After leaving the COPE center on June 7th, we did some sight-seeing around Vientiane, Laos. Our first stop was the Pha That Luang, one of Laos’ most important religious symbols. The beautiful Golden Stupa is 45 metres high, and is surrounded by 30 small stupas.
Our next stop was the Patuxay, or Victory Gate of Vientiane. It is a huge gateway that closely resembles the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It was built in 1962, and is dedicated to the people of Laos who fought in the struggle for independence from France.
This was our last day in Laos, as we would be traveling by plane to Phnom Penh, Cambodia in the morning. I really enjoyed the country of Laos. The natural beauty of the Mekong River and mountains were breathtaking, but on the flip-side, I was very saddened to learn about the devastation caused by the United States during the Vietnam War from the 260 million bombs they dropped. It makes me really sad to think about how the effects of those actions are still severely impacting the people today. I am happy that I visited Laos, and overall Laos was a very informative, eye-opening and beautiful section of my trip.
On June 8th we took a flight from Vientiane to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Phnom Penh is a large and very busy city in Cambodia, an it was a nice change from from the cities we had seen in Laos. We immediately hopped on the bus and headed to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
Visiting this museum was a very saddening experience. Learning about the genocide in Cambodia that killed 2.4-3 million Cambodians under rule of the Khmer Rouge was an eye opener for me. It is so awful what the Cambodian people have been through. In case those reading this blog don’t know the background, I’ll try to briefly summarize it.
The Khmer Rouge were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, and were led by Pol Pot, also known as the “Hitler” of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge were a communist party, and believed that peasants were the ideal communists, while city dwellers were the root of all capitalist evil. They began their ruling by forcing all city dwellers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to abandon their homes as quickly as possible and migrate to the countryside. They were then put to work for 12-14 hour days of hard manual labour working in the fields. The Khmer Rouge believed that to have the ideal communist society all people would have to live and work as peasants in the countryside. This manual labour lead to many deaths from starvation and overwork.
But this was just the first of many steps taken by the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge then banned religion, money and private ownership. Communications with the outside world were strictly forbidden and family relationships were demolished.
Anyone who fit into the category of a supposed “enemy” (including people committing the forbidden acts listed above) were arrested, tortured and eventually executed. Professionals and intellectuals, or even people wearing glasses, were considered “enemies”, in addition to anyone with connections to the former Cambodian government, or any foreign governments. Christians, Muslims and Buddhist monks fell into this “enemy” category as well. Anyone who the Khmer Rouge believed was against them, or was supporting capitalism was considered an “enemy”, in addition to all of their family members and children.
The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is the former Security Office 21, which was created by the orders of Pol Pot. Previously this area was the Tuol Sleng Primary School and Tuol Svay Prey High School. This security office doubled as a prison, and was used for detention, interrogation, torture, and then killing of Cambodian “enemies”. This was a place where people went in, but never came out. The main purpose of this location was to extract confessions from prisoners before they were taken away for execution.
There was barbed wire outside the buildings, so that prisoners would not escape, or commit suicide by jumping from the higher floors of the building.
Each room was converted into a number of small cells, and each small cell would contain a number of prisoners.
The Khmer Rouge collected photographs of the prisoners and films of the confessions. The photos were displayed in the museum.
Once the prisoners were tortured and interrogated, they were taken to the Killing Fields to be executed.
It is not exactly known how many deaths resulted from the rule of the Khmer Rouge, but it is estimated that in the country of Cambodia (with a total population of 7 million people), 2.4 – 3 million people were executed by the Khmer Rouge. This number accounts for more than 30% of the population of Cambodia, that were executed on Cambodian soil by their own leader.
You can see in the photo below that many of the people were executed with blindfolds on, and ropes tied around their wrists.
Walking through the prison was very difficult, and it was devastating to see how people suffered through this period and the vast and atrocious number of unnecessary deaths of innocent Cambodian people that resulted from the Khmer Rouge rule.
We then visited the Killing Fields, which contain more than 20,000 mass graves. To save ammunition, executions were done using poison, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. Children and infants of the adult victims were killed by bashing their heads against trees. The children were executed as a precaution in case they grew up taking revenge for their parents death.
While walking through the Killing Fields we saw a number of the mass graves.
The entire area contains bodies under the soil, and most of the graves have not been excavated, in order to let the dead rest in peace.
While walking through the paths you can see bone fragments in the ground, peaking up through the soil (it’s hard to see them clearly in the photo below). You can also see pieces of clothing peaking through the soil as well. This is because many prisoners were forced to dig their own graves, and they were too weak to dig very deep.
At the Killing Fields there is a memorial dedicated in the honour of the Cambodian people who died during the genocide. Inside the memorial are the skulls of the excavated bodies.
It was devastating to see how the Cambodian people suffered only about 30 years ago under the rule of the Khmer Rouge, leading to the death of 2.4 - 3 million people! All these deaths have resulted in a Cambodian population where currently about 50% of the population is under 20 years of age, as the majority of the older population was killed during the genocide.
This was a very sad day.
No comments:
Post a Comment