The horrific history no one's heard

One of the side effects of living in Cambodia for an extended period of time (i.e. more than a few weeks), which is at once fascinating, terrifying and soul-crushing, is getting to witness the after effects of the Khmer Rouge genocide on a daily basis. Even though the war technically ended twenty-some odd-years ago, the mass atrocities and civil destruction that followed have greatly impacted socioeconomic recovery here. Understandably so – Cambodia’s historical clock had, in the span of four years, lost its currency, schools, professionalism, religion, infrastructure, and about one-third of its population. Essentially, social development was back to square one; Year Zero as some like to call it.

The politics and policies that followed the genocide were complex, oftentimes corrupt, and almost always foreign-influenced. Today, Cambodia’s international reputation is that of a relatively “stable” country, and by stable, I mean that its internal issues and geographical size don’t warrant much foreign attention. Which is really, terribly frustrating when you’ve had the chance to spend time in this country, and acutely embarrassing when only four months ago, you couldn’t for the life of you have located Cambodia on a map.

Hence is the result of a totally sheltered, privileged, Americanized life. Recognition of this, along with a determination to redeem my ignorance and the realization that many of my friends and family are just as uniformed about Cambodia’s past as I was in mid-August, has led me to this post today. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not writing this to play the shame game. Why would you know anything about Cambodia if nobody (the media) were talking about it? Or maybe you know more than I’m giving you credit for because you’re better in tune with twentieth century history than me. Or maybe this post is more a way to assuage my own psyche than it is a chance to awaken yours. Either way, it’s meant to be informational (and somewhat amusing / funny?) when you get to the personal anecdotes... so hang in there please! Because this post took quite a long time to write.

From what I know, the first record of settlement on Khmer land stretches way back to somewhere between the first and fifth century. Consistent territory wars between the Khmer (Cambodian), Siamese (Thais), Burmese, Javanese (Indonesians) and Vietnamese caused Khmer soil to trade hands frequently. Its land saw at least four major empires, and if you’re geeking out when this post is over you should definitely look them up. But for the sake of brevity and relevance and so that this story doesn’t put you to sleep, I’m going to skip ahead to historical events beginning in the nineteenth century.

For ninety years, Cambodia, or Kampuchea in Khmer, was colonized by the French. Being sandwiched between the two powerful countries of Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia was facing threats of territorial invasion on both sides. Panicked, the King at the time, Leggio Norodom, requested the establishment of a French protectorate over his country, which lasted roughly from 1863-1953. By 1946, France no longer had reason to occupy Cambodian land, and declared it a self-ruling country. On November 8, 1953 French troops finally withdrew completely and Cambodia gained official independence. Just three weeks ago my friend went to the 63rd annual celebration at the Independence Monument. The king was there! I slept through it, shame on me.

Unfortunately, Cambodians were not able to celebrate their first year of freedom for long. The Cold War was already in full swing - minus and fighting – when the French peaced out of Southeast Asia. King Sihanouk had declared Cambodia a neutral state in the war, but pressure from North Vietnam was making him paranoid and power hungry. Sihanouk eventually became convinced that if he aligned with the communists - or at the very least offered them shelter and room for supplies within his borders – they would surely keep Cambodia safe. Not so much. This decision quickly backfired as Khmer citizens became angry that their majesty had gone behind their back and betrayed national trust. So not surprisingly, when Prime Minster, Lon Nol made the decision to stage a coup and overthrow Sihanouk while he was traveling out of the country, little public protest ensued. Citizens needed someone who could protect them, someone who could allow them to live a peaceful and stable life. And Lon Nol was basically their only option.

Well, it turns out the new Prime Minister couldn’t exactly keep his promises either. He promptly pledged an oath to democracy and aligned with the United States, who began furiously bombing Cambodia to rid it of the North Vietnamese communists. This unwarranted aggression killed several million people, while leaving the Vietnamese miraculously unscathed, culminating in an incredible US failure that had lasted for over a year. Only a few years later in 1973, the US signed the first Paris Peace Agreements ending their direct military involvement in the Vietnam War, and calling a ceasefire on all fighting throughout Vietnam. Troops were withdrawn form Southeast Asia and Cambodia was left in shambles.

Now Khmer people had a new reason to be pissed, especially peasants and families living in the countryside where the majority of US bombs had hit. Who would come to their rescue? The one and only: Khmer Rouge, or as I like to call them, the Super Communists.

The Khmer Rouge began as a small guerrilla force fighting within North Vietnamese borders. It was a secret group that convened late at night in empty buildings, led by the all-inspiring Pol Pot, or Brother Number One (pictured right). Men in favor of Pol Pot’s radical visions for Cambodia were mostly Khmer and supported the North Vietnamese as communist allies. However, they largely took advantage of this relationship to develop into proficient, ruthless soldiers, hoping someday to take over their own country.

