Today We Walked Through Hell

I am still decompressing from our visit to S21, and then the Killing Field here, one of 190 in Cambodia. From a population of 17 million, between 3 -3.5 million died by execution, starvation and disease. That doesn’t include the 200 000+ killed by American B52 bombers. About 20% of the population gone - an entire generation. Our tour guide John is the older brother by another mother of our Cambodian Intrepid guide Bo. He lost his father at the age of three, so never knew him. His siblings disappeared for 5 years and thankfully returned to the village eventually. He was very emotional but powered through tears relating his, and Cambodia’s story  

Pol Pot, a former Buddhist priest, orchestrated a coup to depose the King at the end of American involvement in Vietnam. He was backed by China and the North Vietnamese. He ruled for less than four years, but his paranoia à la Stalin and Mao Tse Tung focused on routing out CIA spies, KGB agents (as China and the Soviets had a falling out) led to purges of intellectuals, government officials, foreigners, young men who might fight back and eventually his own soldiers. He executed all family members including women and children, (sometimes 3 generations) of suspected spies 

S21 was a former school that became a detention/torture prison for “VIP” suspects, their wives and children. Our tour was sickening to say the least. I will spare the details. Twenty thousand people  died either there or at the killing fields. 7 men survived when the Vietnamese defeated Pot. 

Five have since died. We met two of them today  I bought the book of one gentleman. You are welcome to borrow it. Both have no family and the government does not give them a pension.

This was etched into the wall above a doorway. 

The local Killing Field is about 35 minutes from S21. There were 109 mass graves, some still not excavated. Again, the details are beyond gruesome. I will share only if asked. One lady in our tour has visited several Nazi Jewish death camps. She said that while the numbers there were greater, the brutality here was worse. Bullets were deemed too expensive to use so the deaths were horrific. I could not bring myself to enter the memorial with all the skulls at the end of the story  

Everyone was greatly affected. Many tears. John’s stories of the human degradation there added to the emotion. Pol Pot died of natural causes under house arrest at the age of 72 in 1998, nineteen years after his capture. Four senior members were given life sentences. No one else has been held legally responsible. Many of the killers are “regular” citizens of Cambodia now and some work in the government. John told us that Buddhists do not ask for revenge nor wish retribution or harm to the perpetrators. In his heart he has forgiven them and only hopes that they are able to understand the horrors that they committed and the effects on those still living, and they will live harmoniously with everyone they meet. 

A Buddhist prayer:

Oh great, compassionate Buddha

We sincerely pray to you

May the deceased and those bereaved

Find comfort

May the deceased and those bereaved 

Find refuge. 

Life is uncertain

Death is certain

Life and death are seen as one whole

Where death is the beginning of another chapter of life. 

Death is a mirror in which the entire meaning of life is reflected. 

Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to learn.