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Cambodia observes 30th anniversary of end of genocidal regime
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"Pol Pot: Anatomy of A Nightmare"
Monks chanted at the Genocide Museum and “killing fields” throughout Cambodia on January 7 to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of Pol Pot’s horrific regime – one of history’s worst.
About 40,000 people attended a rally by members of Cambodia's ruling party in the capital Phnom Penh, according to the Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency.
Dictator Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime killed an estimated 1.7 million people – more than one-fifth of Cambodia’s population -- in the late 1970’s. They were either murdered outright, or died from forced labor and starvation.
At the most notorious killing field, Choeung Ek , 8,000 skulls are stacked up in the former orchard just a few miles from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. Even the glorious Angkor Wat temple was used as a killing field.
Cambodia’s deadliest prison, then called S-21, is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The 290 skulls on display there used to be arranged in the shape of Cambodia. The walls of the former high school are papered with head shots of the 14,000 prisoners tortured there daily by the Khmer Rouge. These photos can be ordered, if you really want, as wallpaper for your computer.
Although one of history’s worst mass killers, Pol Pot never faced trial and died peacefully in his sleep at age 73. “Pol Pot” was one of 10 aliases for Saloth Sar, a former schoolteacher . “The more often you change your name the better. It confuses the enemy,” he once said, according to “Pol Pot: Anatomy of A Nightmare” by Philip Short ((Henry Holt and Company).
Five former Khmer Rouge leaders are languishing in a Cambodian-United Nations detention center -- whose food they’ve complained about. The trial of Kaing Khek Iev, who led Tuol Seng, will probably go on trial in March, but the four other detainees, in their 80s, are unlikely to face charges until 2010 and may well die peacefully before facing justice.
”After 30 years, no one has been tried, convicted or sentenced for the crimes of one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “This is no accident. For more than a decade, China and the United States blocked efforts at accountability, and for the past decade (Cambodian Prime Minister) Hun Sen has done his best to thwart justice."
The Royal Embassy of Cambodia in Washington did not respond to my e-mails and phone messages requesting a comment and additional information.
Recently, I realized a life-long dream to visit Cambodia. I asked my extraordinarily knowledgeable guide, Phalla Chan, how he had managed to survive those years. “I guess I’m strong,” he replied. “Today is for today, not for thinking about yesterday.”
I immersed myself in Cambodia’s tragedies of yesterday, converted into today’s tourist attractions described above. The killing fields and museums affected me as deeply as Holocaust museums in Washington and in my hometown of Houston; Robben Island prison off Cape Town, South Africa where Nelson Mandela was held for 27 years in a three-square-yard cell; the Spanish Inquisition Museum in Lima, Peru; among many others.
"Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it," the philosopher George Santayana warned so memorably.
The recent and ancient past of Cambodia is definitely remembered -- as is the Cambodian proverb “Cultivate a heart of love that knows no anger”.
For more information:
“Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare” by Philip Short (Henry Holt and Company). Short has been a foreign correspondent for "The Times" of London, "The Economist", and the BBC
“The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79” by Ben Kiernan (Yale University Press). Kiernan is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, and the founding director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University
"How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975" also by Ben Kiernan
Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program, Ben Kiernan, Founding Director
Cambodian Embassy in Washington, DC
U.S. State Department travel information about Cambodia
Trails of Indochina tour operators, who organized my independent travel in Cambodia and Vietnam
More About:
travel ·
books ·
Pol Pot ·
Angkor Wat ·
Genocide ·
Cambodia ·
Choeung Ek ·
Killing fields ·
Tuol Sleng ·
Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program ·
Kaing Khek Iev ·
Human Rights Watch ·
Hun Sen
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