CAMBODIA

There are two things that are immediately obvious in Cambodia; the absence of elderly people, and the absence of middle class. 

You have the majority of people who live day to day, in single rooms, lean-to shanty homes, on fishing boats beside the river, and then you have the ones that drive their Lexus and BMW's.

I struggled trying to decide what to include in this post. Many of us only learned of the Khmer Rouge, and the atrocities committed by them, against the people of Cambodia, when we saw the movie, " The Killing Fields" in the early 80's.  But that was a movie....it shocked and saddened us, and then we went about living our lives.  What we saw today was real and brutal and haunting. It was a very emotional day, visiting both Security Prison 21 on the outskirts of the city of Phnom Penh, and then 15 km down the road, one of the Killing Fields. The prison was a former high school, turned into a torture, interrogation and execution centre in 1976 by the Khmer Rouge. The people were told they were going to a re-education centre.  It was one of 187 prisons created between 1975-1979. 

Only 7 adults and 4 children survived this prison. We met 2 of them.....

I will not post pictures of what we saw inside, you can google it if you want.

There are hundreds of killing fields around the country. Most have been excavated by the government, and turned back into farm land. The people were naturally upset by this, and convinced the government to leave Choueng Ek killing field and allow visitors to see it. 

There is a monument near the entrance, placed as a tribute to all the victims.

It is filled with skulls.

We walked around the fields on a wooden path and saw craters in the earth, pieces of clothing poking through, exposed by the rain over the years. Our guide, who lost his father and many siblings during this time to starvation, pointed out 2 teeth that were still embedded in the soil near the path. A few of the mass graves were enclosed by bamboo fences adorned by thousands of bracelets left by visitors.

 

A few of us chose to leave bracelets (given to us by a monk during a temple blessing in Thailand) at the grave beside the children's tree.

When we finished our tour, and were walking away from the fields I had to take a picture of the first thing I could find that had beauty.

Almost 3 million people were either murdered or starved to death and everyone you see in this country was affected by this genocide. Less than 3% of the population are over the age of 60 and 50% are under 20. They do not teach anything about this period in the schools here, nor is it mentioned in the National Museum.

We could have come to this country and not seen these things, and I totally understand when someone says they chose not to. Once you see something, you can't unsee it. But we both felt strongly that this is a part of history that can never be forgotten or hidden.

Stay tuned.....