Jo Day's 2013 Career Break Blog: Angkor Wat What?

Sun 15^th Sept was a 7 hour coach journey to Phnom Penh the capital of Cambodia. The border crossing took only 1h30m. We had a 15 minute walk to our hotel for the last part of the journey due to riot police everywhere blocking the streets, not allowing the coach access.

Monks in Phnom Penh

Cambodia housing seen on our journey

Livestock movement on a moped throughout Asia

Yet more revolting food on the menu

Some of us decided to walk to a bar mentioned in the Lonely Planet called the FCC=Foreign Correspondents Club because it was in a grand old building with great views. The police let us through their cordon, but the FCC was closed. I’m unsure why there was a police presence. I put it down to the overlanding experience.

Mon 16^th Sept was another educating day in modern history. I had read & heard a little about a place called Cambodia. We knew it was coming due to the stories of friends who had been before. We were preparing ourselves.

Everyone should visit to gain knowledge of what happened & therefore be aware to do something, to help prevent awful events like this happening again in the world.

If I (or my friends about the same age as myself) had been born in Cambodia we probably would not have reached the age 3! Our heads would have been whacked against a tree because our parents used reading glasses or had professional occupations or could not cultivate enough rice when forced to do so!

Pol Pot marched his uneducated boy army called The Khmer Rouge (Khmer is the ancient name of the empire in this region that was dominant & Rouge symbolizing communist, but rouge not red because Pol Pot was educated in France & Cambodia was once a French colony), from the countryside into Phnom Penh on 17^th April 1975 (not that long ago at all but the eyes of the world were looking at Vietnam), to put an end to the civil war by creating a peasant dominated state called Democratic Kampuchea where everyone would be equal, living very basic lives.

But, right from day 1 (which Pol Pot called Year Zero); there was a flaw in that theory. Not everyone was equal because there were leaders (who are at this very moment on trial for genocide at The Hague). There was nothing democratic about Kampuchea it at all. Karl Marx would have been turning in his grave during 1975 knowing that Pol Pot was actually trying to turn theory into reality in this way = trying to change the world rather than just interpret it!

At first the people of Phnom Penh were glad to see the army on the streets taking control over the civil war. Peace at last. They did not know what Pol Pot had in mind. Within days the entire populations of cities & towns were forced into the countryside to work 12-15 hour days farming for the greater good of the whole population. This included the sick & elderly. Most people did not know how to farm. They were not used to manual work. They had quotas to meet. Tensions frayed. Many dropped down dead from exhaustion in the Cambodian heat with only a small amount of rice to eat per day. The cities became ghost towns.

Intellectuals (people with glasses, professions, spoke another language, etc); people in politics, teachers, foreigners & their families were not marched to the countryside. They were not given the chance to mingle with the new peasant population because they had the knowledge & possible ability to challenge the Khmer Rouge regime.

Instead, they were sent to The Killing Fields. We went to the killing field on the on the outskirts of Phnom Penh called Choeung EK genocidal center.

In respect to the dead, signs requested silence. That was easily adhered to by all visitors. A) The headphone audio tour kept everyone quiet. B) Everyone was in complete shock at what we were hearing & seeing. C) Could not find words to comprehend what we were learning.

No bullets used in the genocide here because they were too expensive. Instead people hacked to death with farming tools, throats slit with palm tree leaves, babies swung & smashed against a tree. Hundreds of people were murdered & buried in this small area daily.

Just because some too clever for his own good nutter with a power chip on his shoulder decided educated people did not fit into his totalitarian idea.

So, in theory even he did not fit into the society he was creating, being educated & now the leader of a society that should not have had a leader. Really he was completely stupid not being able to see that. Not clever at all. Thicko!

In reality I suspect he realized this. He was just an evil mad man.

I can’t understand why other people (those now on trial in The Hague), thought his ideas would work, thought his ideas were good ideas, agreed with him & actually helped him murder people in such horrific ways. I guess they were all nutters as well. Pity they all met.

