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This is the history that Cambodians will never forget.
For years surrounding Cambodia's declaration of independence
in 1953, the country was battered with civil war and multiple
struggles for political power. During this time of unrest,
a small Communist faction called the Khmer Rouge grew
in popularity and finally, headed by general Pol Pot,
overthrew the US Backed Lol Non government in 1975. |
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Memorial pagoda, Choeung Ek
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Crusade of Horror
The Khmer Rouge set out on a four year crusade of ethnic and
moral cleansing over the country. This meant Vietnamese, Chinese,
Muslim and Buddhist nationalists, supporters or those of any
association, were to be expelled or eliminated. Pol Pot desired
to restore the country to the Communist ideal of a rural state
where commercial activities centred on honest factory work
and farming. All urban dwellers were evacuated from the cities
and sent to hard labour work camps in the countryside. The
city centres quickly became ghost towns if not destroyed altogether.
The headquarters for all cleansing activity was called S-21,
positioned in an old high school on the lower side of Phnom
Penh. Prisoners taken by the Khmer Rouge were meticulously
numbered and photographed as they entered S-21. From there,
the Khmer used any torturous means to elicit a confession
from the accused, then they were either executed on site or
taken to the nearby fields of Choeung Ek where the
victims would dig their own graves and be killed by inhumane
means - sometimes as barbaric as getting prisoners to batter
each other to death in the slender hope of getting mercy from
their captors. These morbid acts took place at the infamous
rice fields that would later become known simply as "The
Killing Fields". By the time the Vietnamese liberated
Cambodia in 1979, 1.7 million people had been exterminated
or died through suffering.
Visiting the legacy of Pol Pot today
Today, S-21 now serves the historic purpose of a museum, renamed
Tuol Sleng, showcasing the torture setting as well
as thousands of haunting black and white photographs of the
numbered victims themselves. The most disturbing and somewhat
controversial image was once the map of Cambodia constructed
from the skulls and bones of victims found in the shallow
graves on site. However, in 2002 the Cambodian government
replaced it with a normal satellite map. They did this to
try and move the nation past their Killing Fields image and
to disguise their immediate brutal history.
From the museum, it is a dusty and bumpy moto ride or big
trek across the twelve miles to the Killing Fields of Choeung
Ek. This may not be a pleasant tourist site to visit but
one that definitely serves to honour the memory of the victims,
understand the history of the country and ensure that these
atrocities will never happen again. Due to external as well
as popular pressure, Cambodia has recently taken the difficult
steps of setting up a war crimes tribunal to prosecute certain
responsible members of the Khmer Rouge. |
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