PHNOM PENH - Cambodia's
Khmer Rouge mass murder sites affect visitors in
different ways. For me, it meant weeping
throughout and being unable to reconcile the
contrast between massive, deadly brutality on
display and the seemingly gentle, friendly
Cambodia of today.
Cambodia does itself
and the world a great service by preserving the
memories of the millions that died during the
1975-79 Khmer Rouge reign of terror under the
leadership of Pol Pot. Both Tuol Sleng, the prison
known as S-21, and Cheoung Ek, the so-called
Killing Fields, remain powerfully evocative even
after the passage of decades. But their most
important modern day lesson may be waiting to be
learned 6,500 kilometers (3,900 miles) away in
Iraq.
Some displays at the two sites are
positively chilling. At Cheoung
Ek, 15 kilometers south
of capital city Phnom Penh, a Buddhist stupa
towers over the site's 129 mass graves. The bottom
level of the stupa holds clothing from the
estimated 20,000 people executed and buried there.
The next eight levels hold skulls from
victims arranged by estimated age, many showing
signs of fatal blows with shovels or ax handles -
favored by the Khmer Rouge as an execution method
because it saved bullets. The top eight levels
contain bones sorted by type. Paths throughout the
two hectare site, once a peaceful mangosteen
orchard, still reveal bone fragments and teeth
peeking through the soil.
The Khmer Rouge
converted Tuol Sleng Primary School and Tuol Svay
Prey High School in central Phnom Penh into
Security Office 21. The S-21 museum preserves
classrooms turned into cells, pieces of the
chalkboard still intact; the wire woven into nets
across the exterior hallways to prevent inmates
from attempting suicide leaps; and metal beds
rigged with shackles and car batteries for
interrogations.
But the most haunting
feature of S-21 are the inmate photographs, row
upon row of black-and-white head and shoulder
identification shots. Beyond the vacant eyes of
the subjects, the portraits are a monument to the
banality of evil. The people who took these
photographs, developed them, catalogued them, and
filed them were simply bureaucrats doing their
jobs.
What's too often lost in the use of
"banality of evil" is that the banality in no way
excuses or explains the evil, which took place on
an unprecedented scale in Cambodia. Some two
million Cambodians out of an estimated population
of 7.3 million perished under the Khmer Rouge
regime. By proportion of the national population,
that's way more than Stalin, Hitler or Mao
murdered, making Pol Pot the all-time leader in
mass murder.
Of course, no one kills that
many people alone, and that's another incredible
thing about visiting those tragic sites in today's
Cambodia. Everyone you meet around town seems so
pleasant and cheerful, it's hard to fathom how
these same people or their parents could have been
party to such atrocities.
Examples such as
the Soviet gulags, Indonesia's 1965 anti-communist
purges, and the 1994 massacres in Rwanda,
underline that no nationality, ethnic or racial
group has a monopoly on massive scale inhumanity.
Setting the stage What's also
fascinating is that the Khmer Rouge didn't commit
murder in the name of religion or ethnicity or
nationalism. It was just politics. That's another
indication that genocide can happen anywhere when
the political conditions are right, as they were
in mid-1970s Cambodia.
For centuries, the
country was caught between more powerful
neighbors, Vietnam to the east and Thailand to the
west. Then in the 1960s, Cambodia got caught in
the middle of the American war in Vietnam.
American planes bombed North Vietnamese bases
inside Cambodia, also inflicting massive
collateral damage on civilians.
Following
General Lon Nol's 1970 rightwing coup that ousted
king Norodom Sihanouk, US and South Vietnamese
troops crossed the border, pushing North
Vietnamese forces further into the interior. More
civilian casualties resulted and Cambodia's
politics became more deeply dividing.
The
US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973 weakened Lon
Nol's government and strengthened the Khmer Rouge.
In April 1975, with Phnom Penh surrounded and
American aid ended, the government surrendered to
the Khmer Rouge.
Academics still debate to
what extent the US extension of the Vietnam
conflict into Cambodia helped or harmed the Khmer
Rouge's cause. The same can be said about the
Vietnamese troops. What's clear is that foreigners
fighting on Cambodian territory brutalized the
population and helped unravel the country's social
fabric, paving the way for extremism and tragedy.
A political void following the ouster of a
long-serving leader, foreign troops fighting their
own war as an away game, and, a neighbor anxious
to take advantage of the turmoil - standing amid
the mass graves, it seems apparent that Cambodia's
past could easily represent Iraq's future.
The American invasion destroyed the
political fabric of Iraq (some would argue of
America, too). The invaders destroyed Iraq's
government, the ruling party, and the army. The
country plunged into greater chaos and factional
fighting than Cambodia ever suffered before the
Khmer Rouge triumph.
Iraq's traditional
unfriendly neighbor Iran used the opportunity to
fill the power vacuum. According to some, Iran
sent in its own operatives. As a bonus, Iran can
play the religion card with Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim
majority that had been suppressed under Saddam
Hussein, who favored the Sunni minority.
The presence of foreign troops fueled an
insurgency that forced Iraqis to choose between
sides in a fight they didn't want. The violence
led to further polarization. It also stunted
political growth. Reminiscent of post-coup
Cambodia, the government is massively corrupt and
largely distrusted.
The withdrawal of
American forces hasn't solved Iraq's political
problems, just as America's withdrawal from
Vietnam didn't lead to Cambodian reconciliation.
It was two years after the Americans left Vietnam
that the Khmer Rouge came to power and commenced
their killing spree.
August marks two
years since American combat troops left Iraq. Stay
tuned - and hope that in this world vastly more
connected than in 1975, genocide can't happen
again.
Former broadcast news producer
Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong
Kong On Air, a novel set during the 1997
handover about television news, love, betrayal,
financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. See his
blog, online archive and more at MuhammadCohen.com.
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