Phnom Penh – A New Perspective

Warning: This post contains content that some readers may find upsetting

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Capital Punishment

As excited as I had been to show Alex around Bangkok, Khao Sok and Siem Reap, I was silently dreading a return to Phnom Penh. My memories of this city were of desperate poverty, streets filled with litter, an awful hostel experience and a stench of hot sewage that followed you everywhere you went in this boiling concrete jungle. Picture my surprise when we cross the river into the modern capital city filled with huge glass towers, modern high rise apartments and expensive restaurants of all cuisines lining the streets. As we step off the bus I expect to be welcomed by that dreadful smell of rubbish left to rot in the burning sun but it doesn’t come. Hmm.

A fellow Brit we’ve suffered through the sweatbox bus with kindly allows us to piggyback on his SIM data and we take a Grab tuk tuk to our hotel. We’re greeted by a small army of hotel staff and are shown to our room on the 9th floor of this massive “guesthouse”. £25 a night goes a long way in Cambodia. It’s another beautiful big room with a giant tv, huge bed and even a balcony. I figure we’d pay 10x this amount for an equivalent stay in Europe.

Both starving from another long journey we quickly make tracks to a local eatery humourously called “Pu Rock Cafe”. It is neither a Rock Cafe nor is it Pu as we enjoy fresh Lok Lak and mango fried chicken.

Returning to the hotel we decide to checkout the rooftop terrace on the 14th floor. There is no one else around as we cool off in the refreshing pool and make ourselves comfortable on the sun loungers. For the rest of the evening we bathe in the luxurious comfort of our air conditioned room and put our feet up.

The Killing Fields

On my last visit to Phnom Penh I made sure to visit S21 the infamous prison of the Khmer Rouge but for one reason or another I never visited Choeung Ek AKA “The Killing Fields”. Eerily, our hotel is close to S21, so we take a ride across the capital, which for many thousands of innocent Cambodians was the last journey they would ever make. As we arrive I’m somewhat surprised to see the site is not a bleak empty field or graveyard but a thoughtfully curated memorial ground. However, as we will discover, the darkest depths of the human condition are hidden within the shade of these Chankiri trees. Out of respect, there are only two photos from this location. This stupa serves as a memorial tower to remember the millions of people that brutally lost their lives to the Khmer regime. Almost a quarter of the country’s population at the time.

For those who don’t know, the Khmer Rouge emerged as an extreme communist party in response to Western Imperialism coupled with countless bombs dropped by American warplanes along the border with Vietnam. These bombs killed and maimed thousands of farmers and peasants as what America would call collateral damage from their war with Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge army stormed the capital of Phnom Penh and rounded up everyone in the streets. At best you were chosen to serve the revolution by swapping your perceived easy life in the city for a gruelling fourteen hour day turning the country into a giant rice paddy. At worst you were recognized as a government worker, a spy, an intellectual (if you wore glasses, had soft hands or pale skin or spoke a foreign language you were considered an enemy of the state), a teacher, a doctor, a monk or just looked at someone the wrong way. For these people, and we’re talking tens of thousands, you were brought here to where we stand now (or to one of many other sites like this), perhaps after weeks or months of torture at the S21 prison.

Prisoners would be placed in shackles in a pitch black room alongside dozens of their brethren. Unable to see, the only sounds they could hear would be the diesel generators and the loud speakers hanging from trees blasting out music of the revolution. This was not to brainwash them but to drown out the sound of what was happening mere meters away. As some of them knew already, they had been sent here to be executed. Bullets were expensive so the guards would use crude farming equipment and even sharp branches of a tree to hack, slash, bludgeon and break the skulls of their own people. The bodies would be tossed into a mass grave of up to 450 people and doused in DT. Partly to mask the smell and partly to finish the job if somehow the victims had survived the brutal execution attempt. During the beginning of the regime, a handful of trucks carrying prisoners would arrive each month. Towards the end, multiple trucks would arrive per day, up to 300 people at a time. So many that the guards could not keep up with the amount of murder required.

We pause for some reflection next to a peaceful lake where fish bob around and birds gracefully swoop by us, unaware of the horrors that occured here. We listen to stories of some of those guards who were part of the regime, and those who survived it, and how even if they are now physically recovered from the malnutrition, disease and starvation, their minds are broken beyond repair.

As we continue the grim tour we pass another mass grave where hundreds of headless remains were discovered. This was the site where traitors, or anyone suspected of being a traitor met their grisly end. The regime message of “Better to kill an innocent person than to risk letting a guilty person live” is almost too barbaric and nonsensical to believe, yet this was their slogan.

The next site is almost too difficult to write about but I feel it’s important for people to know the atrocities that happened here. In the hope that it shows how a country devastated by such acts can recover and find a brighter future. Another mass grave. Here women and children had been tossed into a pit, often naked after being raped. Next to the pit is a tree covered in hairbands, toys and teddy bears. The guards used this tree to bludgeon children and babies to death by holding them by the legs and smashing them headfirst into it. “Better to cut out the roots so the trees of revenge cannot grow” another heartless motto. 

As we approach the end of the site we are invited into the tower. Seventeen levels of cracked skulls and bones fill the tower from floor to ceiling with a frightfully macabre sight. The sheer scale of these atrocities can hardly be described.

