History, Genocide, Realization

Walking through the Killing Fields at Choeng Ek, past mass graves and cases of skulls, a chill that won’t shake runs through my living bones.  The Khmer Rouge regime used mass graves to bury the millions murdered during its rule from 1975 to 1979. Taking power after the Cambodian Civil War, the Khmer Rouge executed anyone who disagreed with its policies, and everyone with ties to the former government. They also tortured and killed intellectuals and those in high professions, in order to squash questioning or revolution. Ethnic minorities including Thai, Vietnamese, Cham, (the muslim minority), Christians, and Buddhist monks were another target. With executions, starvation, torture and disease, the genocide killed between 1.7 and 2.5 million people, according to the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. That’s about one quarter of the entire population, (7-8 million at the time), and puts Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, right up there with Hitler. Makeshift signs describe each area of the memorial. First victims would be brought in truckloads from the prison and told they were going to a new home. Here, the Khmer Rouge soldiers would beat child victims with shovels and pickaxes. Adults were also beaten or beheaded, and some were buried alive. A tree with a speaker, helped hide the victims’ screams from workers in nearby fields. It’s hard to imagine such horror taking place without anyone knowing, especially because there were 20,000 gravesites across the country. It is common to see bones floating to the top of the soil after heavy rains, and in the memorial there are collections of clothing and skulls that have resurfaced over time.

The Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, formerly Security Prison 21, is equally haunting. The building was originally a high school, but the Khmer Rouge turned it into a torture and interrogation center. Those thought to be against the government, or minorities, were taken to the prison and tortured until they gave up family members or friends, who were then also arrested. Often, children were tortured in front of parents until they confessed loyalty to the old regime. Eventually, Pol Pot turned against his own party and became a manic killing machine, taking his paranoia of being overthrown out on his highest officials and arresting them for espionage. Prisoner estimates range from 17,000 to 20,000.  We looked into cells barely big enough to stand in, and examined torture mechanisms left since 1979. Prisoners were chained to the bed and beaten with shovels or whipped with metal rods full of spikes. They had their fingernails ripped out, and were hung upside down in a bucket of water with their hands tied to the bottom. There were many other techniques, including waterboarding and electric fire, and prisoners routinely confessed their loyalty to the opposing party, or if innocent, made up stories and confessions to stop torture.

There was a list of rules for prisoners, and all who disobeyed were severely punished, including infants. The rules were as follows:

1. You must answer accordingly to my questions. Do not turn them away.

2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.

9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.

After days or months at the camp, prisoners would be taken to the killing fields. Of all the victims, there were only seven survivors, two of whom are alive today.

Like any power hungry, paranoid maniac, (Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi), Pol Pot’s inner workings are hard to fathom. What’s harder to understand is why the United States supported his regime. The United States dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Cambodia between 1965 and 1973. During the Clinton administration, in an attempt to find and deactivate land mines, new information was released showing the bombings to be much more extensive than previously thought. "To put the revised total 2, 756, 941 tons into perspective, the allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during all of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively. Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history," write Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen, ("Bombs Over Cambodia" The Walrus (Canada), Oct. 2006, pp. 62-69).  This helped the Khmer Rouge grow in power, because those who lost family joined their revolution. (Keep in mind 2.7 million only counts bombs dropped by the United States. There were millions more and the Cambodian Mine Action Center estimates 4-6 million still remain active in Cambodia, causing immediate harm to farmers and others in rural areas). The United States sided with Pol Pot’s government to overthrow the Vietnamese in Cambodia, as we had just lost the Vietnam War. Once Vietnam invaded Cambodia, the US assisted Khmer Rouge guerrillas on the border of Thailand. China was another big supporter. After years of border conflicts, Cambodia and Vietnam had no real relations, and in December 1978 Pol Pot invaded Vietnam, fearing they would attack Cambodia first. However, Cambodian forces were expelled from Vietnam, and Vietnamese armed forces then captured Phnom Penh in Cambodia in 1979.  By this time, members of the Khmer Rouge were defecting and assisting the Vietnamese. The Khmer Rouge was basically finished, and a new government formed, called the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge, trying to maintain some legitimacy, fled west to the Thai border where they controlled small areas for ten more years, surviving only on aid from China and timber smuggling. Though no longer the ruling body in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge it was still recognized as the legitimate government by The United States and other western countries.  Vietnamese troops discovered the security prisons and killing fields, yet despite realization and horror across the world, the Khmer Rouge, (later under the title Democratic Kampuchea), retained a seat in the UN until 1993. Though Vietnam and Cambodia were victorious, the United States, along with China and the ASEAN countries, sponsored Pol Pot’s government in exile. Throughout the 1980s, millions of landmines were planted along the western part of the country. The Khmer Rouge was the strongest rebel group in Cambodia, and the U.S. provided extensive military aid. In 1989,once the new government was stable, Vietnam left Cambodia. The new government, (though still not recognized by western countries), and the Khmer rouge continued to fight until 1996, when about 4000 Khmer Rouge soldiers defected. After factional fighting, Pol Pot was finally imprisoned by his own party.  In 1998, the remaining members of the Khmer Rouge apologized for the genocide and in 1999 they surrendered.

The confusing part is that today the United States funds groups to save children from landmines, provides clean water to families and there are a hundred other US funded humanitarian efforts throughout the country. But, we were/are a big part of the reason children are still killed in land mine accidents. With a quarter of the population killed during the genocide, focusing on the best and brightest, we are part of the reason the country is lagging economically today. They’re behind because they had to start over only 20 years ago. 1980 is very recent. The Untied States is built on freedom and bringing democracy to the rest of the world, yet we support oppressive regimes that are anything but democratic. The US hated communism and waged a war in Vietnam over it, then sided with China, the biggest communist country in the world, in supporting the Khmer Rouge. We condemned Hitler, yet supported Pol Pot because we didn’t like Vietnam at the time. In the 1980s we supported the Taliban in order to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. More recently, we helped overthrow a tyrannical regime in Libya, (as we should have), yet barely batted an eyelash when protests broke out in Bahrain, a strong Gulf ally. I understand that international politics are complicated and cannot always be honorable. However, it seems we would be better liked across the world, and have more money ourselves if we supported governments that support their people, and didn’t spend billions on bombs and attacks only to spend billions more years later rebuilding the same areas and communities we helped destroy.