the Silver Pagoda, Wat Phnom, and the Russian Market.

I have to admit, I didn't know much about Cambodia's history before I travelled here.

Here's what I've learned about the country's recent history in a nutshell: Cambodia used to be a french colony until King Sihanouk declared it's independence in 1953...he was originally very popular and went on to create a socialist state and cut all ties with the USA. This form of socialism wasn't too popular with the Cambodians and he was ousted by the USA-backed Lon Nil in 1970. Shihanouk went into exile in China and from there he created a revolutionary group called the Khmer Rouge. This was a time when the war in Vietnam was making it's way over the border into Cambodia and north Vietnamese troops started to join force's with the Khmer rouge.

Lon Nol had a problem now.

This new group was becoming more powerful than his military and even the USA providing him with everything they could he could not win this war with the Khmer Rouge.(It likely didn't help that the USA was now carpet bombing Cambodia to kill the Vietnamese communists they knew were hiding there and ended up killing 250 000 Cambodians civilians in the process.) This only drove more and more people into the Khmer Rouge to now fight against the USA backed leader in retaliation for their family members killed by the US bombings.

In 1975 the Khmer Rouge finally took the city of Phnom Penh.

Lon Nol was such a corrupt and ineffective leader that they were greeted with open arms...the Cambodian people felt liberated.

That did not last long.

Problem: King Sihanouk was no longer leading the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was.

And Pol Pot had his own ideas.

He wanted Cambodia to become a "Maoist, peasant dominated agrarian cooperative" A radical social reform into a classless society without capitalism, imperialism, religion, education or free will.

His first order of business was to turn the clocks back.

Welcome to year zero.

He abolished all currency, books, and communication with the outside world.

During the Khmer Rouge's three year, eight month and 21 day rule of Cambodia between April 1975 and December 1978 some of the most heinous crimes were committed in modern history.

On April 17, 1975 the city of Phnom Pehn was seized. Everyone was evacuated from their homes in the middle of the night and forced to march under the pretext of an impending US attack, even the sick were forced out of hospitals at gun point. In reality, they marched for days and days into the country side andwere forced to work the fields. Everyone, including children, were forced to work 12-15 hours a days with little to no food as slave labour. The city of Phnom penh was completely emptied of all the people and left a ghost town. Imagine moving 3 million people out of their homes en masse.

Second order of business was to eliminate anyone who they even suspected of being educated: anyone with ties to the old government, lawyers, teachers, doctors or even someone just wearing glasses along with their family members were brought to Tuol Sleng otherwise known as S21 prison and interrogation facility. The prison used to be a secondary school. The chalkboards and desks were replaced by rusty beds and iron shackles and the rooms converted to small cells by building brick walls. Fences with barbed wire surround it and wire and bars cover all windows to prevent suicide by jumping out. This former school has now been turned into a genocide museum and serves as a testament to the madness of the Khmer Rouge regime. Only 7 people survived as they were found in the prison alive when the Vietnamese army liberated it....some were saved because of their skills as painters and were forced to watch and paint pictures of the gruesome tortures. Click HERE for an article in the Cambodian Times telling the story of one of the few survivors. Only 4 are still alive today. One man who spent many months at the prison and was one of those 7 survivors was there when I visited today. He told his story via translator to a group of us who were in the room. He was tortured for 12 days and nights. They ripped off his fingernails and toenails, they whipped him so badly they broke his back. In the night when he was chained in his cell he was tossing around trying to get comfortable due to the severe pain in his back and the clanking of his ankle chains caused the guards to accuse him of trying to escape so they sent him for 100 more lashes. He says he had a bucket to use as a toilet...one day it accidentally spilt over and he as forced to lick it up. He says they gave him a handful of food per day and the same amout of water. He was tortured until he made a false confession about being with the CIA. He was lucky and was saved when the Vietnamese liberated the prison. He told this story while standing in the cell he was kept in.

MAKESHIFT BRICK CELLS, ANKLES WERE CHAINED AND THE SMALL BOX YOU SEE WAS THE TOILET.

