I have the task of authoring a cultural blog post this week, a grave task given that the team visited two genocide memorials over the weekend: the killing fields of Choeung Ek and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. For those of you who don’t know, the 1970s were an incredibly difficult time for the Cambodian people. Between 1969 and 1973, the United States carried out secret bombing raids in Cambodia. During these raids the US dropped over 2.7 million tons of ordinance on the country, some of which did not explode, leading partly to the work that we do. These bombings mainly targeted the countryside, forcing many families to relocate to urban areas where they had no homes or jobs. This would set the stage perfectly for the ideology of the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot.
On April 17, 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and immediately began driving people out of the city. Pol Pot’s vision for Cambodia was a primitive communal utopia but in reality, the Khmer Rouge turned the entire country into a forced labor camp. The citizens of Cambodia were essentially enslaved and forced to toil in rice farms day in and day out after being displaced from their homes. Anyone seen as a threat to the revolution was sent to a prison or “security office,” and eventually killed. Tuol Sleng was the site of one such place.
Formally known as S-21, for Security Office-21, Tuol Sleng is now an educational museum and memorial to the people who were killed by Pol Pot’s regime. 14,000 of the estimated 2 million people killed by the Khmer Rogue were detained at S-21. The site remains largely unchanged from the way it was found in 1979, save for the two monuments erected in memory of the people who passed through the ground’s gates of corrugated steel. Outside the cell blocks, the original barbed wire nets that kept prisoners trapped within their buildings is still strung from the ground to the roof. Inside, the crude brick and mortar cells, no bigger than six feet long and three feet wide, have been preserved to give a sense of the living conditions that victims were forced to endure; sometimes two to a cell. This is where “enemies of the revolution,” artists, monks, educated people, and their families, were held until they were sent to the killing fields to be executed.
As disturbing as these places are, they are incredibly important on both a personal and global scale. On a personal level, they offer a place of introspection and mourning for those affected by the Cambodian genocide. For us, it gives greater understanding to the work that we do and why it is even necessary in the first place. But most importantly, they educate the world about the factual history of the Khmer Rouge atrocities in an attempt to help prevent future crimes against humanity. That is why it is imperative that we visit sites like this, and share what we have learned with the people around us. Lest we forget, and allow history to repeat itself.
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