During our time of briefing in Cambodia (Monday, October 6) we had a ‘Day of Culture’. For short-term missions, learning about the culture & visiting historical sites is a great way for missionaries to be more effective out on the mission field. What I learned here helped me minister better, as well as connect with the Cambodian people we lived & worked with.
The pictures you see here in this blog are specifically ones taken from the first place we visited, a place called Toul Sleng. Toul Sleng was once a school, however under the Khmer Rouge, it was a station in the city to torture, execute, starve, & force labor upon those the reign saw as a threat to the new political party of Communism. This sign was posted at the entrance.
Below, was a picture of just 1 of the torture stations I saw. To the right of this sign was The Gallow. If you can imagine, two poles connecting to eachother at about 2 stories high–they would pull the prisioner up by the robe which wrapped around the top connecting pole.
There were boards full of pictures of each prisioner who stayed at this camp. The Khmer Rouge was the communist party of Cambodia, which was from 1975-1979. It was responsible for the massive genocide of about 1.5 MILLION PEOPLE. I never once learned about this in school.
I went thru room after room & was shocked to find the youngest prisioner was not a toodler, but a small newborn. I do not know what happend to this baby.
I hope you can read the short documentary below on Pol Pot, aka “Brother number 1”. Those the committee chose to exterminate during the KR were:
Anyone with ties to the former government or with foreign governements.
Professionals & intellectuals (included almost everyone with an education, or even people wearing glasses, since the regime thought those who had glasses were literate).
Ethnic Vietnamese & Chinese.
Christians, Muslims, & Buddhist monks.
Homosexuals & the Handicapped.
& those guilty of “economic sabotage” (many urban dwellers, who had not starved to death, were punished due to their lack of agricultural skills).
Pol Pot also saw fit that children be separated from parents. At this camp in the city, the children were taken away, brainwashed to socialism & taught torture methods, practicing on animals. They were also given leadership in torture & executions.
Hanging sign in the hallway of the building. The motto of the party, “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”
The barbed wire was placed so prisioners could not committ suicide.
The city of Phnom Penh was completely abandoned, except for processing camps like this one, because all people were forced out into the countryside to work the rice fields & other labor camps. These specific rooms contained more cells to hold prisioners. I think there were 3 large buildings on this campus, each building having 3 floors.
This Genocide Museum is a place that was hard to visit, but a necessary place to see. Seeing things like this, only confirmes my opinion, man is NOT inherently good.
