The flood of essay-length thoughts continues but there's too much to say and I don't know where to begin. Post-Thailand-Honeymoon haze, slightly dazed walking through the streets of Siem Reap I can see the traces of grabbing hands that fought over this land.. the architecture is French Colonial, the accepted currency is the US$, there are westernized cafes on most street corners, and there is a man with heavy eyes sitting by a small art stand with a sign: "I lost both my hands fighting the Khmer Rouge. Please help support my small business."
~ The Pol Pot-lead Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide officially from 1975-1979, and its repercussions continued unofficially well into the 90s. During those few years, 1.5-3 million people died in the government's attempts to cleanse the nation, and skip the intermediate steps to becoming a self-sufficient agrarian-based society overnight based on the Chinese Communist model of the Great Leap Forward and the international community largely ignored everything that was going on. 25% of the total population died from mass executions, torture, malnutrition, disease, and forced labor. Anyone suspected of having ties to the former government or foreign governments, any professionals or intellectuals (which included anyone who spoke multiple languages or even people who just wore glasses), "ethnic saboteurs" aka people who lived in cities, any ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, or other minority, and Cambodian Christians, Muslims, and Buddhist monks were all targeted, tortured, and executed. The Khmer Rouge regime planted land mines across the entire western border, effectively walling the helpless in. Defining "genocide" as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" and not including other instances of non-genocide mass-killings, the Cambodian Genocide is the third largest in history by death toll, after Holodomor and the Holocaust. " Pol Pot died on 15 April 1998, having never been put on trial." To quote a leader of the Khmer Rouge regime about the value they placed on life, "To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss." ~ Reading the history of what lead to the Cambodian genocide leaves me with an eerie feeling of deja vu, because the ingredients that seem to lead to these kinds of monstrosities become very clear. Cambodia got caught in the middle of the US and Vietnam during the Vietnam war, letting the Vietnamese use their ports for shipping and letting the US bomb Vietnam hideouts in Cambodia - a decade after both Cambodia and Vietnam won their independence from France and a decade before the Khmer Rouge takeover. A disenfranchised society is left in the wake of massive violence, destruction and loss, disenfranchised with the West, and is looking desperately for someone to reinstate hope and guide them... Today, the recovery continues. Siem Reap has been mostly de-landmined, but there are still millions of landmines throughout the rest of the country that continue to kill and maim, and many of the families separated during the regime still have not been reunited. The history of the genocide is not taught in Cambodian high schools. The trials of leaders from the Khmer Rouge regime for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity continue today. ~ "The bones cannot find peace until the truth they hold in themselves has been revealed." -Deputy Military Police Chief Nhim Seila, Cambodia |
AuthorWhen the feelings are ripe, the words must flow Archives
April 2019
Categories |