As we walked around the killing field, bone fragments, teeth & clothes were visible as they were being leached from the ground with the rain over the years. We were walking among mass graves. Most bodies had been exhumed & a giant Stupa was filled with all the skulls recovered so far from this killing field.

As well as a memorial, this killing field is still an exhibit being referred to at the genocide trial in The Hague today. I discovered Cambodia has found 300 killing fields since 1979.

The day got even more horrific from here! Next we went to the centre of Phnom Penh to a school built in the 1960’s called Tuol Sleng primary & Tuol Svay Prey high. This building & small grounds has seen a lot. From children being educated to people being tortured to adults being educated today.

It appears Pol Pot tried to justify mass genocide! He suggested intellectuals, teachers, politicians, foreigners were spies against communism who would be a cause to stop the new society’s peace. That’s why they needed to be eradicated. He could prove this was true by getting them to admit what they were doing.

How could Pol Pot get the intellectuals to admit they were spies & therefore justify their killing? By getting them to sign confessions. Why would people confess to something they had not done?

Because they were being tortured in this school which was a prison called security office 21 (S-21) between 1975 & 1979. The photos & sights here were horrendous. Classrooms became torture chambers. It is estimated 20,000 people passed through this building between 1975 & 1978. Only 7 people did not die by torture inside or at the killing field after signing their confession!

The confessions were ridiculous stories. They even sounded like complete fiction & fantasy. The facts did not add up. They could not be true. I read one of an English man from Newcastle.

Our female guide suffered the Khmer Rouge regime. She was 13 years old in 1975 & lived in Phnom Penh. She was marched into the countryside to farm. She never saw her dad again.

Like the killing field, Tuol Sleng genocide museum is also an exhibit still referred to at the genocide trial in The Hague today. Torture implements, shackles, cells, barb wire, confessions & mug shots of the ‘spies’ (victims) who are eerily staring back at you & seem to know it was the end for them are left in situ. There were thousands of blood spatter patterns on the walls!

The trial today in The Hague is trying to prove who is responsible. The killing field Choeung EK genocidal center & Tuol Sleng genocide museum are proof it actually happened.

One of the things I learnt was how ignorant world leaders were to the situation in Cambodia. It was the Vietnamese (who were & are still communist), who put an end to Pol Pot’s killings on 7^th January 1979. Their army marched in & forced the Khmer Rouge soldiers/leaders into the jungle & helped Cambodia form a new government. World leaders saw this as Vietnam helping to create another communist country in SE Asia & civil war continued. As a result the UN kept the same Khmer Rouge representatives for Cambodia. The Lonely Planet states, the victims were represented by their murderers in the UN for 12 years! This is one reason for the delay of this genocide trial.

At the end of the Tuol Sleng genocide museum leaflet it states “Making the crimes of the inhuman regime of Khmer Rouge public plays a crucial role in preventing a new Pol Pot from emerging in the lands of Angkor or anywhere on earth”. I hope it does.

Throughout the day I often thought about Cambodian people who would be my age who should be walking the streets & enjoying life. Only they aren’t there. An entire generation (my generation) was wiped out. My parents would have been killed & so would I being their baby. Most people alive in Cambodia today have family who were murdered between 1975 & 1978. Like the girl in the shop I spoke to & the boy working in the hotel reception who have no grandparents. The hotel we stayed at in Siem Reap was owned by a refugee & trained orphans. Along this 6 month overland journey there have been many times when I realize I was lucky to be born in Britain. Today was one of those times.

After this sad educating Monday we all needed a drink. Luckily the FCC was open.

Julie Andy Simon Teresa Phil Spike

Tue 17^th Sept was a 6h coach trip to Siem Reap & on Wed 18^th we were up at 4.30am for a guide around Angkor Wat & the Temples of Angkor. Cambodia is a poor country according to the Lonely Planet. When the temples were built way back when, they made this a wealthy place. Did the builders realize it would have a lasting legacy to generate wealth for this land? I nearly forgot to collect my laundry which would have been a disaster-only the clothes I was wearing to last until December!