The Dark Side of Cambodia

The Phanthoms of the Dark Side of Cambodia
written: 2-24-2011
been there: 1-27-2011

Nearly a month has passed since I came face to face with the Dark Side of Cambodia's past - the atrocity of Pol-Pot's genocide. Like Vonnegut, who could only write of the bombing of Dresden in his "Slaughterhouse 5, The Children's Crusade" some 20 years after the fact, I needed some time to digest what I have seen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five
To write about it meant to edit the photos, which meant to re-experience the horror that I've seen. After the blissful month in Cambodia, I did not yearn to do that at all. Yet, I wanted to share this before I went to Russia and completed the Phase I of my Journey.

As a child, I remember standing before the grim "Apotheosis of War" and being moved to the core that someone could capture so much sadness and cruelty with a few brush strokes. I still shiver thinking of my small body standing before that enormous display of pointless death.
http://solutionproblem.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/apotheosis-of-war.jpg
I have never thought there existed a "prototype." And in Phnom Penh, I found it without looking for it.

I am not a fan of big cities. I am not a masochist by nature. I knew facing this history in such gruesome fashion will be jolting to my spirit and heart. Yet, I felt that, given how recent and overwhelming this tragedy has been to Cambodia, and that it touched virtually everyone alive in the country at the time of the Pol-Pot regime, I could not truly understand the people here without facing this meat-grinder. So, I stopped in Phnom Penh to witness the Toul-Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choung-Ek Killing Fields.

Yet again, I'm feeling the meagerness of the words' power when staring brutal and pointless death in the face. The mixture of horror, compassion, profound sadness and "does not compute" emotions having an orgie inside me....
The thought that ONE MAN could kill off a quarter of the country's population in just a few years based on an erroneous idea that the modern generation could repeat the Khmer Empire's herculean feats of growing rice....but without taking into account the actual method the Khmer's used [the growing and shrinking Tonle Sap lake that provided the perfect planting ground for the abundance of rice that has provided for the glories of the Khmer Empire].

Apparently, Pol-Pot thought it was the giant reservoirs that the Khmer God-Kings built just to glorify their deities and solidify their power that served as giant rice-field irrigating systems. So, the day that Khmer Rouge took over the country, most of the population of the city [regardless of the age and health] got mobilized to grow rice on a brutal schedule of 15 hr/day labour in the provinces..... A major prison was established for political prisoners [and most of the intellectuals of the country - any keepers of Khmer culture/tradition] at an elementary school that came to be known as Toul-Sleng or S-21. Nearly 14,000 people were brutally tortured there and then sent off to the Killing Fields at Choung-Ek to end life in a mass grave.

The guards were much the same people as the prisoners. And, yet, the horrors of S-21 echo until today. Stanford Prison Experiment [http://www.prisonexp.org/] and Milgram's Obedience Studies [http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm] come to mind....The question that so many have tried to answer: how can a human being cause such suffering to another human? The mind immediately "core-dumps" from an overload, when one witnesses SUCH cruelty in SUCH proportions...it simply does not compute. Even knowing about the research on the subject.

One of the handful of Toul-Sleng survivors [less than 10], was a talented artist. He felt that no matter what, we need to remember this crime against his people, never to repeat it. So, after the Vietnam intervention and the end of Khmer Rouge regime, he came back to the ghastly halls of Toul Sleng to paint what has happened there. It is his paintings that you see in the photos. Being an artist myself, I can only imagine the catharsis this man must have experienced creating these gruesomely detailed displays of unthinkable suffering.

The museum has jolted me in many ways - it was the contrasts between the sunny reflections of palm trees and the nature of the photographs they were reflecting upon. It was the faces of the live facing the blind orbit stares of the dead with a mixture of curiosity, horror and silent fascination.....It was the ghostly way that the mug-shots of the prisoners were floating amidst the reflections of the barred windows and the silouettes of the visitors....as though they were still there, haunting the halls as the souls who have not found peace. After all, in many cultures [including Cambodian], there is a belief that unless a body is given a proper burial, the soul shall remain behind, often haunting the place of its suffering.....In Toul Sleng, it's easy to believe in some substance to this belief. The energy there can be cut with a knife - it is thick still - years after the last prisoner has left it.

I have compiled an album just of such "ghosts'" photos - the Genocide Ghosts. I agree with that courageous artist. We need to remember. No matter what.

Aside from the cruelty and the scale, what apalls me about Pol-Pot's genocide is that in but 4 years he was able to completely cut off the people of his country from their heritage. Even the gentle link of the "celestial dancers" Apsaras that have danced at the Kings' courts since the Khmer times has been severed. To bring back this piece of legacy, Cambodia had to invite a Khmer-dance expert from the U.S. to teach the current generation the sacred movements of the Apsaras! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsara_Dance

So, in Cambodia, there are some of the most glorious temples and art in all of Asia, but the people who live here now know little to none of the history of their Khmer ancestors. There is something deeply disturbing about that. Pol-Pot's idol was Mao, who attempted the same kind of collective memory eradication with China.....though he did not completely succeed due to the size of the country and the number of its people....Pol-Pot did.

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If I drank, I wouldn't mind a few shots of vodka after editing these photos....it was like re-living being there.