The Killing Fields

This one needed a post of it's own.

The Killing Fields of Cambodia.
I knew it had to be done. You cannot take the glories of Ankor Wat without acknowledging the Khmer Rouge. But it didn't make the duty any easier.

We started at Tuol Sleng, the former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison. This is where they detained and tortured thousands of Cambodians before taking them to the killing fields. Almost immediately upon arriving you could tell that this former school had become something altogether more horrible. The crumbling buildings were left bare, barbed wire exposed and tiles stained. The concrete walls pockmarked with chips from the assorted implements used on those detained here. These rooms are bare now. But the iron bedframe remains, shackle in place, and the metal bullet cartridge used as a toilet laid bare for all to see. With each progressing room I felt the unease, the unimagineable horror creeping up my skin and clawing at my stomach.

Our guide began to relate the methods and the questions asked of the detainees. And throughout it all she drove home the pointlessness of it all. They wanted nothing more than addresses and family history. And like so many torturers throughout history, they wanted confessions. But it was never made clear specifically what they wanted confessed. To them, there was no right answer. Only "the enemy of the revolution". And for them that was enough reason to commit such crimes.

In another building were the methodically collected portraits of the prisoners. Many of whom were Khmer Rouge themselves, for they didn't even trust their own people. The most heart wrenching of these portraits was of a mother and her newborn son sitting in the chair reserved for interrogations and pictures. She is crying, eyes filled with horror. Our guide said she had faithfully served the regime and in the end had her entire family killed before her eyes.

Later we headed on to one of the nearest killing fields to Phnom Penh. And this one hurt, but it a very different way. The fields themselves are quite idyllic. Green grassy meadows with flittering butterflies and lazy bees. All the more shocking them when you see the stupa containing over 8000 human skulls. And again when you look down at the ground and see that your feet are resting on the exposed bones of someone brutally killed long ago. Auschwitz was painful and a shock, but there is something primal about physically coming into contact with those nameless many dumped in these mass graves.

The day was sad for us all, but there was still more to see in this city and with our last day here we plodded on. It was somewhere in the bright golden splendor of the Royal Palace, bejeweled in silver and graceful curving sculpture that I realized that you cannot take the good without the bad. And that somehow, knowing the horror that is so entwined in this country somehow makes the beautiful things all that more precious and meaningful. And that both, in equal measure, are the essence of Cambodia.