Angkor Babies, Day II: Angkor What?

Siem Reap, Cambodia, 8/7/11

"I was very young during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s. I remember one night my family was sitting down at the kitchen table enjoying dinner when we heard gunfire and explosions coming from outside. We immediately sought shelter in a small underground bunker, hidden through a trap door under the floor. Such shelters were quite common during the late 70s. My whole family huddled together in the cramped space as the roar of ammunition raced above us. We sat there preying the officials would not find us or destroy our house. Hours passed and the gunfire eventually ceased. We climbed back up to thankfully find our home fully intact. Our meal, however, suffered a much worse fate, as when we were underground our dog helped himself to quite a feast."  - Angkor Wat Guide, 8/7/11

This is just one story in what was one of the worst examples of genocide in recent history, killing nearly one third of the Cambodian population from 1975 - 1979. As our terrific guide at Angkor Wat recites the tale, his consistently affable manner turns ferociously serious and his expression becomes stoic. Although the harrowing anecdote presents the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in an overly intimate manner, I am impressed how he ends the story on a bright and humorous note to which any dog lover can relate. That he can find humor during a period of nonstop brutality truly represents the strength and resilience of the Cambodian people. A community of strong, united, patriotic citizens despite the fact that their country was on the brink of complete destruction just three short decades ago.

***

It's our second and final day visiting the Temples of Angkor and we've saved the best for last. Our attempt to wake up for the sunrise at Angkor Wat proved futile but, due to the overcast weather, supposedly the sight left much to be desired. After the rudeness and general hostility of yesterday's tuk-tuk driver, we make sure today's is a more optimal choice. We get lucky with "Mr. Black," a tall, slightly oafish Siem Reap local who wears a wide grin, his smile almost extending to his eyes. Mr. Black is knowledgeable, genial, and laid back, a welcome change from yesterday. We grab a quick breakfast of pastries from a big red shop set along a strip mall composed exclusively of bakeries. No one speaks English but I still have success ordering fluffy cinnamon raisin danish with a slightly odd wheat-flavored green tea.

Angkor Wat, meaning "City Temple", is the world's largest religious site and one of the original Ancient Wonders of the World (although the youngest at a sprightly 900 years). The temple is Cambodia's premiere attraction, it's national symbol (found on the country's flag), and a triumph of Khmer ingenuity and architecture. Angkor Wat was designed to represent Mount Meru, the sacred mountain home to many Buddhist and Hindu deities, with five central towers representing the mountain's five summits. Angkor Wat is bordered by a large moat and the temple itself lies in the center of a island surrounded by dense trees. The temple grounds make up roughly 200 acres.

The complex was built in the 12th Century by King Suryavarman II and, although scholars estimate it would take 300 years to build today, the construction only roughly thirty-seven years to complete. Approximately 38,000 Cambodians worked on the construction plus 4,000 elephants. Angkor Wat's stone were found in a quarry at Mount Kulen, roughly twenty-five miles away from the site and transported down the SIem Reap River. The temple is predominantly composed of sandstone, almost all of which is carved into ornate bas-reliefs and friezes. One of the most landmark friezes is a scene of the Churning of the Sea of Milk, an epic good versus evil battle fought by Buddhist and Hindu gods as they battle to harvest the elixir of immortality from the sea. There are 1,796 devata carvings spread across the temple grounds. Devatas are sacred Buddhist female guardian angels and each deva in Angkor Wat has a different hairstyle and dress. Other reliefs depict giant tortoises, dragons, unicorns, griffins, elephants, and lavish dancer.

We explore the lavish grounds with our incredibly informative guide who not only possesses the encyclopedic knowledge of every frieze and pagoda, but has an uncanny knack for great photo opportunities. He is like a walking Natural History Museum. He points out bullet holes and grenade explosion craters from the Khmer Rouge's unsuccessful attempts to destroy the mighty temple during the late 1970s. The entire site is magical and, due to the low season, surprisingly quiet. We spend hours walking around, admiring the bas-reliefs and friezes, which are so precise they seem as if they were carved with needles, learning ancient Khmer mythologies. One section of the temple houses four small swimming pools laid out in a 2x2 grid. Suryavarman had a daily ritual of bathing in the pools and then retreating to the "echo chamber," a small stone room roughly the size of an airplane bathroom. The king would stand and pound on his chest with both hands, creating a reverberating echo that representing his sins and disease leaving his body. Amit, Louise, and I all connect with our inner royal by beating our chests, hearing our sins rush out of our bodies and echoing throughout the small chamber. Oddly the echo only works when you beat the center of your chest, other parts of the body or shouting do not work.

