A backwards regime

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Today was a bit depressing.  We spent the morning (after being able to “sleep in”) in Phnom Penh visiting two sights (Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek) which pay tribute to the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime.  Before I talk about our visit, I think it is important to provide background information on Pol Pot’s rise to power and his ideology.  All information is from my Footprint guidebook.

Pol Pot – the idealistic psychopath

“Prince Norodom Sihanouk once referred to Pol Pot as ‘a more fortunate Hitler’.  Unlike his erstwhile fascist counterpart, the man whose troops were responsible for the deaths of perhaps two million fellow Cambodians has managed to get away with it.  He died on 15 April 1998, either of a heart attack or, possible, at his own hands or somebody else’s.

            Pol Pot’s real name was Saloth Sar – he adopted his nom de guerre when he became Secretary-General of the Cambodian Communist Party in 1963.  He was born in 1928 into a peasant family in Kompong Thorn, central Cambodia, and is believed to have lived as a novice monk for nine months when he was a child.  His services to the Democrat Party won him a scholarship to study electronics in Paris.  But he became a Communist in France in 1949 and spent more time at meetings of Marxist revolutionary societies than in classes.  In his 1986 book Sideshow, William Shawcross notes that at the time the French Communist Party, which was known for its dogmatic adherence to orthodox Marxism, “taught hatred of the bourgeoisie and uncritical admiration of Stalinism, including the collectivization of agriculture”.  Pol Pot finally lost his scholarship in 1953.

            Returning to a newly independent Cambodia, Pol Pot started working as a school teacher in Phnom Penh and continued his revolutionary activities in the underground Cambodian Communist Party (which, remarkably kept its existence a secret until 1977).  In 1963, he fled the capital for the countryside, fearing a crackdown of the left by Sihanouk. There he rose to become Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.  He was trained in guerilla warfare and he became a leader of the Khmer Rouge forces, advocating armed resistance to Sihanouk and his ‘feudal entourage’.  In 1975 when the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, Pol Pot was forced out of the shadows to take the role of leader, ‘Brother Number One’.  Although he took the title of prime minister, he ruled as a dictator and set about reshaping Cambodia with his mentor, Khieu Samphan, the head of state.  Yet, during the years he was in power, hardly any Cambodians – save those in the top echelons of the Khmer Rouge – had even heard of him.”

‘Pol Pot time’: building year zero

            “On 1 April 1975 resident Lon Nol fled Cambodia to escape the advancing Khmer Rouge.  Just over two weeks later, on 17 April, the victorious Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh.  The capital’s population had been swollen by refugees from 600,000 to over two million.  The ragged conquering troops were welcomed as heroes.  None in the crowds that lined the streets appreciated the horrors that the victory would also bring.  Cambodia was renamed Democratic Kampuchea (DK) and Pol Pot set to work establishing radical Maoist-style agrarian society.  These ideas had been first sketched out by his longstanding colleague Khieu Samphan, whose 1959 doctoral thesis – at the Sorbonne University in Paris – analyzed the effects of Cambodia’s colonial and neo-colonial domination.  In order to secure true economic and political independence he argued that it was necessary to isolate Cambodia completely and to go back to a self-sufficient agricultural economy.

            Within days of the occupation, the revolutionaries had forcibly evacuated many of the inhabitants of Phnom Penh to the countryside, telling citizens that the Americans were about to bomb the capital.  A second major displacement was carried out at the end of the year, when hundreds of thousands of people from the area southeast of Phnom Penh were forced to move to the northwest.

            Prior to the Khmer Rouge coming to power, the Cambodian word for revolution had a conventional meaning, ‘uprising’.  Under Pol Pot’s regime, the word pativattana was used instead; it meant ‘return to the past’.  The Khmer Rouge did this by obliterating everything that did not subscribe to their vision of the past glories of ancient Khmer culture.  Pol Pot wanted to return the country to ‘Year Zero’ – he wanted to begin again.  One of the many revolutionary slogans was “we will burn the old grass and new will grow”; money, modern technology, medicine, education and newspapers were outlawed.  Khieu Samphan… said at the time: “No, we have no machines.  We do everything by mainly relying on the strength of our people.  We work completely self-sufficiently.  This shows the overwhelming heroism of our people.  This also shows the great force of our people.  Though bare-handed, they can do everything.”

            The Khmer Rouge, or Angkar Loeu (‘The Higher Organization’) as they touted themselves, maintained a strangle-hold on the country by dislocating families, disorientating people and sustaining a persistent fear through violence, torture and death.  At the heart of their strategy was a plan to unfurl people’s strongest bonds and loyalties: those that existed between family members… Under heinous interrogation procedures people were intensively probed about their family members and encourage to inform on them.  Thos people who didn’t turn over relatives considered adversaries (teachers, former soldiers, doctors, etc) faced odious consequences, with the fate of the whole family (immediate or extended) in danger….

