Stepping off the bus in Phnom Penh was an intesne experience. Instead of a big bus stations, we'd been brough to a random streent corner in the city. From the moment my feet touched the sidewalk, I was surround by pakcpacks, joslting passengly and eager tuktuk drivers.
My entire stay in Phnom Penh was like this: up close and intesne. WHile walking the busy streets of the city looking for dinner, I'd step out of the way of honking cars and motos as the buildings pressed me up against the streets. It's a city that means business, unfrieldy to idle visitors. Here, people live their lives, fight, make up, go to work, cook for their families. Here is a history of horrible prostitution, of theft, of drugs, here is a history of war.
While there are people who love visiting the city, and Lonely Planet seems convinced that Phnom Penh is up and coming and a great place to visit, the only reason I found myself there was to learn about Cambodia. Like many capitol cities, there are sights to see, but also plenty of indifferent locals. It's suh a big city that I never really saw much of it, and perhaps I missed the fantastic parts, but it did get to the important places.
How much do you know about the history of Cambodia?
I didn't know all that much three months ago.
Besides learning a bit about the ancient Kmer Empire while visiting Angkor Wat, the only other thing I knew about Cambodia's history was that it got pulled into the Vietman war when Nixon staretd bombing it in secret to break up Viet Cong supply lines. I'd also heard a little bit about this mysterious Kmer Rouge, which I knew to be a pretty awful dictatorship in the 70s.
Exactly how awful it was, I had no idea.
The first time I was given any hint at the gravity of this part of Cambodia's history was in Wanaka, NZ. I'd met an Austrailian who'd traveled a number of times throughout Southeast Asia, and he told me he loved Cambodia. That it was a beautiful country with wonderful people. He also said that it was empty.
"Compared to its neighbors, it's empty." He'd told me, "Outside of the cities, the country side has practically no one in it."
"What?" I responded, confused as to why that might be.
"It's because a third of the population was killed under the Kmer Rouge."
A third of the population.
I'd learn more about this throughout the trip, but, like many things, I didn't really register how horrible of a dictatorship the Kmer Rouge really was until I got to Phnom Penh and visited S21 and the Killing Fields.
Almost directly because of the US's meddling in Cambodia during the Vietnam War (or the American War as it is called over here), Pol Pot came into power in Cambodia, backed by an army. The cambodian people believed he would bring a communist peace, but Pol Pot's vision was far from that.
Three days after siezing power, the Kmer Rouge had forced all of Phnom Penh's citizens from the city. They marched without rest or food for days and days until they arrived at work camps--similar to the Nazi's concentration camps. This happened all over Cambodia, as people were forced from their homes and made to work. Pol Pot's vision was to remove any westernization, any modernization from Cambodia. He wanted to return to an idealized agrigarian society. Any one educated, all lawyers and doctors and teacher, anyone with skin too light or anyone with glasses, anyone who knew any French or English, were killed. Everyone else worked.
They worked for many hours in a day, only given two bowls and thin rice soup to survive on. They were seperated from thier families, lived in shacks. Essentially slaves.
Throughout their time in Power, the Kmer Rouge got increasingly violent and paranoid. More people were killed, they arrested "traitors" and sent them to prison, they attacked thier people. If one person was accused of some crime against the regime, their entire family was sent to prison.
But it wasn't just prison. If they were killed outright, they were brought to one of the many prisons around the country, like S21, a building that used to be a school before the regime. During the Kmer Rouge, it was a prison were thousands and thousands of people were totured on a daily basis, until they were close to death. Then, they were brought to a killing field, like the once just outside of Phnom Penh, and beatened to death, thier bodies left there unmarked among thousands.
Visiting S21 and a killing field was the other main reason why my time in Phnom Penh was a challenge. S21 as a place is still so filled with ghosts. The air there is stale, and the taste of blood and old screams hangs heavy in the air. The rooms were people were chained up for months and months are still there, the scrapes and screams clinging to the cracked bricks. Like the Nazi's the Kmer Rouge recorded alll their activities. They took pictures of all their prisoners, and those pictures are now hung up on the wall. These prisoners knew they would die sometime. Maybe soon. Maybe in a few months. But I don't know if they knew what was in store for them before thier deaths. But looking at the eyes of the dead, it was obvious that they knew what their fate would be.
Once of the most horrible parts of the Kmer Rouge was that they took little kids--ten year olds and twelve year olds and, because they "had to memory of the time before and were pure" they were put in charge. They were made to torture and kill, to crack the whip and dole out not-enough food. Those kids, today are adults, and I can't imagine the burdens they carry on their shoulders.
The second most horrible thing for me to learn about the Kmer Rouge was about the US's policy towards them. The North Vietnamese were the ones to liberate Cambodia from the Kmer Rouge, forcing Pol Pot and his followers into the country side near the Thai border. But because the North Vietnamese were communist, the United States, the UN and many other western countries recognized the Kmer Rouge as the official goverment for many years after they lost power. I know that the US has meddled in other countries for many years. I know they've put dictators into power and created wars. But I can't understand how it's possible for our country to support a regime that destroyed so many lives, a regime that did not know what freedom meant, a regime that dragged an entire country through a literal hell on earth.
That was hard for me to swallow.
So. Now that I've horrified you all with this story, I want to make sure you know that Cambodia is getting better. It's still very much a third world country, and a lot of things from the Kmer Rouge are still unaddressed, but my next few posts will tell stories of my time in Camobodia as it is today, and why there is hope for this beautiful country.
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