Weight Lifting

Today was another heavy day, but one that was important. We visited the local sites associated with the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge and, while it was difficult to see these things, I think it is important to understand what took place.

In April of 1975, the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh and shortly thereafter declared Cambodia to be Democratic Kampuchea, under the leadership of Pol Pot. Their communist ideal was to achieve a "Year Zero" for Cambodia, eliminating all that existed before it. All of the previous culture would be replaced by a self-sufficient, agrarian society, with no social classes, books, money, personal possessions, etc. The plan to achieve this involved a rice quota of double or triple that of the current output. They saw the rural farmers as the good people who would be the future of their country, while the people in the cities were engaging in business enterprises for their "personal gain", rather than working in the fields for the "common good". Their solution was to evacuate Phnom Penh (and other cities) by warning people of an expected attacked by American bombers, which was a lie.

Once in the countryside, the people were forced to live under communist rule. They were forbidden to do anything without permission and permission was rarely granted. Forbidden activities included traveling, engaging in religious worship, playing games, taking breaks from work, dating, reading and writing, wearing anything other than black pajama-style pants and shirts, arguing, complaining... the list goes on. They were denied adequate medical care, since the Khmer Rouge did not believe in Western medicine and were denied any education other than that supplied by the Khmer Rouge for their purposes.

Our first stop for the day was the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which was originally a high school (Tuol Svay Prey), until 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took it over and turned it into the S-21 prison. As many as 100 people per day were brought here. Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were housed and tortured in this prison. Nearly all of them were eventually killed. When the Vietnamese army freed Phnom Penh in 1979, they found only 7 prisoners alive and the bodies of more prisoners that had been killed as the army approached.


The prisoners were at first people who were seen as opposition to the Khmer Rouge, particularly those associated with the previous government, people with foreign connections, intellectuals, the educated, or even those that appeared to be educated or intellectual (those wearing glasses, those that understood English or French, etc.). Eventually, many of the prisoners were members of the party who were accused of betrayal, often brought here with their entire family, including children.

Some of the classrooms were turned into individual cells to house those that had committed the highest crimes. These cells were barely large enough to lay down in.

Other prisoners were shackled by their feet to iron bars in large, open rooms, such that they slept in rows with their feet together. They were not allowed to talk with one another and even had to ask permission before being allowed to shift their sleeping position.

The facades of these buildings were covered with electrified barbed wire to prevent escape or suicide through the open-air hallways.

The Khmer Rouge photographed all of the prisoners and often photographed the torture that they endured. While all of the rooms in the museum were left as they had been when the Khmer Rouge fled, many now have cases full of pictures of nameless victims, young and old, as well as pictures of the results of some of the beatings.

Some of the smaller rooms, which were used as torture chambers, were empty except for a bed used for the torture, which ranged from beatings to electrocution to suffocation. This was done to elicit confessions, some of which included outrageous lies told to stop the torture. The confessions were often lengthy, as each included the prisoner's description of their life history, their criminal or treasonous acts in chronological order, including conversations with other "traitors", and a list of friends, family, and acquaintances that were also "traitors".

After a break for lunch, and to gather ourselves, we went out to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. This was a pretty little longan orchard that became the horrific place where the prisoners from S-21 were slaughtered and buried in mass graves. Many of these people were bludgeoned to death so as not to "waste" bullets.

The picture below is of a memorial that houses the remains of 8985 people found at this site.

This small orchard is littered with 129 shallow, mass graves, of which 43 have been left untouched. Some single burial sites contained the remains of as many as 600 people. From this distance, it perhaps looks unremarkable, but all of the little hills and dips in the ground are graves or graves that have been unearthed. And everywhere you walk, there are pieces of cloth and bone and teeth littering the ground.
After the first full year of farming, the rice output was less than the Khmer Rouge had planned. Rather than feeding the workers and selling less than the budgeted amount of rice to other countries, the Khmer Rouge sold the full amount of rice they had planned to sell, in order to make money for the country and to create an image of success for their model to the outside world. But this meant letting the people starve. Then, they executed those that had produced below target, accusing them of sabotage; many of these were former city dwellers that were growing rice for the first time. The Khmer Rouge felt that they did not need these people, but they grossly underestimated the labor force necessary to meet their quotas.

In 1979, the Vietnamese army recaptured Phnom Penh and, by 1980, drove the Khmer Rouge into Western Cambodia, where they continued to fight for more than a decade. In 1991, the Khmer Rouge formed an agreement with the government installed by the Vietnamese, but by 1992, rejected it and resumed attacks once again. In 1996 there was a large scale defection from the party. Pol Pot was not captured until 1997 and even then, only by competing party members. He died in 1998 and the final members of the Khmer Rouge surrendered in 1999.

Under the Khmer Rouge, hundreds of thousands of people were executed and it is estimated that about 1.5 to 2 million of the 7 million person population of Cambodia died in total due to the Khmer Rouge, including those that died from starvation and disease. Democratic Kampuchea (i.e. the Khmer Rouge) held a seat in the UN until 1993.