The Khmer Rouge had already failed in the mission several times when the US bombs hit Cambodia, but the resulting anguish of province-dwellers gave them new hope for their communist agenda. They operated on the border of Cambodia and Vietnam, recruiting peasants and preparing for their invasion. They also reassured Sihanouk that he would be reinstated as King under communist rule, which was total BS. Of course Sihanouk would align with the Khmer Rouge if it meant he could reenter his country and resume his kingship. Little did the King know that the only power he would hold through the next four years would be in his royal title. Post-Khmer Rouge invasion, Sihanouk was put on house arrest in the palace and forced to obey the Khmer Rouge like everyone else.

In April of 1975, the Khmer Rouge had recruited enough soldiers and was ready to attack. They marched through the city of Phnom Penh, rounding up all individuals and forcing them to walk for days on end until they reached makeshift labor camps across the countryside. The soldiers informed their dismayed citizens that another US attack was upon them, and that they must head to the provinces for safety. They would be returned to their homes in three days, an assurance that was quickly proven false. Many people died of starvation and fatigue during this long march, and many, many more perished at the camps. Lon Nol and his government were seized and killed and foreigners and local citizens were being disappeared and executed left and right. In a 48 hours the country had turned into a war zone of full-fledged chaos.

The Khmer Rouge, or as they called themselves: The Angkar (meaning “organization”) had one overarching mission: to turn Cambodia into an agrarian utopia where everything would be shared and class divisions wouldn’t exist. The people would all work in the fields, growing their own food and living amongst each other in cramped quarters. Kids, for the most part, would not go school and an economy would no longer be necessary because there wouldn’t be any competition. Schools and temples were destroyed or turned into meeting and storage spaces. Anyone previously involved in politics, education and religion were immediately murdered. The cadres would pull aside anyone with glasses or smooth looking hands, which in their eyes were symbols of intelligence and wealth, and behead them. Teenage girls were raped and forced to marry soldiers so the couple could produce more children to work. Everyone was forced to wear the same black uniform, and attend daily evening meetings to learn the doctrine of the Angkar. There was never enough food or medicine, and those who worked in makeshift hospitals had no training. Life had been turned completely upside down, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

I can’t even fathom what such a life must have been like, and its been pretty surreal meeting people in Cambodia that survived this period. This war was not that long ago; most people over fifty here remember the experience, but only some want to talk about it (I can’t blame them). My Khmer Mom and Dad were two of these survivors, and while I’ve heard a little about their experience, this is their tragedy to tell, not mine. I don’t feel comfortable or authorized, to relay anyone’s personal nightmare in such an informal space, but I recommend you check some out for yourself. Many memoirs have been published recounting what childhood was like under the Khmer Rouge regime. I’ve only read a few, but this one made me cry, which never happens with books. If you really want to know what life was like in the labor camps, I highly recommend reading it. The narrator, Loung Un, was only five years old when her family was marched out of Phnom Penh.

Several memorial sites have also been erected in and around Phnom Pen to pay respect to those who perished during the genocide, which at the same time serve an educational and touristic purpose. The two most famous, which I have had the fortune - and horror - of visiting, are Toul Sleng Prison Museum and the Killing Fields.

The former site was easy to visit because it’s located directly across from my house (creepy, right?) This museum used to be a high school, but was converted into a prison shortly after Phnom Penh was evacuated. The Khmer Rouge used the classrooms as cells, where prisoners thought to be affiliated with politics, foreign relations or intellectualism (or really anything deemed un-Angkar) were shackled together and tortured for information. I won’t get into the gruesome details or mechanisms of punishment, but if you’re following politics in the US right now than water boarding should ring a bell. And if you want a secondhand glimpse of what I witnessed at this place, check out my latest Facebook album, which is full of graphic pictures and ridiculously long captions.

The Killing Fields, located on the outskirts of the city, were equally spooky and depressing. The name pretty much says it all. After being brutally accosted and interrogated, individuals from Toul Sleng were piled into trucks in large numbers and driven to the fields on a nightly basis, where they were murdered in a disgustingly routine and nonchalant fashion. People were beaten and slaughtered in unthinkable ways, and their bodies discarded in dugout pits, which were promptly buried after reaching max corpse capacity. The majority of Khmer Rouge infrastructure built within the fields’ property has since been demolished, but a few fenced-in graves remain aside trees used for skull-smashing and noise reverberation (to drown out the screams of the dying). When the fields were transformed into a museum, informational signposts were planted to mark the trail of atrocities, and a memorial was constructed to house the bones of excavated victims – mostly skulls. Actually, there are eleven layers of skulls on display; rows of disfigured bones with holes, indents and cracks running through them; skulls that were once the heads of healthy men, women, young adults, children and infants subjected to some of the worst barbarity known to human kind. (Again, see Facebook album for pictures if you dare).

