I know what I know and I can’t deny it
Something on the road, cut me to the soul
because if you are anything like me or the rest of my squad, you
probably are unaware of the realities of the genocide that took place
here in Cambodia only 30 years ago…
Half of the country is under the age of 20 years old. 80% is under the age of thirty years old.
is because of a genocide that took place not so long ago. In fact, most
of you reading this were alive during this time. If you were born
before the year 1980, this happened in your lifetime. The Khmer Rouge
was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea,
who were the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Under the
Khmer Rouge, it is estimated that some 2 million people were either
executed or died as a result of what was going on.
Khmer Rouge carried out a radical program that included isolating the
country from foreign influence, closing schools, hospitals and
factories, abolishing banking, finance and currency, outlawing all religions, confiscating all private property and relocating people from urband areas to collective farms where
forced labor was widespread. The purpose of this policy was to turn
Cambodians into “Old People” through agricultural labor. These actions
resulted in massive deaths through executions, work exhaustion, illness,
and starvation.
In Phnom Penh and other cities, the Khmer Rouge told residents
that they would be moved only about “two or three kilometers” outside
the city and would return in “two or three days.” Some witnesses say
they were told that the evacuation was because of the “threat of
American bombing” and that they did not have to lock their houses since
the Khmer Rouge would “take care of everything” until they returned.
The
Khmer Rouge attempted to turn Cambodia into a classless society by
depopulating cities and forcing the urban population (“New People”) into
agricultural communes
. The entire population was forced to become farmers in labor camps.
was abolished, books were burned, teachers, merchants, and almost the
entire intellectual elite of the country were murdered, to make the
agricultural communism, as Pol Pot envisioned it, a reality. The planned
relocation to the countryside resulted in the complete halt of almost
all economic activity: even schools and hospitals were closed, as well
as banks, and industrial and service companies.
their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the
population, at the same time executing selected groups who had the
potential to undermine the new state (including intellectuals
or even those that had stereotypical signs of learning, such as
glasses) and killing many others for even breaching minor rules.
The
Khmer Rouge government arrested, tortured and eventually executed
anyone suspected of belonging to several categories of supposed
“enemies”:
Anyone with connections to the former government or with foreign governments.
Professionals and intellectuals-in practice this included almost everyone with an education,
or even people wearing glasses (which, according to the regime, meant
that they were literate). Ironically and hypocritically, Pol Pot himself
was a university-educated man (albeit a drop-out) with a taste for
French literature and was also a fluent French speaker. Many artists, including musicians, writers and film makers were executed.
Ethnic Vietnamese, ethnic Chinese, ethnic Thai and other minorities in Eastern Highland, Cambodian Christians, Muslims and the Buddhist monks.
“Economic
saboteurs:” many of the former urban dwellers (who had not starved to
death in the first place) were deemed to be guilty by virtue of their
lack of agricultural ability.
were told by our contact that before the Khmer Rouge took over, there
were over 1,000 Christian pastors in Cambodia. That number was reduced
to 3. We visited one of the torture chambers in Phnom Penh as well as
one of the actual killing fields where thousands were executed only
minutes away. S-21 Prison has now been turned into a museum. Before the
days of the Khmer Rouge, it was a high school. When the country was
overtaken, the high school was turned into a prison where thousands of
people were held captive and tortured for months before being sent on a
truck to be executed at the killing field.
obvious reasons, the day we went to Tuol Sleng (the S-21 prison) and
the Killing Fields was a hard day for all of us. But I think one of the
biggest reasons it was so hard for all of us was that none of us had any
idea of the extent of it, no one ever told us.
