The tragedy that is Cambodia

If you read any of the history of what is now known as Cambodia you will read about the battles, great cities and the culture which ruled much of Southeast Asia at one point or another. If you read the history of the past 50 years it is much less about creation and much more about destruction. The conflicts that arose between successive governments devastated the country and all should share the blame - King Norodom Sihanouk, the government of Lon Nol, the Americans who supported him, the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, and the current Government of Hun Sen and King Norodom Sihamoni. Not just for the loss of life caused by their conflicts but for the disrespect they showed their countrymen through their lack of leadership, freedoms for the people and economic development. I blame the post Vietnamese occupation "freely elected" governments most as any "democratic" government should have put in place and enforced basic freedoms and implemented the basic plans required to lift your country from the ashes of war. The country today is 20+ years behind its neighbors of Thailand or Vietnam in terms of visible development. The country is corrupt and the lack of structured development has led to a feeling of the Wild West. People are doing whatever they have to in order to feed themselves or their families. We have seen 9-year olds selling books at 10pm on weeknights and doubt that they go to school; been harassed by the incredibly pushy tuk-tuk drivers who would take your wallet if you let your guard down or worse, many of these same tuk-tuk drivers also offer to sell you drugs as you walk down the street at night. We have heard stories about people selling their children into prostitution, entire villages devoted to adult prostitution and we have seen a gun range less than a kilometer from the killing fields. I could not confirm it but the country appears to be lacking basic education for its children and based on what we learned when we donated blood in Siem Reap, the health care system is inadequate and corrupt with nurses and doctors requiring side payments prior to dealing with you. The country is 14 years past its free elections and still appears to lack any plan to bring its people any prosperity. The most widely known part of the tragedy is the reign of the Khmer Rouge (KR) which killed approximately 1/3 of the population (2+ mil of a total of 7 million). There are several sites in the country which have been developed help people understand what happened. Two of the most visited are the Choung Elk killing fields and Tuol Sleng the former Secret Prison S-21. The KR murdered people throughout the country and buried them in mass graves. Many of these have been found during subsequent construction of homes or buildings. The most visited is 14km outside of Phnom Penh and is called Choung Elk. Per KR records, approximately 16,000 people were murdered and buried at what had been a peaceful orchard. While visiting Choung Elk you walk past large holes in the ground which the very poorly maintained signs tell you are excavated mass graves, you look at a stupa (Buddhist temple) which houses the sculls of too many innocents. The skulls show the trauma of a blunt object or a bullet hole which likely killed that person. Near the excavated graves you see cloth coming through the ground and bone fragments mixed in the leaves. Ewa and I stopped for a moment at what we though was an unusual bone fragment only to realize it was a tooth.

Our general observation is that unlike the Holocaust sites in Poland which pay proper respect to the dead and the horrific fashion in which they were murdered, the Choung Elk killing fields left us with the feeling of a cold, obligatory explanation of facts rather than a heart felt explanation of a national tragedy. It seemed to us that the country has not reconciled with itself and the tragic nature in which countrymen murdered each other. The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, located in the former S-21 prison, was again more focused on a cold representation of the facts. It however had several art installations which softened the impact of the museum. One of which was done by one of only a handful of prisoners which survived. His paintings depicting scenes he either saw or heard about during his time in the prison. When I say it softened the impact, I mean it was a careful way to portray the tragedy without placing blame on anyone who may have been in the Khmer Rouge. (Sorry but pictures just can't do justice to some scenes. Tuol Sleng was a school prior to the Khmer Rouge.)

The final part of the tragedy is the fact that the Country does not seem to be able to reconcile with itself. That is, there is no apology on the part of the former members of the KR towards those which they nearly starved to death or the families of those they killed. The current government is run by Prime Minister Hun Sen who was the #2 man for most of the KR's rule, the foreign Minister during after the Vietnamese occupation and since the “free elections” he has led the democratic country like many murderous dictators. That is that his opponents backed off after being intimidated, beaten or killed shortly before Election Day. More recently the government enacts laws which allow outspoken opponents of the government to be indefinitely imprisoned.