This was easily the most depressing and infuriating field trip I’ve ever been on. I remember getting home that night and recapping what I saw to my family, in disbelief that everything I’d read over the past few months had actually , truly happened. They sort of nodded their heads sadly, like yes Amy, this is the reality of our country’s history - glad you’re finally catching on. Kidding, they’re the kindest, least judgmental humans in the world, but this is what I would’ve been thinking if I were them. Anyway, lets get back to history before I lose my shit.

Fortunately, in 1979, a little less than four years after the Khmer Rouge took over, the Vietnamese showed up to save the day. To be fair, they weren’t really interested in “saving” Cambodia so much as putting a stop to Pol Pot’s nonsense. Over the years, he had become increasingly paranoid that the Vietnamese were going to invade and take over his country. So he jumped the gun and invaded Vietnam first, prompting an aggressive counterattack in which Vietnamese troops essentially chased the Khmer Rouge into the borderlands of Cambodia and Thailand. Whether Vietnam would have eventually invaded Cambodia had Pol Pot taken a chill pill is unclear to me, but what I do know is that a lot of Khmer Rouge soldiers were weak and starving upon their attack, making it easier than expected for Vietnam to push them out of central Cambodia. However, they could not kill off the Khmer Rouge completely, who hid out recuperating in the jungles of Thailand and Cambodia, determined to continue their fight. The civil war was not over, in fact it lasted all the way into the mid-90s.

The Vietnamese had their work cut out for them upon arrival in Cambodia. A puppet government, called the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, was installed and directed by Heng Samrin. Vietnamese troops were deployed throughout the country to pursue their battle against the Khmer Rouge. Warfare remained prevalent and ruthless, especially in the countryside where families - having been freed from the labor camps - were forced to build bomb shelters and teach their ten-year-old children how to fire weapons. Many perished, ironically, at the same time the PRK were desperately trying to revive the community.

Under a new socialist agenda, schools and temples were reopened in Cambodia. The city of Phnom Penh was repopulated, and those able to work as doctors, teachers, monks, and in any otherwise socially useful profession, were forced to step up to the plate. Many families opened small food shops outside their houses, or created makeshift markets in their communities as a means of economic survival. Since money had been abolished, people used rice as currency. And since all school materials had been destroyed, teachers drew their lessons in the sand with sticks. Can you imagine living in this type of society, in the eighties!?!?! The answer for most of us is, no. We certainly, most definitely cannot.

After ten years, when Cambodia had reached some semblance of stability and the Cold War was drawing to a close, Vietnam withdrew its troops and left several members of the PRK in its wake to keep the country intact. The leaders of the PRK were mainly Cambodians actually; people who had left Cambodia prior to the Khmer Rouge and become politically educated in Vietnam. So the leaders who stayed behind post-Vietnam withdrawal were back in their home country, but as politicians now rather than lay people. One of these men was Hun Sen, the current day Prime Minister of Cambodia.

In 1991, the second Paris Peace Accords were signed marking an end to the fighting between the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge, although as I said earlier, the Khmer Rouge didn’t officially disband until later in the nineties. You may be wondering at this point how the Khmer Rouge was able to survive for so long, given the terror and utter destruction they inflicted on society. You may be wondering – like I was – why the heck the US never stepped in.

Well, it may be hard to believe this, but up until 1991 the US actually supported the Khmer Rouge. Why? Because they were terrified that the communist Vietnamese would take over all of Cambodia, and then Thailand, and ultimately the entirety of Southeast Asia. Remember, it was the Cold War era, and all the US really wanted was to make sure the democratic allies won. The US even allowed the Khmer Rouge to represent Cambodia’s seat in the United Nations. And then, when the Soviet Union fell, the US rushed to offer Cambodia aid as if they’d been rooting against the Khmer Rouge all along. It was easy for the US to pretend the genocide wasn’t happening between 1975-79 because the Khmer Rouge allowed very limited outside media coverage of the atrocities it was inflicting. So as a result, most Americans just focused on the bigger war – the Cold War – and all but forgot about Cambodia.

