So far on this blog you’ve seen the beaches, charming towns, fabulous restaurants, and adorable people of Cambodia, and that’s probably as it should be. They’ve come a long way since ‘79, and all of that deserves to be seen. However, we decided to spend some of our time in Phnom Penh learning more about its history, specifically the 4 years of hell that happened under the Khmer Rouge in the 70s, and the way the country has dealt with it ever since. I’ll start by sharing an article that I came across in the New York Times a few months ago. It talks about the struggle to have young people understand what happened to their parents and grandparents when most of them don’t or can’t believe it. And it makes some sense – it’s a difficult story to imagine.
We spent an afternoon visiting S-21 Prison and one of the Killing Fields just outside of Phnom Penh.
This high school building was turned into one of the most notorious prisons in the country during most of the reign of the Khmer Rouge. The cruelty was most specifically (though certainly not exclusively) directed at city people and anyone who seemed remotely educated, as these were all threats to the peasant utopia that the Khmer Rouge hoped to create. If you look closely at some of the photographs in the slideshow, you’ll see how very young many of the prisoners were.
If the prisoners didn’t die here, they were often taken to the killing fields just outside of town.
I’ll leave it here, but I’ll recommend a book that I read while we were there called First They Killed My Father. It’s written by a woman who was 5 years old when the Khmer Rouge took over. It’s valuable time spent reading about those years through the eyes of a child.
1 response so far ↓
Lindsey // June 23, 2009 at 10:56 am |
If I remember correctly – this book was touted as an interesting read…
“Off the Rails in Phnom Penh: Into the Dark Heart of Guns, Girls, and Ganga”