Never Again

Few things make me angry. I admit I'm quick to frustration but it takes something truly special... or should I say extreme to get me to the boiling point of anger. Perhaps one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, thing that really gets my dander up is when people enact and get away with acts of injustice. To put it simply, stupid people tick me off. For example, my friend and I watched Schindler's List over Christmas break and instead of being sad for the Jews who had their lives completely torn apart by the Nazis, I found myself angry at the followers of Hitler who could enact such horrors on innocent people. I felt those same feelings when I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC as a high school sophomore.

I had a very similar experience just this past Friday.

While I was fairly familiar with the atrocities that happened at the killing fields at Choeung Ek and the S-21 facility, I didn't realize just how much pain still lingered there. The Holocaust Museum was sad and all, but you're sort of removed since it's in DC and not Europe. When you go to Choeung Ek and S-21, you're standing in the very spot where unspeakable horrors occurred. And that's hard to deal with. So while this post will be difficult to read, I feel that this will be one of the most important blog posts I ever write while I'm here in Cambodia. People need to know what happened.

So Friday morning came, and after a long, bumpy, and very dusty tuk-tuk ride just outside of the city, we arrived here.

 

We paid for tickets, and then donned headphones plugged into a recording device that would serve as a personal tour guide throughout the grounds. The man in recording explained to me, that in 1975, a Communist man named Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge, gained power in Cambodia. He wanted to establish his vision of a perfect Cambodia, and the best way he thought of doing this was purging the country of every "Western" influence. So, in essence, anyone who was educated was now an "enemy of the state" and needed to be put to death. Doctors, teachers, lawyers, anyone with an education and their families now found themselves in Pol Pot's cross-hairs.

So, during the four years of Pol Pot's reign, he would find those he wanted dead and would ship them to many places like Choeung Ek around Cambodia to be systematically put to death. Here's what I saw.

 

There were about three of these. 

 Visitors leave wristbands as symbols of hope, love, and mourning.

 Yup. Those are real.

 In case you can't read that, it says, "Mass Grave of 166 victims without heads". One of the most awful things about this place was finding out that the people weren't killed with guns, they were killed with simple gardening tools like hoes, bamboo shoots, knives, things like that. Just awful.

When truckloads of people were brought to be killed, they would blast pro-Khmer Rouge songs over a loudspeaker to cover the screams of dying people.

 That says "Please don't walk on the mass grave!"

I just... I just can't. This was by far the hardest part of the whole place. Pol Pot wanted entire families dead because he didn't want any family member seeking revenge later down the line. Women, children, and babies were not spared and were killed in extremely brutal ways. I won't go into detail. Because reasons.

The tour ends with looking in a giant spire filled with skulls and bones dug up from the mass graves found on location. The different colored dots indicate the gender, age, and the evidence of which weapon was used to kill the individual. 

After this less than uplifting tour, we traveled to the inner city to a place called Tuol Sleng, or S-21. This was a torture facility, that used to be a high school, in which Pol Pot would bring educated people to and torture them until they confessed false crimes such as working with the CIA or aiding other western powers. The people that were brought here didn't even know why they were being arrested, and if they didn't die here, they were shipped off to the killing fields.

 This is one of the torture rooms. They'd be chained to the "bed" and them tortured in various ways until they confessed to crimes they didn't commit.

 They had four rooms filled with these pictures. The Khmer Rouge were freaks about documentation so all they faces you see were Cambodians who were arrested and taken to S-21, beaten, tortured, and then shipped off to Cheoung Ek. I tried to look at as many as I could. I wanted them to be remembered.

This woman was the wife of a Khmer Rouge official. Once Pol Pot started turning on his own men, her child was killed in front of her to force to her confess to uncommitted crimes, then she herself was killed.

These were the holding cells for prisoners while they weren't being questioned or tortured. They weren't allowed to speak to one another and sit in the intense heat of Cambodia.

I know it's not a great picture, but see how narrow they are?

Pol Pot and his regime killed about two million people. TWO MILLION. And it's not like it happened a long time ago; it was only in the seventies. Almost every Cambodian I've met had family members or friends that died under Pol Pot. And like I said earlier, the pain and sorrow at both those places was almost tangible. At Cheoung Ek, there was a journal that visitors could share their thoughts and feelings. As I thumbed through it, I saw a simple phrase, "Never Again." I completely agree. It makes me angry that innocent men, women, and children were killed so brutally. It makes me angry that Pol Pot was only ever given house arrest for his crimes before he died. But, it gives me more of a resolve to be more like Jesus Christ and to do all I can to make sure something like this NEVER happens again. Let's be a little kinder, more patient, and more understanding of those around us. Will you join me?

I hope this post didn't depress you. I'd love to talk to any of you about this when I get home and show you more pictures. Or even feel free to email me. Youtube it. Google it. This is something everyone needs to know about. I feel I didn't adequately convey the recognition these places deserve. 

But if you are depressed by this post, go eat some ice cream. That's what we interns did.

All of us got ice cream sundaes to cure our genocide induced depression. This was only $1.90, people! 

Man I love Cambodia.

Until next time.