Happily ever after... in Phnom Penh

Cambodia: Part Two.

Read Part One. It was time to leave Siem Reap to go to Cambodia’s real capital city - Phnom Penh. It took us 7 hours in a very cramped minivan and roads that made India’s side streets seem like F1 racing tracks to get there, but I knew the history lesson on Cambodia we were about to get would make it worth it. When we talk about mass genocide and wars on humanity it’s easy to associate such events with the distant past “before our time”, and for some of us even before our parents’ time. Torture devices and the like are gory images that exist in museums, history textbooks and maybe James Bond movies. But to think that around 3 million people in a country of 8 million had lost their lives between 1975 and 1978 - around the time The Spy Who Loved Me was released - is nothing short of shocking. The Khmer Rouge was a Cambodian communist guerrilla group led by the dictator, Pol Pot, who aimed to create an agrarian utopia, where the country would rely on nothing other than agriculture. The Khmer Rouge seized the city of Phnom Penh in 1975, and forced all city dwellers to abandon their homes to work under inhumane conditions in labour camps in the countryside. The capital was turned into a ghost town within just three days, simply unimaginable when you walk around this busy capital where traffic makes it difficult to cross the road. Not far from the city centre, a local high school was converted into the notorious “S-21”, a top secret prison, just months after the regime was established. We walked around it’s quiet, stuffy interior, which is now haunted with photographic evidence of former prisoners made up of intellectuals, ethnic minorities and just about anyone who "posed a threat" towards the regime. It’s strange how thousands of eyes holding no expression can express so much pain.

Outside, a large, wooden torture apparatus, once used for children to practice gymnastics, still stands in the heat, ashamed of the cruel use it was put to during so many years. A bumpy road 15km outside of the city led us to the village of Choeung Ek, the same road frequented by trucks full of blindfolded prisoners of the regime just 35 years ago. Unaware of the horror that awaited them, these victims would believe they were being taken to a training camp, a strategy used by the guards to avoid chaos. This land they is what is now called The Killing Fields. The audio guides we were given drowned out the sound of children playing in a school next to the fields, replacing today’s laughter with horrifying accounts of the past from the few survivors of the murderous regime. Headphones filled our ears with the chilling tune of political songs once blasted out of loudspeakers in the fields to mask the screams and cries of babies, children and adults of all ages being beaten to death in ways too monstrous to describe. As we walked around the mass graves, and finally the pagoda where glass cabinets display tiers upon tiers of skulls discovered in 1980, the overwhelming sorrow I felt left little room in my mind for any other thought. This darkness followed me around Cambodia like a shadow, but made me see the country in an entirely different light. Like the tree in Tah Prohm temple, this is a country that has since grown out of ruin, where thirty percent of the population was wiped out as a result of starvation or murder under the Khmer Rouge. But even though poverty still plagues the country, and a corrupt government only causes further damage to the Khmer people, Cambodians are determined to get over the past, dream of a better future and live life... with a smile. Guess what I found out in Phnom Penh? 1. Under the Khmer Rouge’s deadly regime, education, religion, and family relations were prohibited. The “elite prisoners” of S-21, made up of intellectuals, artists and civil servants were tortured until they gave names of family members, so that they too could be killed in case of later vengeance. Members of the Khmer Rouge’s families seen as traitors or opposers of the regime were no exception. 2. Pol Pot continued to lead the Khmer Rouge as an insurgent movement until 1997, and was backed by the United Kingdom, the United States and China, as they all shared a mutual enemy: Vietnam. 3. Although some of the surviving leaders of the movement were eventually brought to justice, Pol Pot died in his bed in 1998. Hours before his death, he had heard he was going to be turned over to an international tribunal. It is suspected that he committed suicide, although heart failure is often cited as the official cause of death.