This weekend, a few of my teammates and I travelled to Phnom Penh to visit the genocide memorial there. From 1975-1979, Cambodia experienced one of the worst genocides in history. 3 million people died, more than the holocaust. Today, 80 percent of Cambodia’s population is under the age of 30. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge wanted to re-build Cambodia from the ground up, which meant killing anyone who was educated. They also killed their wives and children to prevent them from taking revenge. The rest of the population was uprooted into villages and into forced labor for “re-education”. Many of the people that weren’t killed outright for breaking some impossible rule in these villages, died of starvation.
In Phnom Penh, one of the thousands of “killing fields” throughout the country has been preserved to serve as a reminder of the past. The victims of the Khmer Rouge were brought to killing fields to be killed and were then thrown into mass graves. Before the killing fields, victims were brought to Tuol Sleng prison where they were brutally tortured, sometimes for months. Records were kept of every prisoner that entered Tuol Sleng. After the Liberation in 1979, files containing short biographies and a photograph taken of each person upon arrival to Toul Sleng were found in the prison. One floor of the high school/prison is now dedicated to a display of these photographs. There are hundreds of headshots of men, women and children.
Seeing the bones at the Killing Fields was overwhelming. It was intense to walk among the graves. Seeing the torture rooms and the gruesome photos in Tuol Sleng was absolutely sickening. Looking at face after face in the photographs wrecked me. I looked at every single photo. Hundreds of them. The looks on their faces tell a story. A baby boy with confused eyes. An oldwoman whose expression is tired and beat. A young man, his eyes burning with passionate anger. A boy whose face is one of utter defeat. Women whose mouths are twisted with bitterness. Whose eyes are filled with fear and grief. A grown man, strong and healthy looking, staring at the camera with helpless, lifeless eyes. Some were terrified. Some were confused. Some were angry. Some were defiant. I looked at one picture and something in me just knew that the 20 year old I was looking at had been his mother’s pride and joy. That he had meant more to her than anything else on earth. And his life was ended in horrific brutality. For nothing. He was tortured and killedfor nothing.
At one point I walked by Courtney who was staring at a particular photo and she called me over to look. The 3 or 4 year old boy in the photo literally could have been one of the boys from the village. I looked at this little boy’s face, thinking about the personality of little Pro-On, how he’s adorable and sweet-natured and well mannered and brilliant and how he has this cute little giggle. That little boy could have been Pro-On. He was slaughtered like an animal. In fact, he was most likely bashed against a tree to save ammunition. My heart just broke. It was absolutely overwhelming. The genocide became so real in that moment. How does something like this happen? How do you learn about something like that and walk away unchanged?
I looked at face after face. I looked into the eyes of old women, young men, husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, wives, and sisters. Into the eyes of children and babies. I looked into the eyes of teachers and lawyers. Doctors and scientists. Schoolchildren. Housewives. They were all somebody. They were people and they were slaughtered. The world didn’t even know.
There’s no neat ending to this blog. I don’t have any answers. I don’t know how something like this happens, how it’s allowed to happen. But the word I can’t stop thinking about is Redemption. This nation is being redeemed. God is moving in big ways in Cambodia.
