On one of my last days in Phnom Penh I took a ferry across the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers to explore a semi-rural area outside the city. The ferry landing on the other side already looked more like a village, albeit a very busy one. I hunted for a bicycle rental spot (Vicious Cycle) shown on the map, and, amazing for me, found it pretty quickly. The proprietor had me ready to go in minutes. As is all too often the case for me, I had no set plan other than riding around and exploring. The bike guy suggested a destination, which seemed like a good idea. And so I set out.
From the ferry you can see the sharp (not photo-shopped) contrast between the Tonle Sap and the Mekong rivers (Mekong in foreground)
I’ve called this area semi-rural, but even that is not vague enough. Parts were quite rural, other areas more suburban, with McMansions surrounded by security walls. My first stop took me to Queen of Peace Catholic Church just around the corner from the bike shop. This was only the second church I’d seen in Cambodia. This one served ethnic Vietnamese, though the Buddhist cultural environment seemed evident even here. The sanctuary had no chairs, only rugs which I assumed must have been for a very meditative form of worship.
Queen of Peace, Areyksat
From the church, I discovered my maps app was not working so had no way finding capabilities for going to the guest house the bicycle proprietor had pointed me toward. But, I knew the general direction, so I set out with the plan of looking for signs in English toward my destination, or in hope that the app would eventually wake up.
This “plan” took me down an alley with Khmer spilling out of their homes, selling, buying, playing games, just living their lives. And then onto a dirt road and past fields under cultivation. I was happy to have a mountain bike for the trip. The lack of route meant I passed brand new temples and the above-mentioned McMansions, and also through places where prosperity had not yet reached. I rode along with children on their way to school. And even though I’m sure I was not the only westerner in this part of the region, I didn’t see any others. So that made the morning unique in my time in Cambodia.
As I rode my mapping app began to provide better information, and (after going well out of my way) I found a sign, in English, for my destination. I finally ended up at SMango, the resort suggested at the bike establishment. I wish I’d brought my swim wear, but this trip was not carefully planned (see above). After partaking in 2 of the basic food groups (coffee and ice cream) I made my return trip, which was much more efficient.
Even before I arrived in Phnom Penh I was using my phone to set up a tour for the next day to the Killing Field memorial and Tuol Sleng, the infamous S21 prison. Tourists can take a tuk tuk to the sites and walk through at their own pace. Or, like me, you can sign up for a tour that will collect you from your hotel and have a guide to provide background and explain the site. My group was fortunate to have Visal Sen, an experienced guide who was well-versed in the history of the period and the specific developments of the Cambodian genocide.
At Tuol Sleng the Khmer Rouge converted a high school into a security prison. It’s easy to see the school beneath the prison today—the two stories with outside passages would have worked just fine in Southern California. But every bit of the site was bent to the goals of the Khmer Rouge, with large classroom either converted to tiny cells or to places to process and torture those interned. The attendants had the goal of forcing confessions, making intellectuals (teachers, doctors, anyone with education) or their wives and children admit to actions subversive of the Khmer Rouge movement. Whether they had heard of the CIA or not, many admitted under duress to spying for the Americans. Once they produced confessions, prisoners were taken to Choeung Ek, a nearby area in Phnom Penh and murdered. Throat cut or bludgeoned, and then buried in a shallow grave.
The memorial sites, and our guide, turned aside from no detail of the brutality committed in these places. Visal described the means of torture and murder. The walls of the prison displayed photos taken of particular cells at the moment of liberation, of the remains of those who had suffered there. Several rooms maintained the cells, showing how people had to live in a few square feet of space, leaving only for torture or for the killing field. Other rooms had movable boards covered with the photos taken when prisoners were processed into the prison. Men, women, adolescents, children.
The memorial sites, and our guide, turned aside from no detail of the brutality committed in these places. Visal described the means of torture and murder. The walls of the prison displayed photos taken of particular cells at the moment of liberation, of the remains of those who had suffered there. Several rooms maintained the cells, showing how people had to live in a few square feet of space, leaving only for torture or for the killing field. Other rooms had movable boards covered with the photos taken when prisoners were processed into the prison. Men, women, adolescents, children.
I went to Cambodia relatively well informed about the genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge. From 1975 to 1979, the KR emptied Cambodia’s cities and imposed a utopian vision of peasant producers. But real or suspected resistance, even in the form of a desire for family life or for the barest comforts, resulted in murderous violence. Careful estimates regularly place the toll of the genocide at nearly 2 million, more than 20% of Cambodia’s population. I had expected to find these sites interesting and informative, showing the physical space in which horrific acts took place. But the cumulative impact of this tour left me deeply disturbed. Once again, I recognized the wall that makes genocidal actions so incomprehensible. Although I took many photos, when and where allowed, when I considered what to share on social media, I decided against posting any of the images of human remains or other evidence of horrific violence.
Another dimension of the Cambodian trauma had emerged before I reached Phnom Penh. In Siem Reap, the night before beginning a bicycle tour, I’d asked my tour guide about the impact of the genocide. “Bo” said that in school he had learned relatively little about it. The teachers seemed to want to keep the topic to the guilt of the Khmer Rouge.The Khmer Rouge were Cambodian, of course, and developed a strange Khmer first ideology that drove their murderous tactics toward the Cham and other minorities inside Communist Kampuchea. But I took away from that discussion with Bo the sense that the “official” story aimed to other the genocide, to assign it to one group committing violence against another.
This falls in line with Joel Brinkley’s account of recent Cambodian society in Cambodia’s Curse. Pol Pot, supreme leader of the Khmer Rouge and the architect of their genocidal violence, continued living in a Khmer Rouge controlled area of Cambodia after the intervention of the Vietnamese and later during the country’s management by the U.N. He was placed under house arrest in 1997 by a rival KR leader and died of heart failure less than a year later. Only a few of the leaders of the KR during the era of genocide faced judicial proceedings, and not until the early 21st century. Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian monarch, collaborated with the KR regime and somehow extracted a clean bill of political health from the international community and Cambodians alike. He ruled until 2004 when he handed over the monarchy to his son. Hun Sen, a member of the Khmer Rouge, later joined the Vietnamese who invaded Cambodia in 1979 and effectively ended the genocide. He became the prime minister of the Cambodian state under occupation, and he has remained in power until today.
“Othering” genocide happens widely and shapes the memory of it. Germans for decades blamed “the Nazis” for the Holocaust and for World War II. Many other European states, to some greater of lesser extent collaborators in the work of the Nazis, did likewise. And othering only begins the list of ways that genocide is made to fade. But without the pain of confrontation and the messy process of seeking justice, the trauma remains with no prospect of closure.
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