There was a calm reverence about the place. A quiet mood that sealed the surrounding area within a cone of silence. Even the birds seemed to understand it was not not a place to sing too loud, or too bright. I laid a two dollar contribution on a silver tray as a pair of small brown hands lit four sticks of incense and handed two each to Amanda and me. We respectfully removed our shoes and walked up a small flight of stairs, smoke drifting behind us in small, sweet curls.
The building we approached was a chedi, two stories high, with four tall white walls supporting a stack of three Asian-style peaked roofs painted green and orange. The interior was exposed on all four sides, and I squinted my eyes due to the bright glare that reflected off a glass case that ran up the height of the building. As we got closer the glare dimmed and I could clearly see the case's contents of more then 8,000 human skulls.
Spend any amount of time in Cambodia and you're guaranteed to see the long term effects of war. Cultural landmarks riddled with bullet holes. A landmine victim selling books from a converted bicycle he has to pedal with his arms because he has no legs. A beggar whose face has been burned into one giant scar.
American involvement in Cambodia's civil war is often treated as a footnote in our Southeast Asian military campaign- an asterisk. Though people often discuss Vietnam, never much thought or reflection is given to the so called "secret wars" we conducted in Cambodia and Laos. However, during the early 1970's the American military dropped approximately 2,750,000 tons of bombs on Vietnamese soldiers that had crossed the border into Cambodia. Though President Rıchard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger denied the bombings, it is now widely acknowledged that countless thousands of civilian casualties took place during this 14 month American campaign.
Because it suited or own best interests, we disregarded the political desires of the Cambodian people and helped to install the American friendly puppet Lon Nol as their Prime Minister. We turned a blind eye to Nol's corrupt abuses of power so long as he continued to rubber stamp our requests to drop more bombs. These campaigns helped intensify unrest and over time served to increase support for the rise of the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries which eventually resulted in civil war.
Meddling in a situation we didn't fully understand, we fanned the flames of an already volatile situation. We brought in bigger weapons that found their way into the hands of both sides. Then, when things got to hot, we walked away. Leaving the small nation's army alone to fight a gang of butchers against whom we knew they couldn't win.
It only took four years for Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to completely devastate Cambodia. It's hard to rationalize the thinking behind what they did. It was genocidal madness masked as ideology. They intended it to be an agrarian-communist revolution. Those who lived in the cities and did not produce food were thought to be exploiting the farmers. Decadent and useless these people were the enemies of the revolution. Almost immediately after the Khmer Rouge came to power the capitol city of Phnom Penh was evacuated. It's residents were marched into the countryside to be enslaved, imprisoned or killed.
Anyone who was a member of the previous government was killed. Anyone who had ties to the American military was killed. Anyone who had a college education was killed. Anyone who wore glasses was assumed to be educated, and was therefore killed. Those that weren't executed outright were forced to work on farms under excruciating conditions, and to live in villages that were little more than internment camps.
The tall, white building I stood in front of with it's bone white display of human carnage is a memorial to the people who died during this unforgettable period of Cambodian history. The area surrounding the memorial is known as the Killing Fields, for obvious reasons. Walking around the site one sees mounds of dirt at spots that served as mass graves. Bits of clothing and fragments of bone still poke out of the ground in places. Signs reveal the horrible truth about the numbers of human remains excavated from around the area.
It's hard to be here and not begin losing hope. To wonder how an evil as terrible as this could exist within human beings. But the horrors inflicted on Cambodia don't end with the eventual defeat of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese in 1980. Since then they've had to deal with a massive infestation of landmines (many of which are left over from American, French, and German armies) that until only recently caused crippling and death on a scale unheard of anywhere else in the world.
Equally destructive, but more subtle were the social impacts of the genocide. How would people recover from the trauma caused by the things they saw and experienced? With most of the former government officials killed who would lead the country? How could Cambodia fix it's infrastructure without the experts necessary to perform large scale public projects? And without teachers who would educate the next generation of doctors, engineers and business owners?
These long term problems do not have quick or easy solutions. In fact, it will more than likely take several generations for Cambodia to recover from the events of the 1970's. But they are trying. They are survivors, and even after all they've been through they are not a bitter people. Cambodia may be a poor country, but there is one thing they seem to have an abundance of, and that is hope.
For anyone interested in learning more about American involvement in Cambodia, or the Khmer Rouge period of Cambodian history I recommend the following three books:
Sideshow: Kissinger, Kissinger, and the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung
The Killing Fields by Christopher Hudson
No comments:
Post a Comment