Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
I would suggest you start your visit at the Museum. The building was a school at first. It became a detention and torture center named Office S.21 in 1975 under the Khmer Rouge regime. It was then transformed into the museum it is today.
(Photo Credit: Explorer Cambodia)
Out of the 20,000 prisoners incarcerated here, only 7 survivors were found.
On the day of my visit, a photographer for the regime and a survivor were present. It was interesting to hear how, despite being on two opposite sides of the regime, they both held the same fears. When asked about whether he felt empathy for the victims, the former photographer said there was no place for that. He only had one thought "Do your job well or you will end up on the other side".
The tyrannic regime had previously been hailed as savior by the nation. That was when the Khmer Rouge first took power after years of civil war. It didn't take long to see that nobody would be safe from the regime, as paranoia grew within the party. Educated, non-educated, politicians, students, men, women, children, elderlies and foreigners. Nobody was safe.
To think that the leaders of the party, upon their arrests, pretended not to know of the existence of this prison and of the torture and killing taking place!
(Photo Credit: Explorer Cambodia)
Today the museum honors the victims by showcasing the pictures of about 5,000 of them, written documents and some paintings created by a survivor. The museum is an eerie place with the pictures arranged neat and tidy rows and the skulls in displays. As for the people in the pictures, some of them are defiant, desperate and some others are smiling because they know they have done nothing wrong and they expect to be freed as soon as the misunderstanding is cleared. And yes, some of them are children.
(Photo Credit: Explorer Cambodia)
When I was visiting I could hear the cries of an animal in the distance, which gave me chills and prompted my over active imagination to create scenes in my head.
Killing Fields
Side note: I have included many disturbing facts in the rest of this post. If you are of a sensitive nature, you might not want to keep reading.
It is horrible to think that victims were not shot here, as bullets were expensive. They were beaten and hacked with whatever was cheap and available, including axes, bamboo poles, car axles, hammers, machetes, etc. Those who were not dead were covered with DDT, which finished the job and helped cover the stench in order to avoid raising suspicions. Patriotic music played day and night. At night it served to cover the screams of the executions.
Babies were killed before their mother. A slogan of the regime was "To dig up the grass, one must remove the root." Whole families were killed to prevent acts of revenge. The Chankiri Tree, or Killing Tree, which you can see during the visit, was used to execute children and infants who were seized by the legs and smashed against it. The soldiers would laugh while doing this. Not laughing could mean they were sympathizing and could make them a future target.
Another of Pol Pot's slogans was "Better to kill an innocent than to spare an enemy by mistake".
People not executed were worked to death and agricultural products were exported to China to pay for weapons even as Cambodians were starving. One woman was killed for having two bananas, which the guard presumed she had stolen.
At the end of the visit, you walk in front of a ossuary, a Buddhist stupa in which skulls are stored. When you are inside, it feels like you can't see the end of them. On many of the skulls, you can tell the cause of death by the breakage of the bones.
(Photo Credit: Empire de la mort)
As if it wasn't chilling enough, sometimes bones come up to the surface when it rains. They are picked up by the staff at given times, but chances are that you will see some human bones on the ground as you walk through the site.
The Vietnamese forces would have discovered quite gruesome scenes both at Office S-21, where dead victims of torture were still chained to bed frames and at the Killing Fields, where mass graves burst due to the accumulation of decompositions gases.
Even after the Khmer Rouge were forced to retreat by Vietnamese liberation troops in 1979, it would appear that First World countries - like UK and France - still recognized Pol Pot as the leader of Cambodia and did not recognize the government appointed by the Vietnamese. Worst, they seemed to think the Vietnamese had created a problem in Cambodia. With the support of Australia, the United States and China, the Khmer Rouge held on to its UN seat. In the meantime, the Russians supported the Vietnamese. Doesn't this all seem like remaining politics from the Cold War era? If you are interested about the politics behind the stances taken, you should read this article or this article from the archives of the New York Times.
No comments:
Post a Comment