Imagine that you have been pulled from your home, and forced to work in the rice fields for 12 hours a day. You are only given two bowls of rice porridge, which contain a number of rice grains that you can count with your fingers, a day. Your family is starving and at times mysteriously taken away by the regime never to return. Your life is consumed by a state of constant fear, until one day your neighbor wants to get ahead and tells the local Khmer Rouge Cadres that you have stolen some rice or just one banana. A truck arrives and you are shoved inside. The truck comes to a stop and you jump out to find yourself at a school. Phew, it looks peaceful enough right? All they are going to do is question you a bit and then realize that you are a hard working supporter of the regime. No! They measure your height and take a mug shot, after which you enter a state of hell. Basically no food, no bathing, and torture in so many horrendous ways. This goes on until you write a confession of some sort and most likely it will need to include accusations about your family and friends. In the evening they will herd you blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back into a truck. They will tell you that you are just being relocated to another holding cell. After 30 minutes, the truck comes to a halt and everyone is ushered out into the night air. If you are one of the lucky ones, you will be led directly to a pit and not forced to wait and listen as those around you are beaten to death. All you could do is pray for death quickly.
The Khmer Rouge didn’t want to waste bullets, so they used axes, pipes, bayonets, knives, and palm tree bark to kill their victims in the middle of the night. After they threw bodies into the mass graves, they would sprinkle DDT on top to mask the stench and just in case someone survived the grotesque beating. They even killed babies by grabbing their ankles and banging their heads against the trunk of a tree. All of this brutality happened and not in the distant past. One third of the Cambodian population died under the Khmer Rouge. Several generations were scarred and the country today is still reeling. It is important for us as humans to visit these sites. We need to remember what cruelty humans are capable of and fight to prevent any form of genocide. Living in North America and Europe, we don’t often think about the fact that somewhere in the world right now people are being killed for their religious views, ethnic background, etc.
We spent a somber day at the Choeung Ek Memorial (Killing Fields) and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21). All of us took in a lot of information and felt drained afterwards. To end the day in a positive way we had dinner at a restaurant called Friends the Restaurant. It is very much like New Haven. The employees were at one time troubled youth who have been given a new lease on life. I highly recommend eating there and supporting their cause.
Thank you Miriam for joining our group for this experience. Your presence was greatly appreciated.
The Khmer Rouge didn’t want to waste bullets, so they used axes, pipes, bayonets, knives, and palm tree bark to kill their victims in the middle of the night. After they threw bodies into the mass graves, they would sprinkle DDT on top to mask the stench and just in case someone survived the grotesque beating. They even killed babies by grabbing their ankles and banging their heads against the trunk of a tree. All of this brutality happened and not in the distant past. One third of the Cambodian population died under the Khmer Rouge. Several generations were scarred and the country today is still reeling. It is important for us as humans to visit these sites. We need to remember what cruelty humans are capable of and fight to prevent any form of genocide. Living in North America and Europe, we don’t often think about the fact that somewhere in the world right now people are being killed for their religious views, ethnic background, etc.
We spent a somber day at the Choeung Ek Memorial (Killing Fields) and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S21). All of us took in a lot of information and felt drained afterwards. To end the day in a positive way we had dinner at a restaurant called Friends the Restaurant. It is very much like New Haven. The employees were at one time troubled youth who have been given a new lease on life. I highly recommend eating there and supporting their cause.
Thank you Miriam for joining our group for this experience. Your presence was greatly appreciated.
