Society's Values

I was mentally prepared to leave behind the sparkling tourist side of Thailand, although spending my last week with a Canadian family in Cheng Mei, it could have been a country in the world.  Thailand in many ways is Western, or more accurately dons many of the trappings of a Western society, with giant supermarkets shelving foreign foods and products to large malls with Sony Centers, KFCs and Megaplex style theatres.  However, I wasn’t prepared for the difference of quality of life that awaited me in Cambodia. 

In the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, there are still bare piles of trash on the streets to be picked up by people wearing a karma.  It’s a checked scarf that wraps around the face and neck, tucking under a hat, making them look like they’re about to rob a bank or star in a Middle Eastern ransom video.  You need one to keep the stench from taking up residence in your nostrils as you walk.  Sidewalks here aren’t used for walking, but for parking, for food stands, for seating at small restaurants, for storage, and for silver car parts next to motorbikes getting tune ups.  Feet here seem to be merely for decoration, certainly not for walking through the maze of sidewalk commercialism they’ve created. 

Feet here seem to be merely for decoration, certainly not for walking through the maze of sidewalk commercialism they’ve created.

Motorbike and Tuk Tuk drivers wait at exits of public buildings, at street corners, at tourists sites, they pull up next to you on the sides of roads and shout from across streets, they lie to you about attractions being closed so you’ll need a ride to someplace farther away and don’t take your first, second, third or fourth ‘no’ for an answer unless they have another potential client, which is any traveler not in their Tuk Tuk.  I understand that they have to make a living and that as most locals use them religiously, they probably find foreigners walking around their city very strange, but do they have to be so abrasive about it?  Or illogical, if I’ve said ‘no’ to the first nine drivers standing in a line directly in front of them, do they really think I’ll suddenly change my mind?

That said, the feel about the Cambodian people is different than the Thais.  They smile at you without reservation, especially if you initiate, where as the Thais half smiled, half grimace like the effort would overcome them.  Even the poorest of kids laugh and give you a cheeky grin, although usually before asking for money for posing for one of your photos.  I don’t know if it’s the atrocities they’ve suffered or if it’s in their nature to appreciate life more, but they do.

When most people think of Cambodia, the Killing Fields is most likely what comes to mind.  I’m sure most but the youngest of you would have at least heard of the Khmer Rouge.  The group was only in power for four years, but left a mark still affecting Cambodians today.  They fought a civil war to depose a corrupt Cambodian monarch in the mid 70’s.  They were overthrown by the Vietnamese Communists Party and the Cambodians that they armed.  Not being intimately familiar with the history I find this strange as the Khmer Rouge were Marxist themselves and their takeover was backed by China. 

I know given the Vietnam War it’s probably very un-American to say so, but ‘go Vietnam.’  I’m sure things weren’t all peaches and cream under the Vietnamese, but surely it was the lesser of two evils.  I mean the Khmer Rouge killed about 2 million people in less than four years. 

The Cambodian People’s Party has been in power since an agreement was forged by the United Nations with the Vietnamese Government and the different Cambodian political factions following the downfall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.  You can’t immediately tell that it’s still a communist government.  It is one of the few countries left in the world without a McDonald’s, but other international franchises are growing up in the tourist areas, showing the country is opening up to commercial influences. 

Although the Killing Fields are what jumps to most people’s minds about Cambodia, there isn’t much left to see.  I paid $10 for a Tuk Tuk to and from its out of the way location, and a $2 entry fee to see nothing more than grassed over holes in the ground where bodies had been.  Only four of the 20 mass graves had a wood shelter built over it and a plaque describing what was found, like an entire pit of decapitated bodies or a pit of women and children.  Other signs along the path described elements of the camp, like the chemical shed, adding gruesome details about how the guards would spread chemical over the body to either help them decompose quickly or finish off victims that didn’t die immediately.  Ironically, a large lake at the back of the property with benches and a path surrounding it like a park without a sign posted purpose.  

The main focal point was the five story stone memorial prominently placed just beyond the entrance.  It was topped ornately like a temple with the roof’s corners curving into shapes like the prow of a boat.  The inside is less ornate with an untreated structure of 2x4s and plywood flats creating a shelving unit that left less than a foot for tourists to circumnavigate.  Each level was about four feet high with 15 levels reaching up to the ceiling.  The first level had a single row of skulls of victims originally buried here each facing their nearest observer.  Why they got special treatment, I don’t know.  The rest of the levels had skull up on skull piled on top of each other, filling the entire space. 