YOU CAN SEE WHERE THEY BROKE THROUGH THE WALLS AND BUILT SMALL BRICK CELLS.

A ROOM THEY USED FOR TORTURE. A PICTURE OF THE LAST VICTIM, THE WAY HE WAS FOUND, IS HANGING ON THE WALL.

AT THE KILLING FIELDS, THIS IS THE TREE THEY USED TO KILL BABIES BY SWINGING THEIR HEADS AGAINST IT.

PILES UPON PILES OF SKULLS IN THE MEMORIAL STUPA.

On the walls hang pictures of some of the 17 000 people who came through here and were eventually murdered, some are before and after torture shots...the pictures really show the indiscriminate nature of the barbarianism. Woman and children and infants killed as easily as fellow Khmer solders as generations of torturers and executioners were killed by their replacements. At one time the S-21 prison claimed 100 people a day. Walls and walls are filled with these harrowing black and white photos...fear and terror evident in the eyes of people who know something really bad is about to happen to them. Some of them are so young. As the Vietnamese were closing in on the city a last fourteen Cambodians were tortured to death and the rooms that they were found in have photographs of their gruesome deaths...blood stains are still seen on the floors and walls.

THOUSANDS OF MUGSHOTS. ALL THESE PEOPLE WERE TORTURED AND KILLED.

There a sign in the courtyard with the rules of the prison:

If they survived the torture they were taken to Choeung Ek, the major killing fields used by the Khmer Rouge from the s21 prison(there are over 350 killing fields all over Cambodia, that they have found so far, containing close to 19 000 mass graves.) and executed and dumped in mass graves. There are 129 mass graves here and many of them have been excavated, the remains of 9885 people, many still blindfolded, were exhumed in 1980 though 43 mass graves still remain untouched. A memorial stupa contains the nearly 9000 skulls as well as other bones and clothing. On the ground as you walk around there are little pieces of colored fabric sticking out of the ground...this is clothing fragments from the victim that pokes it's ways through more and more after each rainy season. Bone fragments are everywhere left over from their victims...literally sticking up through the ground. As the rains and walking traffic push away the soil they emerge. I found a bunch of teeth and part of a jaw bone by a tree. The Khmer Rouge did not believe in wasting expensive bullets or chemicals to kill prisoners and most of the 2.5 million Cambodians who were murdered faced true brutality. Mass exterminations were not common. The Khmer soldiers were given clubs, sticks, canes and knives. People sent to die were mostly beaten to death...they were driven in in groups and lined up blindfolded. They were made to kneel at the edge of the grave pit and beaten to death one by one. They hung loudspeakers from a tree to drown out the screams. Young brainwashed child soldiers were put in charge of killing the babies. They would hold the baby by the feet and swing them into a tree smashing their heads in. The tree used for this still stands. A mass grave beside the tree was excavated to find hundreds of naked women and children's bodies. Hundreds of thousands of people also died from malaria, starvation and dysentery after years spent in slave labour camps.

As Pol Pot's paranoia increased so did the killing of his own men....causing them to defect to Vietnam. It was these defectors along with the Vietnamese troops that invaded Cambodia in December 1978 and overthrew the regime in less than 2 weeks. The Khmer Rouge fled to the jungle but didn't surrender until 1999 and Pol Pot died a free man in 1998. Most of the high ranking officials are still alive today. Five of the highest officers have been arrested recently and are going be tried for genocide(amoung other things) in a UN sponsered tribunal formed in 2006...trials began in early 2009. The man in charge of the Tuol Sleng S21 prison is having his trial currently. Out of the 5 arrested he is the only one to admit and show remorse for his crimes, the rest deny any knowledge of the genocide. Hopefully they Will be brought to justice.

Visiting The Killing fields and S-21 prison was a terrifyingly sobering and disturbing experience...more so as this happened in my lifetime...and even worse is the thought that it has happened many times since...Somalia, Tibet, Rwanda...it's going on in Sudan right now as I'm typing this.

The Khmer had a saying " To keep you is of no benefit an to destroy you is no loss"

A sobering day.