Another reason the Khmer Rouge survived as long as they did is because many Cambodians feared their superpower neighbor, Vietnam. Even though life was difficult under the Khmer Rouge (to say the least), people didn’t necessarily want to see Vietnam take over their country either. So, if out of nothing else but fear, some citizens stuck with their nationalist comrades. You also may be wondering why Vietnam and Cambodia didn’t get along given that they are both communist countries, which is where my “communist versus super-communist” comparison comes in. I’m not intellectually savvy enough to understand the full depth of this relationship, but based on what I’ve learned, it seems like Cambodia has historically always felt threatened by Vietnam. Think about the history, size and power of these two countries, or take a look at a map of Southeast Asia as it’s evolved in the past few centuries. Geography can be very telling.

So, wrapping things up here. Once a ceasefire had been more or less achieved, foreign aid poured into Cambodia to assist with development efforts. The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was stationed in 1991 with several key duties: to keep the peace through installment of non-combative soldiers, to write a new constitution, to oversee the upcoming election and to bring refugees and other internally displaced persons back to Cambodia. They sort of did a good job, but politics at the time were messy and several social uprisings occurred. Since the PRK era, numerous parties had been formed with vastly different agendas, and political alignments shifted frequently. In other words, the sociopolitical landscape at this time was way too complicated for me to explain, let alone fully understand.

But, I can tell you that, whether through corrupt means or not, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) led by Hun Sen, came out victorious in the 1993 elections. This is still the ruling party in Cambodia today. And while this country has made a hell of a lot of progress since its descent to Year Zero, there are still a hell of a lot of problems here. Most poignantly, poverty.

Okay, I’m going to tell one more story here and than be done. But in regards to all the historical facts and information I just presented, I want to say that most of this was written from my own memory and from copious notes taken during a variety of lectures. I recognize that bits and pieces of this summary may not be exactly accurate, and may be perceived differently by others. In some cases, I used Wikipedia to fact-check dates, but other than that no sources have been incorporated here other than those of the brilliant minds of my professors (a big shout out to all you whose personal names I don’t want to disclose!) I hope - if you made it this far in the post - that you found it to be educational, or at least slightly interesting. Keep in mind: this is an informal blog and I totally went way over the top. So take what you’ve learned with a grain of salt, and if anything stuck out, I hope you’ll do more research on your own (or message me.. you can always message me!)

Now for the story. Two weekends ago one of our teachers kindly offered to take us to Udong village, which used to be the capital of the country. It’s only an hour out of Phnom Penh, so we did it in a day. Udong is known for its mountainous and majestic temple, which can be reached by climbing about five hundred stairs. Of course we eventually made it, but we did not expect to be swarmed by a crowd of young children trying to fan us and carry our shoes along the way. You see, it is fairly normal to witness poverty on a regular basis in Cambodia. You will be walking down the street and an US-imported BMW will whizz by on one side, while a homeless woman begs for money on the other. Child beggars are particularly common, especially when you leave the city where the majority of wealth is concentrated. So it wasn’t surprising to see kids at the entrance of the temple trying to elicit money from foreigners. But it was surprising when they walked all the way up to the temple with us - refusing to leave even when we refused their fanning and shoe-carrying efforts. Each child latched onto one of us fairly quickly (there were five foreigners total), and didn’t leave our sides until we got back to the bottom of the stairs. Naturally, we each gave our little acquaintance some money, but we also didn’t really have a choice. The kids were going to follow us, and fan us regardless of how many times we said no. If we didn’t give them money, we looked like jackasses. So the situation was really quite strange and upsetting to me, but I suppose this is the type of forced pressure and guilt you must solicit from others when living in such abject poverty. All I could think when leaving, is how I wished I could have bought them some shoes.

(I was also preoccupied by an angsty monkey who scared me into giving up my can of coke when walking down the stairs. According to my friends, he was on his way to grabbing it out of my hands. 'Tis the life in Cambodia.)

On that note, I'm off to watch Gilmore Girls. But, one last super important thing!! I will be doing some fundraising for a non-profit I’ve been working with here in Phnom Penh called The Advanced Center for Empowerment (ACE). This organization provides educational opportunities and housing to young adults living in the countryside who otherwise, wouldn’t be able to attend college. They also work in slum communities teaching English and facilitating an array of social justice projects. I will be posting a brief letter on Tuesday requesting monetary contributions of any and all sizes. ACE does incredible, life changing work, and after getting to know some of the students affiliated with the program, I am determined to help it continue thriving. So if you’re interested in learning more, stay tuned! Many of you will be receiving an email as well - hope that's okay!

Alright, I’m officially done now. Thanks for listening! And sorry I’m never as “brief” as I think I am. Working on it… also, only eleven days until I get home! Wowzah, time flies.

Happiest of holidays. Talk to you soon!

-Amy