First They Killed My Father

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (day 92)

I woke up last night screaming and thrashing my body, drenched in sweat. Perhaps for a second I felt the smallest fragment of the fear the Cambodian people felt during the Khmer Rouge

Today I visited the Tuol Sleng prison (a school transformed into a prison where they incarcerated and tortured men, women and children during the Khmer Rouge) and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields

As I walked through Tuol Sleng my stomach was queasy and my heart ached. Photo's covered the walls of child soldiers and inmates. I looked into the eyes of these people. Many of their eyes looked empty, like their souls had long ago departed their bodies. Other photos showed haunted faces their eyes glazed with terror. Some of the men and women were already dead and the photo's showed their tortured, lifeless bodies.

As I continued to walk through the grounds of the prison their were reminders of what these people endured. Equipment used to torture them, their cells and the chains that entrapped them. The Khmer Rouge soldiers even covered the balconies with barbered wire to prevent people from taking their own life (even suicide was a privilege not allowed).

I was drawn to a photo of e female prisoner with her baby in her arms. I can not begin to imagine what it would be like for a mother. How helpless and afraid she must have felt knowing she could not protect her own child.

After leaving Tuol Slend we made our way towards the Choeung Ek killing fields. This is the location where thousands of men, women and children were murdered and thrown into mass graves.

One of these graves held the bodies of women, children and babies. The women were buried naked as the soldiers 'raped them for fun' before killing them. Less than a meter away stood a large tree that soldiers titled the killing tree. The executors would hold the babies by the ankles and swing their tiny heads against the truck. After the babies heads were fractured they were thrown into the mass grave like a piece of trash. I stared at the tree and I wondered how something that was used to cause so much harm could still bare green leaves.

On the way out their was a stupor (a dome-shaped monument, used to house Buddhist relics or to commemorate significant facts of Buddhism). The stupor stood about 20 meters high. Inside on display were the bones and skulls of just some of the victims killed at the killing fields. The shelves grouped the skulls by age and gender (juvenile male, juvenile female, elder male)

As I sit here now I struggle to comprehend how humans can be capable of causing so much pain. When I think of Pol Pot I imagine this evil man with a malevolent smile. I am surprised how normal he actually looked. He could be anyone walking down the street. 

Still I am comforted when I look at the Khmer people so warm and kind. Their smiles so radiant as they stand proud. I am thankful that humans are resilient and I hope that at the end of the day good in humanity will always be a stronger force.