"The story that has to be told" (posting from the road)

WARNING - this e-mail/posting is not for everyone. I tried to make it as tasteful as possible, but I do not possess the literary ability to make the topic of genocide pleasant to read.

This won't serve as a replacement for a history lesson, if you want the facts I suggest you try Wikipedia. I am merely going to relay to you what was told to me by some of the people that I have met. I struggled with the decision to even write this, I don't really write on anything that matters, so please don't take these words as my usual 'fluff'. My words here are at the request of Cambodians - they want foreigners to tell their tale - in the hopes that it will stop it from ever occuring again. "The story that has to be told" they called it.

Most people know that sometime in the past some bad things happened to the people of Cambodia, what exactly and when...my guess is that you don't know - at least I didn't. They history books and the people tell different versions of the events but they key points are the same; millions of people died and it started in 1975.

After the Americans left Cambodia, the Pol Pot Khmer Rouge (PPKR) regieme came into Phnom Penh. Their goal was to restructure society, creating an agricultural based country that was not impacted by the rest of the wolrd. To achieve this, the PPKR started with the lies - telling the citizens of the capital that they needed to flee the city because "the Americans were going to come back and drop the B52 bomb on them, just like they did to the Japanese" (please do not e-mail me with inaccuracies in that statment, it's what they were told/remember). Terrified, the residents of Phnom Penh fled the city in a stampede, many people dying in the mass exodus.

Once they reached the countryside, Pol Pot soldiers had them gather around so they could start planning for the future. These soldiers conviced the Khmer people that they should form communities in the country, in order to do this they would have to identify the strengths that they had. All professors, doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers - basically any educated people (including people wearing glasses) - were asked to identify themselves. The plan was to provide further education for these people so they could run a successful community. They were returned to Phnom Pehn with their familes for more education, while the remaining Cambodians were to remain and set up a strong agricultural base. This is what they were told and believed.

Of course that's not what happened. The 'country' people were forced into an agricultural slavery. All individuality was stripped away - with identical haircuts and clothes, the people worked, ate and slept the exact same schedule. Their work days were in excess of 15 hours. Many thousands of them succumbed to starvation and exposure under these conditions.

Young men, under the age of 18 were identified as potential soliders and were seperated from their familes and then the brainwashing began (just think how impressionable teenagers are). This is how Pol Pot recruited new members.

The 'educated' people were taken back to Phnom Penh, to the infamous Tuol Sleng Prison. Commonly referred to as S-21 this former secondary school was converted into a holding prison. As you can imagine, conditions were horrific. There was a list of the rules and consequences still posted when I toured. An example: iIf you were lying on your back and wished to sleep on your side, you had to ask permission - if you didn't you were beat with wire. All but 7 of the over 17,000 detainees held here ultimately met their end after they were taken from S-21 to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields. (The entire family was killed in order to prevent any future revenge).

Nowdays the killing field is almost a peacful place. A portion of the 220+ mass graves have been uncovered to reveal the remains of 8895 bodies of various ages. The government did not want the next generation or visitors to forget the atrocities that occured here - so they decided to erect a memorial tower or stuppa that houses over 5000 skulls, various bones and fragments of clothing. Given their subject matter, it is tastefully done. This stuppa sits in the middle of field that of open grave pits and trees with horrific histories. (there is a "magic tree" - it was here that soldiers would play happy noises over a loudspeaker so that people nearby would not hear the moans and screams. This is one of the reasons the field remained a secret for as long as it did.) There are so many more tales I could tell you from my visit there but I don't want to sensationalize this posting like some cheap Hollywood movie - what happened was brutal and horrific. I only visited Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, there were many similar set-ups throughout the Cambodia.

So when did it end? Officially January 7, 1979, after Vietnamese intervention, the PPKR was toppled. Unofficially, the horror, in more subdued ways continued into the 1990's. I spoke with one young man who remembers hiding in the temples of Angkor Wat when the Khmer Rouge came to town (Angkor Wat is surrounded by a moat, it was built to be a fortress). Looking around today, it is unusual to see an elderly person. I have met 3 people my age who lost parents to the Khmer Rouge long after the killing allegedly ended.

Is the Khmer Rouge finally gone? Most Cambodian nationals will not discuss the subject, they fear a return of the past. Some feel that the "bad guys" simply took off the military uniform and put on a suit (sidebar - the current Prime Minster is Hun Sen, the leader of the Cambodian People's Party -CPP. He has been the Prime Minster since 1998 after the CPP staged a bloody coup to overthrow the elected leader at the time). There is constant fear that if you speak out against them or even discuss the past, you will be punished. Everyone that I spoke with was in private, never in a public setting. Corruption and paranoia go hand in hand.

Is peace in Cambodia possible? Of course it is - when everything changes. The other day there were 3 Cambodian soldiers killed over a dispute with Thailand along the border. This is an everyday ocurrance, one that we never hear about. I asked why no country stepped in to intervene during the genocide of the 1970's? Apparently we didn't hear about that either. Ignorance is bliss I guess, as long as your not Cambodian.

**the faces in the photos are a few of the millions that were tortued and executed by Pol Pot's soldiers.**