S21

Having visited S21 last time I was here, I leave Alex at the door, audioguide in hand. Over to her…

S21 was security centre 21. One of many across the Khmer’s rein of terror:

Formally a school, once everyone was kicked out of the cities, this school was transformed into a torture centre. A rope climbing frame was transformed into a torture device, one of many.

18,063 prisoners (including women and children) came through these doors, only 12 survived. The rest ended up at the killing fields we were at this morning. After all, this was not a murder camp, but a torture camp.

Those running the site went to great pains to keep the people alive to be able to fake confessions and information, to ratify tallies of people. They would even bring in ‘doctors’ to try and keep people alive (although all trained doctors had been killed as enemies of the state, and there was no medicine). Indeed, any prisoner who died here was a big problem, and not for the loss of life, after all they would end up at the killing field anyway, but because then the balance sheets of humans wouldn’t add up. If someone died on the watch of one of the guards, that guard could end up here themselves. Because of this, there is significant photographic evidence of the horrors inflicted on the people here, to ‘prove’ the person died here, and could be written off the books. These photos are displayed in this museum, I’m not including them.

When the city was liberated, all they found here were the slaughtered remains of the torture camps final victims, still shackled to the beds they were tortured on. Photos of these final victims are on display as evidence to the true horrors of what happened here. Captioned at pains to prove the photos are of the rooms you are standing in. The beds still in place. I wonder how we will manage in the future of deep fakes to ever know what to believe when (and I say when rather than if intentionally) this happens again.

On arrival to this place, for many who were completely innocent with no idea why they were there, there began a process of dehumanization, they were no longer he or she, they were ‘it’ (a little reminder of why pronouns are important and not referring to people as it). Names were only used for confessions and executions, otherwise they were only referred to by their number. Biographies and measurements were taken of each individual, cutting their hair, swapping their clothes, documenting their final existence. A researcher in fascist regimes explains that this process of not just dehumanising the prisoners, but breaking down the process into steps, enables the people responsible to psychologically distance themselves from the full atrocities they are a part of. “I’m just a biographer”, “I just cut their hair”… is what these people can tell themselves, they’re not hurting these people after all, they’re just cutting hair. It’s tactical, it’s calculated, sadly, we’ve seen it work time and time again.

When the Khmer Rouge took power, they encouraged Cambodians overseas to come back and help rebuild the country from the evil imperialists. But this was all a ruse. They all ended up here to be tortured and killed.

One documented captive was an Australian (Kerry Hamill) who was sailing around the world at 27, brought to and interrogated in S21, forced to identify spies from the CIA and KGB. Just as many others were tortured to give information they did not have. In his documented and signed confession, he gave names from popular culture (such as Colonel Sanders) that the Khmer wouldn’t recognise, given as an example for the pointlessness of gathering information through torture.

The ruthlessness of the man in charge here, Duch, was such that if a sculpture of pol pot was not good enough, the artist was killed. Duch signed off on every captive sent to the killing fields. He wanted to prove his dedication to the cause.

The audioguide explains that this museum exists to share the stories of what happened here, so we may all strive for human dignity compassion and peace. As German Ambassador Joachim Baron von Marschall said at the inauguration of this place, it serves to “Remind us to be wary of regimes that ignore human dignity. No political goal or ideology, however promising, important, or desirable it may appear, can ever justify a political system where the dignity of the individual is not respected” (http://genocidewatch.net/2015/04/20/germany-cambodia-and-a-dark-past/).

This message, that closes the audioguide on this tragic place, is sadly something that keeps being forgotten, including at this exact moment in time. How many museums have we now been to exposing the horrors that humans can inflict on one another for the good of a political power or idealogy? How many more will be created for the atrocities happening right now across the world? How is it that all we seem to learn is how to commit these crimes more ‘efficiently’, rather than the message Von Marschall gave here eight years ago? Will we ever learn it?

Back to James.

Perk me up

We regroup for lunch at a Vietnamese place offering Pho (basically a broth) for lunch. We’re both melting in the heat and humidity so decide against a trip to a local market and instead spend the afternoon relaxing and reading by the hotel pool.

To perk us up from all of the bleak stuff today, I find a rooftop bar nearby and we enjoy cocktails and views on the 25th floor. Afterwards we head to an Indian restaurant for a change in cuisine. I haven’t had a proper Indian curry all trip and having recently heard about one on the Off Menu podcast I am craving one! We order a chicken curry, chickpea curry,  butter naan and rice. I tuck in and savour the tasty and rich flavours. Alex meanwhile is streaming and asking the staff if they have any yoghurt. I had somehow forgotten about her total intolerance to any level of spice and feel slightly guilty about bringing her here.

Done, done, onto the next one!

Onwards with yet another long bus journey and crossing another border… Vamos a Vietnam!

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Adventure – Crossing the road. A lot of important learning.

Excitement – Big TV in the hotel room to watch Fallout on. Peaceful rooftop pool area. Cocktails with a view.

Trauma – another reminder of how cruel humans can be to one another, and how we continue to repeat the same mistakes. A mildly hot curry (Alex)