Killing Fields, Cambodia (not for the easily queasy)

An important part of travel is discovering the history of the place, rediscovering the histories you thought you knew or putting a personal face on past and current events. Or at least that's an important piece of why I travel (other than discovering local beers, that is).

My recent trip to Cambodia was a powerful experience in many ways. In my vision, I saw Cambodia as a wild place, full of bandits, landmines and despots. What I found, in 2007, were lovely and considerate people, a breathtaking landscape and awe inspiring, centuries old temples.

"Khmer" is the traditional and ancient name for the people of Cambodia. Much of the country was part of the Kingdom of Siam. What we know most of Cambodia is its recent past, 1975 - 1979(?), when Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime slaughtered and destroyed a full one-third of the population.

This link gives a brief history of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. What was most powerful was meeting survivors of that time and hearing their gruesome and horrific stories of what they saw and who they lost. This is where things get a bit ugly, and I'll try warn you when the worst of it comes up.

Our guide in Phnom Penh, Sam, told of his mother being sent to the Killing Fields because she was wearing a nice watch. Once she was there, one of the guards decided she looked like his mother and set her free. She walked through the jungle for three days to get back to the village. The family had been dispersed during the evacuation of the city. In 1975, Pol Pot ordered all 600,000 residents of Phnom Penh to get out and move to the jungle. The city was cleared in hours and remained a ghost town until 1979. The Killing Fields has been turned into a memorial and there is a genocide museum you may visit. I passed, but would visit these if I had had more time.

Sam himself worked in the jungle, up in the palm trees, cutting fronds, harvesting juice for sugar. The work was long and hard and he was given a cupful of rice a day. Then he was accused of being a CIA spy and sent to jail. He told stories of what he saw, what the guards did to people - all people, babies and elders, children and adults, men and women. At first they would kill people by machine gun, but it was deemed too fast and too clean.

*EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WARNING*

He saw babies being smashed against trees or thrown into the air to land on machetes. Men being tied with arms and feet behind their back, hauled up by a rope (by hands and feet) and then dropped from high heights. Decapitations.

*Back to less explicit language*

He finally was determined to be a non-threat and was given a pass and released. To get back to his village, he had to pass through seven checkpoints. At the first six checkpoints, he showed his pass and went on his way. At the seventh checkpoint, the guard couldn't read. The guard accused him of being a spy. He pleaded but was forced on his knees to be executed. Then a supervisor came by and asked what was happening. Sam showed him the pass, the supervisor read it and let him go. He ran. And ran. Crying and running as fast as his legs would carry him.

He said even now he has to be careful about how he talks and to whom. The people in Pol Pot's government are still around, probably never to be brought to trial. They say no one knows who was responsible and nothing can be proved.

Tony, our guide in Siem Reap, lost his father and brother to the slaughter, another brother and sister to starvation. He was a young child at the time and would play near one of the temples in his village. One morning, he looked into the temple and saw it bathed in fresh blood, pools of blood on the floor, blood on the walls, everywhere. He asked his grandfather about it and was told to never admit to what he saw.

Most murders in his region were done at night. People would disappear, no one knowing where they went or what happened. Many times the people were tricked into going to their freedom, only to drop into a trap door where they were consumed by fire. This is depicted in one of the 9th-12th century bas reliefs at Angkor Wat as a story of falling into hell to be tortured (I'll post it as soon as I get home, I didn't include it in the Kodak link). The stench of rotting corpses permeated the countryside, as many bodies were deposited near roads and paths.

His mom and another brother made it to the States, and he's never seen them again. He and his grandfather survived by playing as dumb and harmless as possible.

After all of the violence and fear, these two men displayed a pride for their homeland and a joy to see it recover and grow strong. When our time came to depart Cambodia and we were saying our goodbyes, Tony said, earnestly and with sincere gratitude: 

"Thank you. Thank you so much for visiting my country. I am so glad you came to see it."