Most of the sense I got of what really happened came from a place called S-21, which was a school before the Khmer Rouge turned it into a detention and interrogation center.  A friend I met at the hostel was disappointed because the history inaccurately proclaimed in pamphlets and on posters was written by those in power today that includes ex-leaders of the Khmer Rouge.  Fact or fiction, my attention was drawn more to the stories of the people and back story of the hate that caused it.  This for me was more like visiting one of the Nazi concentration camp memorials.  It made the things that happened to the people more real than their temporary resting place.  I didn’t need to conjure an image of a 3x6 foot brick and mortar cell, because it stood before me as evidence even if the blood stains had been washed away and the echoes of the victim’s pleas no longer reverberated through the rooms.

There were four buildings surrounding a grassy courtyard, all roughly the same size with three floors of classrooms cut into different sizes.  The first building had ten classrooms on the ground level, each about 20 feet deep and 15 foot wide making the length of each building about 150 feet.  The metal bed frame alone in its own classroom was nearly laughable compared to the wooden bunk beds Holocaust victims crammed together until they were suffocated for lack of space, especially with the sunlight pouring in from barred windows.  However, a poster explained the first building was for VIPs, like opposition leaders or anyone guards felt it would be helpful to have space to torture privately.  These rooms each have a grisly, but deteriorating, black and white photo of one of the 14 victims the guards shot in their beds before abandoning their posts.  By the time they were found, the bodies were said to be unrecognizable, so for once I was happy the photos looked woefully out of focus. 

In the courtyard a wooden structure, like a giant frame missing its doors, stood.  The children used it for games, by tying a ball on a rope to the cross bar and batting it around.  The Khmer Rouge tied something else to their ropes: hanging people by their arms or necks until they passed out.  They were then dunked into a giant ceramic pot of fetid water until they regained consciousness so they could start again. 

A sign posted the prison’s rules, giving visitors an idea of how hopeless it was for prisoners to vindicate themselves.  Ten rules were listed, but they boiled down to: don’t contradict your guilt in any way, don’t scream while you’re being tortured and immediately tell inquisitors what they want to hear or you will be beaten or electrocuted.  It is easy to understand with that mindset why there were less than a dozen survivors of S-21 with, I overhead a guide say, only three still living today. 

Like the Nazi’s, the Khmer Rouge kept excellent, even photographic, records of their victims.  The whole ground floor of the second building was filled intake photos of men, women and even children that were brought to S-21 and who likely left on the buses that transported ‘sentenced’ victims to the Killing Fields.  Also, like the Nazi’s, the guards that were later found swore that they were forced to work as a guard whether they liked it or not, each with varying levels of remorse as to what happened.

The third building contained the cells of the non-VIPs.  The ground floor had four or five rooms with a rough doorway cut through the original walls connecting them.  These rooms had two rows of brick and mortar or wooden cells lining the outer walls with a hallway down the middle.  There were no beds, just remnants of what each prisoner was given as a toilet.  The upper levels didn’t have cells, but artwork showed the lowest caste of prisoners housed in large classrooms, sleeping side by side, toe to toe on the floor tiles or rattan mats. 

The fourth building housed different art forms from paintings from victims, to photographs of S-21, and a then and now exhibit with photos and stories of 15 low level Khmer Rouge members.  Most that I read made it sound like it was the best choice for them at the time, like a shoulder shrug saying ‘what do you expect.’  This building also included ten skulls that were forensically examined from the unearthed Killing Fields.  The outcome of the non-random sampling showed that four victims were beaten to death with a blunt object, four victims were beaten to death with a sharp object, and two were shot.  The explanation said the Khmer Rouge wanted to save bullets, but that after all, was the same rationalization for building the gas chambers.  I have to wonder at how much more personal and gruesome it would have been to beat people to death on a regular basis. 

The saddest part for me is not realizing what was done, but how different Cambodia could have been if not for the massacres.  Like Hitler, Pol Pot had a people group in mind, but rather than a dividing line of race Pol Pot targeted anyone with an education, anyone who could speak a foreign language or anyone who wasn’t ‘salt of the earth.’  The Khmer Rouge evacuated the cities, sending everyone into the countryside to farm, with or without any skills to do so.  They based their economy completely on rice quotas that even the First People, the original farmers, weren’t able to fill. 

During and after the Khmer Rouge’s reign, there were few left to heal the sick or teach the children.  Even today, in the capital, most of the schools you see have ‘Australian’ or ‘American’ or some other nationality in the title.  I would think after education was deprived them, it would have become more of a priority.  However, the best description I could get from the street kids of their curriculum is English and sales techniques.  I was assured by an American teacher living there that the most schools had a better-rounded curriculum, but it doesn’t sound like it’s always accessible.  It’s sad to see how Pol Pot’s prejudice and hatred is still affecting people’s lives nearly three decades later.