8000 skulls: Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2)

8000 skulls: Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2)

Sickened deep into the gut by the horrors of Tuol Suay Prey High School/S-21 security prison, Andy and I took a motorbike taxi (3 men squeezed on one 100cc motorbike and 1 helmet between us - the norm) through bustling Phnom Penh. We were following the route taken by the S-21 survivors to their final resting place: Cheoung Ek Extermination Camp.

Just beyond the entrance to the Killing Fields, the first tourist 'attraction' is a memorial stupa that whacks the tourist with a direct hit the scale of the brutality that Pol Pot inflicted onto his own people, at this site. From a distance, the memorial resembles some modern art piece: a 15 or so metre high tower of clear perspex and white brick with a roof of golden spikes. But on reaching the entrance step one sees that it houses the remains of those who died here. The 16 shelves are loaded with human skulls, sorted by age and gender. At shoulder level directly beyond the entrance is the 'juvenile females age 15 to 20' group. The front 2 skulls stared back vacantly at me, showing off their lethal bullet and bludgeon marks, as the silent echo of their last scream resonated in my ears.

The memorial to the Cheoung Ek victims – bottom 5 of 16 shelves

Some of the 'juvenile females age 15 to 20'

Nauseated, I dragged my feet along to the tourist information boards, informing that from the 88 of 129 mass graves unearthed here, 8985 corpses have been recovered. A long message titled 'The Most Tragic' attempts to describe what happened at this giant tomb and across Cambodia under Pol Pot (Kampuchea, Campuchea):

"....we imagine that we are hearing the grevious voice of the victims who were beaten with canes, bamboo stumps or heads of hoes. Who were stabbed with knives or swords we seem to be looking at the horrifying scenes and the panic on stricken faces of the people who were dying of starvation, forced labour or torture without mercy on their skinny body. They died without giving their last words to their kith and kin.... How bitter they were when seeing their beloved children, wives, husbands, brothers or sisters were seized and tightly bound before being taken to the mass grave! While they were waiting for their turn to come and share the same tragic lot.

The method of massacre which the clique of Pol Pot criminals carried out upon the innocent people of Kampuchea cannot be described fully and clearly in words, because the invention of this killing method was strangely cruel so it is difficult for us to determine who they are for: they have human form but their hearts are demon's hearts, they have got the Khmer face but their activities are reactionary. They wanted to transform Campuchean people into a group of persons without reason, or a group who knew or understood nothing, who always bent their heads to carry out Ankar's orders blindly. They had educated and transformed young people and the adolescents whose hearts were pure, gentle and modest into odious executioners who dared to kill the innocent and even their own parents, relatives or friends.

They had burnt the market place, abolished monetary system, eliminated books of rules and principles of national culture, destroyed schools, hospitals, pagodas and beautiful monuments such as Angkor Wat temple. They were trying hard to get rid of our Khmer characters and transform the soil and waters of Kampuchea into a sea of blood and tears, deprived of cultural infra-structure, civilisation and national character. [Here] Became a desert of great destruction that drove our society back to the Stone Age."

And beyond the billboards, the rest of Cheoung Ek's 'sights' are just a handful of the excavated mass grave pits. The victims were made to dig large pits and stand inside as they were either shot or buried alive (1). They're about bus-sized, 2 metre deep indentations, fenced off, sheltered and signposted with details like:

Grave 5. Mass grave of more than 100 women and children

Grave 6. 450 victims

Grave 7:

It was eerily peaceful strolling around on hard earth punctured by up-projecting human bones and faded fragments of clothing, still attached to their owners lying inches below my feet. By the unexcavated Chinese mass grave is the site where Khmer Rouge soldiers practised clay pigeon shooting using babies that were alive when they were tossed up into the air. Birds chirped in the tree that still displays marks where ropes once held child victims to its trunk to be flogged. Around me, young lads playfully chased a chicken. Tinny karaoke music and adolescent singing drifted on the faint breeze. Chocolate-skinned kids dive-bombed and swam in a swimming pool sized rectangular pit holding a muddy pond (that may have been a giant mass grave?!), while on the other side of the embankment a woman toiled in her rice field and white cows munched grass. The swimming kids waved and sought my attention by following my head turn with, "Hello hello mister" and 1/2 submerged, wobbly headstands. However I felt too drained and depressed to have the standard 20 times a day, "What's your name? Where you from?" Q & A session with these ragged urchins.

Human rags and bones in the earth between excavated mass graves

8985 corpses of ordinary Cambodians and foreigners have so far been dug out from the earth of Cheoung Ek extermination camp. Only 7 people sent here by the Khmer Rouge exited alive. The Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of up to 2 million people by the most atrocious methods. Only 2 members of the Khmer Rouge are being held for their crimes (1 in a coma) and it's taken until this month (July '06) for officials to be sworn in for long-awaited UN-backed genocide trials! It's looking highly unlikely that any Khmer Rouge murderer will ever be prosecuted for what they committed here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5182534.stm

Staring at these horrific death count statistics, I continue to wonder what could drive a human, often teenage, to: bury others alive; murder without any guilt, mercy or conscience; feed innocent people to crocodiles; butcher and torture their own nationals and even their own parents and siblings. Is this 'ability' learned, genetic, innate, conducted out of fear, or simply acted out to stay on the preferred end of the gun barrel/sword handle? I don't have any answers; I'm just a geologist.

In these last 2 mails I have only scraped the surface of the treatment of the Cambodian people by the Khmer Rouge. For more details do read:
(1). http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/projects/genocides/cambodia/CambodiaHistoryLavinia.htm

In my 6 days in Cambodia I could only focus on the big tourist sites, which unfortunately were centred on ruined temples, landmines, torture and genocide. The snapshots of everyday life I saw were also filled with people building their lives and country with much vigour, and joy at the simple things in life. Definitely worth a visit.

Laos next for some much deserved cheer..........