What can I say about Cambodia? It’s got all the charm, smiles, temples and cultural delights of its southern neighbour, Thailand. It shares a complicated bond of sorts with Vietnam to the east – both victims of the ‘American War’. It’s gloriously hot and sunny. Who doesn’t love sitting on a perch next to the Mekong river sipping an iced coffee? Oh, and then there’s the genocide.
It’s tough to really describe the experience of visiting the killing field of Phnom Penh, one of hundreds spread across the country. And there is the nearby prison, the other ‘must-see’ mass murder site. Our tour guide was born a year after the Khmer Rouge were beaten out of power, so was safe from the horror. His older brother was born in time to be murdered. His parents survived, although they both had their fingers removed with pliers.
There are a couple of trees of note in the killing field. The first one once had a loudspeaker hung up on a branch. It played loud music all night long to drown out the cries and moans of prisoners as they were murdered next to the tree. Killed with farmyard implements, to save on bullets.
There’s another tree, just metres away, where babies were killed. They’d just be grabbed by their ankles and have their heads smashed in against the tree trunk. When he first started work doing tours, the children’s hairs were still stuck to the wood which was still stained with their blood.
The prison was no less horrific. The genocide was well documented by the perpetrators, and is now displayed within the walls as a reminder of what was, and what can be. Of the tens of thousands that were processed through there, just a handful of folk survived. Three of them now sit outside the killing field and within the prison, selling their books and talking to visitors.
I bought a book from the survivor manning the desk outside the killing field. Ten dollars seemed a bargain, given the cost of the story. I got a photo out of it too. I’m not sure I wanted one. I felt a bit uncomfortable. But he insisted. Well, I suppose he’s earned his right to celebrity the hard way. Who am I to deprive him?
The experience of visiting these places is profound. Even more so, I felt, that Auschwitz. Not that it’s a competition. The Killing Fields is a terrific film (albeit with a terrible soundtrack) that barely scratches the surface. I think there’s no substitute for standing on the very soil that those poor folk once stood, to get a sense of the tragedy.
It also feels a bit odd to label this post ‘Cambodia’ and then drone on about genocide. Yes, it was most definitely a national event. But once you’ve left Phnom Penh, it’s like it never happened. We went to Kampot and Kep and we saw a pepper plantation (very interesting), a crab market (a bit interesting) the sun setting across the sea (gorgeous), and then we headed to Siem Reap which was like another world. There was no visible sign of a genocide anywhere.
I take a positive from this. A country can tear itself apart and then come together to heal. Cambodia is perhaps one of the finest examples of this in the world. The folk of the USA should take heart. There will be better days, the tyrants will be beaten. Whether or not the mass slaughter of millions upon millions of people is a necessary, essential part of the process before the healing begins, I do not know. Best of luck….
The Mexile 
Mercy! That sounds horrible beyond horrible. Don’t know what makes it so. The number of victims? The hands-on ways people were tortured and murdered? (As opposed to American B-52s carpet bombing Vietnam from 30,000 ft., or the Israelis pulverizing Gaza and killing 50,000 Palestinians trapped in refugee camps?) At first I thought it was offensive to turn the killing fields into a tourist attraction, like a macabre Disneyland. But I guess it’s better than forgetting.
BTW who’s looking after the British railways while you’re traveling? Or are you retired?
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I’m not sure you’d call the killing fields tourist attractions, as such. Educative memorials would be more apt. Obviously, whatever you call it, it’s grim. And it’s important not to forget. But plenty of folk will do just that anyway.
That 50,000 figure Gaza includes Hamas fighters, btw, who make up somewhere between 50% and 75% of the figure.
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I plead guilty to “rhetorical overreach”, as my public relations assistant would blithely say, for sounding dismissive about the Killing Fields site as a “tourist attraction.” It’s just that when we’ve visited memorials of that type—Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and Holocaust memorials in Washington, Amsterdam and Paris, and Dachau in Munich—I’m bothered by the hubbub of tourist buses, tour guides with megaphones and little flags, gift shops etc. I guess that’s inevitable and worth it if visitors walk away a little more sensitized to the horrors those sites commemorate. That has been the effect on Stew and I. BTW as a result of your post we queued “The Killing Fields” in our Amazon Prime app. We watched many years ago, but don’t remember much.
But I protest any suggestion that I might be a shill for Hamas or any terrorist groups, or ignore the barbarism of Hamas when they killed about a thousand innocent people having a party in Israel. Not so. I think however you have your casualty figures reversed: about 75 percent of the victims in Gaza have been civilians, most of those women and children and in some cases medical personnel and aid workers. If you add to those casualties the obliteration of Gaza as a place for human habitation, and the casualties in the West Bank, where settlers seem to be on the rampage, grabbing Palestinian land and killing people with little or no protection by the IDF, it paints a picture of ethnic cleansing, apartheid or even genocide. It seems that Israel is systematically annexing Palestinian land, and all of this with the support of the U.S. which is providing the ammunition. I’ve even read rumors that the Trump administration has approached some African countries as a possible destination for displaced Palestinians, like the Tories wanted to do with illegal immigrants in the UK.
Keep traveling and reporting back. Stew and I are going to northern Italy at the of June, and to Peru and a cruise on part of the Amazon in August. Might go to England in the fall. We’ve never been to the Far East though, and doubt if we’ll make it. The logistics of getting there and around just sound too daunting.
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There are places that your theme park ‘accusation’ holds water. Even at Auschwitz, some groups have a certain vibe about them. Smiling selfies in front of the ovens sort of thing.
I’m not suggesting you’re a Hamas shill, amigo. But the 50,000 figure is provided by Hamas themselves, and they don’t distinguish between civilian and combatant. It’s a deliberate policy designed to aid their propaganda wing. Finding the actual split between fighter and civilian deaths is murky. A figure close to 50/50 seems reasonable to me. Others mileage might vary. If it varies by a lot, I’d be sceptical. And there are complex issues to debate. How would you classify family members of Hamas combatants who remain with them in the combat zone? Etc.
But with that said, you’ll not need to convince me that Netanyahu is a fascist, that what’s happening in the West Bank is criminal and worthy of sanctions etc etc.
I’ll definitely keep travelling. Mexico is next, in June. I’m trying to fandangle a solo side trip to HavanA while I’m there. We’ll see how that pans out…
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