25 December 2007
Cambodia Politics: Flashback to 1975
It is 1975, Year Zero in Cambodia, named by the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, in an attempt to sever all ties to its past. It is a country in turmoil… In an effort to restructure society into a peasant dominated cooperative a cleansing of the population begins. Businessmen, politicians, and teachers become enemies of the state. The spouses, relatives and children of these people are arrested, believing that any intelligence would be found in the entire family.
Within days of taking Phnom Penh, the entire city, including the elderly and infirmed, are force to evacuate, to march to the countryside and perform slave labor at mobile camps for 15 hours a day.
A high school within Phnom Penh is converted into a detention / torture center. It is named Tuol Sleng, which in the Khmer language means poisonous hill, and referred to as S-21 (Security Office 21). There are many branches throughout Cambodia. Photographs of the inmates are taken before and after torture. They are then transported to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, for death and burial in mass graves. We are told chilling tales, and horrific statistics, of only seven who survive Tuol Sleng out of over 17,000 men, women, children, and infants. During the tenure of the Khmer Rouge, it is estimated that from 850,000 to 3 million people are exterminated, and hundreds of thousands more die of famine and disease. The activities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge are repeatedly compared to Hitler’s actions in Nazi Germany by our guides, the museums, and the literature we read.
We have hired a tuk tuk driver to take us to both Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek. We prepare ourselves… we go to give respect, to those who lost their lives, we go to remember, we go to give witness… and I ask myself, again and again…
How could this happen?
Where was the international community?
Where was the United States?
Have we learned nothing?
I hang my head in shame… and cry for the loss of innocent life.
I include the following pictures of our experience. They are posted with the utmost respect to those whose lives were taken. They are a visual testament to the genocide that took place, a tribute to each of those individuals whose lives were cut short by an insane political machine.
The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek
Within days of taking Phnom Penh, the entire city, including the elderly and infirmed, are force to evacuate, to march to the countryside and perform slave labor at mobile camps for 15 hours a day.
A high school within Phnom Penh is converted into a detention / torture center. It is named Tuol Sleng, which in the Khmer language means poisonous hill, and referred to as S-21 (Security Office 21). There are many branches throughout Cambodia. Photographs of the inmates are taken before and after torture. They are then transported to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, for death and burial in mass graves. We are told chilling tales, and horrific statistics, of only seven who survive Tuol Sleng out of over 17,000 men, women, children, and infants. During the tenure of the Khmer Rouge, it is estimated that from 850,000 to 3 million people are exterminated, and hundreds of thousands more die of famine and disease. The activities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge are repeatedly compared to Hitler’s actions in Nazi Germany by our guides, the museums, and the literature we read.
We have hired a tuk tuk driver to take us to both Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek. We prepare ourselves… we go to give respect, to those who lost their lives, we go to remember, we go to give witness… and I ask myself, again and again…
How could this happen?
Where was the international community?
Where was the United States?
Have we learned nothing?
I hang my head in shame… and cry for the loss of innocent life.
I include the following pictures of our experience. They are posted with the utmost respect to those whose lives were taken. They are a visual testament to the genocide that took place, a tribute to each of those individuals whose lives were cut short by an insane political machine.
Tuol Sleng 
The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek
# posted by Henry @ 3:55 PM 