            People were treated as nothing more than machines.  Food was scarce under Pol Pot’s inefficient system of collective farming and administration was based on fear, torture and summary execution.  A veil of secrecy shrouded Cambodia and, until a few desperate refugees began to trickle over the border into Thailand, the outside world was largely ignorant of what was going on.  The refugees’ stories of atrocities were, at first, disbelieved.  Jewish refugees who escaped from Nazi occupied Poland in the 1940s had encountered a similarly disbelieving reception simply because (like the Cambodians) what they had to say was, to most people, unbelievable….

            During the Khmer Rouge’s 44-month reign of terror, it had hitherto been generally accepted that around a million people died.  This is a horrendous figure when one considers that the population of the country in 1975 was around seven million…. Although the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia may have been a period of unprecedented economic, political and human turmoil, they still managed to keep meticulous records of what they were doing.. Using Australian satellite data, the team was expecting to uncover around 200 mass graves; instead they found several thousand….

            How such a large slice of Cambodia’s people died in so short a time (1975-1978) beggars belief.  Some were shot, strangled or suffocated; many more starved; while others died from disease and overwork.”

At Tuol Sleng Museum (‘Museum of Genocide’) we saw some rooms where prisoners were held and devices used for torture.  “After 17 April 1975 the classrooms of Tuol Svay Prey High School became the Khmer Rouge main torture and interrogation center, known as Security Prison 21 or S-21.  More than 20,000 people were taken from S-21 to their executions at Choeung Ek extermination camp.  Countless others died under torture and were thrown into mass graves in the school grounds.  Only seven prisoners survived because they were sculptors and could turn out countless busts of Pol Pot.”  A number of the classrooms had multiple cells built from bricks.  Each prisoner was given a box to use as the bathroom and was only allowed to empty it when given permission. Just before the Vietnamese entered Phnom Penh, most of the remaining prisoners in S-21 were killed using various disgusting methods.  Our guide informed us that the seven men who survived had a variety of artistic talents and uses within the prison.  A terrible place.

 Our second stop was Choeung Ek, the execution ground for the torture victims of Tuol Sleng.  A huge glass tower stands on the site, filled with the cracked skulls of men, women and children exhumed from 129 mass graves in the area (which were not discovered until 1980).  To date 8,985 corpses have been exhumed.  Walking on the pathways, our guide made sure to point out various bones and clothes which are sitting at the top level of the dirt.  Since the entire site has not been cleared, the heavy rains cause remains to surface.  Really pleasant to be walking on teeth and rags.

Seeing the mass graves, I couldn’t help but compare to the Holocaust.  I’ve actually been in three countries in the last four months which have had huge purges of intellects: Russia, China and now Cambodia.  Unlike the Holocaust, these leaders targeted their own intelligent populations rather than targeting a specific religious group.  I just cannot comprehend the logic of these leaders.  How can killing all the smart people in your society help you progress?  I mean, I understand that they wanted to exert power and in order to stay in control they knew they needed a society they could brainwash, but still.  Anyway, this is a much longer conversation than my blog can handle.

After the depressing morning, we went to Friends restaurant for lunch.  Friends is an organization which provides aims to help street children (and their parents if they have them) by teaching them practical skills, like cooking. (More information on their website here)  I greatly enjoyed my passion fruit and vanilla smoothie, eggplant dip and fish with olive tapenade.  Eating for a good cause.  I also stopped into their shop, which sells items hand-made by the parents.

Lunch at Friends

We then had 2.5 hours to spend in Phnom Penh before heading to the airport.  I went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, built mainly by the French in 1866.  In the ticket line, I met a couple of Americans.  We ended up purchasing tickets off someone who couldn’t enter because of improper dress, so the four of us went in together.  One of the men was a Vietnam veteran and they’d stopped in Saigon as part of their two-weeks in SE Asia.  I took my time exploring the palace since I wasn’t in a rush to get back to the hotel.  Eventually, I walked back in the heat of the afternoon with an hour to spare before our bus left for the airport.  It was nice to relax as I’m feeling exhausted.

Detail, Royal Palace

We weren’t leaving until 5:15, but all of us were ready to go at 5pm, except for Ros who strolled in at 5pm and took a seat to relax and have a drink even though her bags were still upstairs.  She only thinks of herself.  I actually had to step away because I couldn’t listen to her and J.P. went to speak with her about getting ready.  Ela offered to help her with her bags and when the two of them came downstairs, Ros was empty handed with Ela carrying all her crap.  That girl is seriously unbelievable.

Since traffic can be unpredictable we gave ourselves too much time and had loads of time to kill at the airport.  We finally got on the plane and took off for Bangkok.  On arrival we said our goodbyes to Elli (she took a flight to Greece tonight) and transferred to the hotel.  Ela and Jacek are leaving at 5am, so I said goodbye to them at the hotel.  J.P. kindly gave me his room for the night (he went home) so that Ros and I could have our space and I could stay on for tomorrow.  It is so nice to have my own room; no noise right now but the sound of my typing.  The tour was fantastic in terms of where we traveled but, as I suspected from the beginning, the group was not like the one from the Trans-Mongolian.  I really enjoyed the company of Donna and Norm and Elli and can’t thank J.P. enough for being such a fabulous guide.

Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day relaxing since I’ve already seen what I wanted in Bangkok.  Last stop, Hong Kong, on Monday.