Phnom Penh – Legacy of Brutality

After wrapping up our tour in Laos, we deliberated about how we were going to tackle Cambodia. At first, we thought we would stop in the Northeastern portion of the country for a night or two to check it out. After talking it out, we decided to grind on to Phnom Penh as we had committed to working at a friend’s orphanage outside of Siem Reap, the quicker we got to Siem Reap the more time we had to spend helping out.

We arrived in Phnom Penh around 10:00PM at night, first impressions of the place were rather low and after talking to other people we figured it would be best to get in and get the hell out.

I am happy we didn’t follow the advice of others, which is an increasingly common trend on the trip. PP is great, kind of like the guy at work that everybody loves to hate, but after getting to know the dude you can’t help but like the guy.

A LITTLE HISTORY

Cambodia has been through a disgusting amount of violent history in the last few decades. From civil war to brutal genocide, the people of Cambodia have witnessed it all. Phnom Penh, the capital, was the epicenter for the atrocities committed by the notorious Khmer Rouge. If this is the first time you heard that name, educate yourself on the insanity that these so-called revolutionaries brought on to the people of Cambodia.

Basically when Pol Pot and hs regime took over Phnom Penh, all citizens of the city were ordered to leave – over 2 million people fled to the countryside – the lucky ones got away, the unlucky were brutally tortured and murdered alongside friends and family

THE KILLING FIELDS

When PP was finally freed from the grasp of the Khmer Rouge, people began to return to the city and were disgusted with what they found. Outside of Phnom Penh was an area called Choeung Ek, or the killing fields. It was here that the unfortunate victims of the Pol Pot regime were brutally murdered and buried anonymously in mass grave sites. This place is not for the faint of heart, in all honesty I felt sick after reading the information plates scattered around the area. If you don’t want to hear about the sickening atrocities of the Khmer Rouge stop reading now.

The Khmer Rogue didn’t just kill their victims, they brutalized them in the most rudimentary ways with the most basic of weapons. Some people had their heads bashed in with garden hoes, others were beat to death with the axel of an ox cart while others were beheaded with crude machetes. Sounds like warfare from the caveman days, not the mid seventies. Men, women, children, teachers, farmers, intellectuals, journalists, monks, doctors and everything in between was sentenced to a premature death to help cleanse Cambodian society and bring about an agrarian utopia.

Among a million other depressing sites was the most crude and disturbing area of the killing fields, a tree aptly known as the ‘Killing Tree’. It was on the very tree that Pol Pot’s cronies took babies by the feet, swung them at the tree and threw their lifeless bodies into a crude mass grave dug next to the tree, all in front of the mothers of the children. The thought was to kill the entire family so no one would be able to enact revenge against members of the regime.

Standing on the spot where this insanity occurred is ominous and depressing. As you look around the area you see the clothing scraps of victims slowly pushing their way to the surface with each rainfall, tattered, torn and rotting away in the same place for the last 35 years. In another area of the fields there are pieces of bone that push their way to the surface of the earth after resting in a grave for three decades.

As a tribute to the dead a large pagoda was built in memory of everybody who was killed during the reign of terror. The pagoda is filled with the skulls, bones and personal effects of the 9000 people who were exhumed from the mass graves in the area.

Skulls of anonymous victims fill the pagoda at Choeung Ek

Tuol Sleng Prison / S21 / Security Prison 21

After completing the Choeung Ek, we went back to the city to the site of the Khmer Rouge’s main prison outpost. The place was used to interrogate, torture and imprison victims of the regime, including local Cambodians and foreigners alike. Basically untouched, the prison has been left in the same state as it was discovered, with blood stains and cramped living conditions on display everywhere.

The site used to be an old school and is divided into four blocks, A, B, C, and D. The rooms in cell block A have a rusted iron bed, blood stained tiles on the floors, a small plastic container and an old ammunition case. The prisoners in these cells used the plastic container to relieve themselves while shackled to the bed. When the Vietnamese liberated the prison, the prisoners in these rooms were violently mutilated hours before the vietnamese showed up, photos in each cell show how the area and associated body was found. Most were unidentifiable as being human beings – the pictures are what nightmares are made of. All of the final victims found in these cells were buried in the courtyard of S21 where they reside today.

Iron Bed in Cell Block A at S21 with shackles and excrement container

Moving through the prison you see the cells get smaller and smaller, and upon closer inspection you see dried puddles of blood, crude carvings in the walls and other remnants of the horrific time when the Khmer Rouge ruled the country. Each inmate was brought in, forced to write a biography, photographed and usually tortured into making false confessions like working for the CIA and/or KGB. Smart people the Khmer Rouge were – believing people could work for two diametrically opposed organizations.

Torture methods were sickening, once imprisoned victims were usually shackled to the floor or to each other and forced to go to the bathroom in their own cells. Sometimes the prisoners were forced to eat their own excrement and were usually only ‘hosed down’ once every four to five days.

Waterboarding was rampant, fingernails were ripped out and alcohol poured over the wounds, nipples were ripped off, backs were whipped with electrical cable, people were electrocuted, suffocated if it exists in the darkest parts of a person’s imagination it was done at S21.

One of many torture methods employed at S21

Probably the most horrific thing at S21 is seeing mugshot pictures of the victims – some young teenagers, some old men and some women with their baby children. Seeing the last picture that was ever taken of someone is ominous, and the look of despair in their eyes shows how hopeless they were. There are halls upon halls of mugshots, and knowing that we were standing in the exact places where people suffered heinous fates was humbling and disturbing.

Blood stains on the floor of a cell

Coming from a place like Canada it is so hard to understand what violent history is like, it seems so distant and foreign. You can read the books and watch the documentaries, but nothing puts it into perspective like being in the exact places where destructive crimes against humanity have occurred. Your entire attitude changes when you are walking down the street knowing that the Pol Pot regime violently affected every single person over the age of 35 in a direct way.

Surprisingly, Cambodian people do not seem as bitter as I would have expected with after enduring such a violent past, in fact they are probably the nicest, most down to earth, and genuine people we have met on the trip. For them to get over such tragic events is inspiring and really makes you realize how trivial most problems are.

Next time I bitch about having to go to work, seeing a lame chick flick or the coffee shop fucking up my order, someone slap me to remind me that things could be a whole lot worse.