Angkor Wat entrance and moat

One of the many deva statues, each with different headdresses

Outside Angkor Wat with a naga

Boo, scaffolding

Lions guarding the temple

Drinking a fresh coconut with Angkor Wat looming behind

Seven-headed naga statue

Reliving the Horror

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 8/5/11

I truly loved Cambodia from the second I entered. The people are warm, friendly, helpful, and ever-smiling. Many speak near perfect English and are eager to practice by engaging travelers in conversation. Cambodia, especially its capital Phnom Penh, is rapidly growing thanks dually to tourism and foreign investment. Compared to more burgeoning neighbors like Thailand, however, Cambodia still has dramatic income disparities, skyrocketing inflation, environmental degradation, and massive government corruption. Nevertheless, when contrasted to the genocide Cambodia experienced not long ago that brought the country to the brink of destruction, it is shocking to see the recovery the nation has made in three decades.

The mid-1950s, following its independence in 1953, were known as Cambodia's golden years -- a period of significant population and economic growth. But the heyday was brief: Cambodia's eastern border territories became a base for the Viet Cong during the Vietnamese War and were heavily bombed by American troops. In 1970s, as the country was recovering from the collateral damage of a war they were forced into due to proximity, Prime Minister Sihanouk was overthrown by a radical Cambodian revolutionary movement. By 1975, the faction, better known as the Khmer Rouge ("Red Cambodians"), seized control completely of Phnom Penh and renamed Cambodia to "Democratic Kampuchea." The goal of the radicals was to transform Cambodia into a "utopian" self-sufficient peasant-controlled agrarian society. Thus, intellectuals, doctors, students, writers, authors, filmmakers, musicians, and professors were immediately killed. Anyone with glasses or who spoke a foreign language was perceived as a threat. As were city dwellers who had no agricultural skills. Monks, Christians, and ethnic Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese were also victims. Any representations of modern, non-agrarian society were deemed threats are quickly destroyed, including hospitals, schools, and temples. Cities, including Phnom Pehn, were evacuated and tens of thousands were relocated to farms where they were forced to work as slaves. The four year exercise in social engineering was led by Saloth Sar, or Pol Pot, who actually was a prized scholar in Paris before become an extreme Maoist. Under his watch, Cambodia was transformed into a concentration camp, where thousands were worked to death, including women, children, and the elderly. As all doctors were killed and medicine was outlawed, disease such as malaria and dysentery were widespread and untreated. Arbitrary murder and torture, even of women, elderly, and children, were common practices of the Khmer Rouge. By the time, the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by the Vietnamese in January 1979, it is estimated that 1.7 - 2.5 million people died (out of a Cambodian population of 8 million at the time). Most of the party leaders retreated to the Thai border and were caught throughout the 1980s. Unfortunately, due to corruption and bureaucracy, most Khmer Rouge leaders have still yet to be tried in 2011, thirty years later. The worry among many Cambodians is that many of these villains will die of old age before receiving a proper trial. But even more surprising is the fact that the Khmer Rouge was allowed to occupy the Cambodian seat in the UN General Assembly until 1991, essentially "representing their victims for twelve years" (Lonely Planet).

Although Phnom Penh was nearly vacated from 1975 - 1979, the capital city served a significant purpose during the Khmer Rouge's reign. The capital city housed the notorious Security-21 Prison ("S-21") the largest Khmer Rouge prison. It became the torturous home of tens of thousands of Khmer Rouge enemies, which as aforementioned, was essentially anyone was who not a member of the fascist faction. The prison is also known as Tuol Sleng, which literally translates to "Hill of Poisonous Trees." The building, located in downtown Phnom Penh, was originally a high school prior to its conversion to a penitentiary in 1975. One carved poem on a cell wall declares, "when this was a prison, nobody learned. When this was a school, nobody died." The school was made up of two three-story cement buildings set on a vast green quad rife with palm trees. When renovated by the Khmer Rouge, the entire grounds were overhauled and buildings were encased in electrified barbed wire. The classrooms were gutted and converted to miniscule brick cells the size of stand showers while others became torture centers. The prison held around 1,500 at a time and during its four year existence approximately 17,000 people were detained. Only three prisoners survive today.

 

Bed and toilet

 

Prisoners slept on metal beds with their feet and sometimes hands shackled. Drinking water was heavily rationed, meals were a food spoonfuls of rice porridge daily, and showers consisted of getting sprayed with a hose every four days. As such, disease was rampant in S-21 including malaria, lice, and ringworm. The rules of S-21 were quite strict and spelled out as follows [sic]:

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t 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.

Disobedience towards the rules results in all sorts of barbaric torture including waterboarding, suffocation, sexual abuse, removal of fingernails, electric shock, whipping, contact with hot metal rods, and drowning. 

Waterboarding apparatus

The prison has been preserved in the same condition as when it was operational and now serves as a museum (Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum). Former cells are lined with black and white photos of all the detainees, most are visibly diseased, malnourished, and injured even in the still photos. Some rooms depict the child prisoners, as young as five years old, while others showcase the women and elderly. Larger rooms showcase all the original torture devices accompanied by vivid oil paintings showcasing how they were used in practice. Many of the rooms still have blood on the floors from thirty years ago.

 

The museum is absolutely horrific to walk through. Amit, Elaine, Louise, and I are speechless, eyes filled with water as we walk through the cells.

S-21 Prison was merely a temporary 2-3 month home for its prisoners before they were transported to Choeung Ek, the largest and best-known site of Cambodia's Killing Fields (there are 20,000 total across the country). Choeung Ek is located in the surburbs slightly outside Phnom Penh. When our tuk-tuk pulls up, I immediately notice the beauty of the area, like a lush apple orchard filled with beautiful entangled trees. Prior to 1975, the grounds were used for growing watermelons, longan fruits, rice, and corn. But its beauty belies a much crueler history as Choeung Ek was the largest execution area of the Khmer Rouge, resulting in 20,000 deaths. Daily executions range from a couple dozen to 300. After serving a 2-3 sentence of torture and brutality, victims were transported from S-21 to the Killing Fields. So they would cooperate, Khmer Rouge officials blindfolded the prisoners and informed them that they were being released to their families. When they arrived at Choeung Ek, victims were quickly killed using sharpened spades, axes, hoes, wooden clubs, knives, palm branches, bamboo or poison. Guns were not used as to save ammunition, mask the execution sounds, and keep other victims in an orderly fashion. Small children, even toddlers, were executed by having their heads bashed against the field's Chankiri trees (the scars have not washed away).

Like S-21, Choeung Ek today serves as a memorial and a museum. The focal point is a glass-sided ten-story stupa that holds the remains of the 9,000 bodies found at the execution site. There are over 5,000 skulls along with stray bones and shredded clothes.

We walk around the Killing Fields with our tourguide, passing by all the mass graves. There are 129 in total, 89 of which have been excavated. The largest mass grave held 450 bodies although it's not much bigger than a small swimming pool. Not all the mass graves have been excavated and when there is a heavy rain, bone fragments and rags of clothing are known to rise to the surface. We walk among the path, cautious not to hit the bones sticking out of the surface.

Chankiri tree, where children and toddlers were beaten to their deaths

Execution weapons

The combination of S-21 and the Killing Fields is traumatizing and heartwrenching. I've never been to Auschwitz, but I assume the experience is very similar. Walking through the prison cells and the mass graves is a window into humanity at its worst. Some of the images today are completely branded into my mind and will not be soon forgotten. The Khmer Rouge ravished a peaceful and wonderful country, killing nearly one third of its population and leaving a wake of destruction. But unlike the Holocaust or American segregation, the Khmer Rouge was in power just thirty years ago, not long before I was born. As with parts of Africa today, the experience teaches that true evil never learns and will always persist. So for the rest of us, as with the Holocaust, the Civil Rights Movement, and the reign of the Khmer Rouge, all we can do is learn, honor those who were lost, and swear to never forget.



Note: Some photos from Elaine