Armed and Dangerous in Phnom Penh

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The wounds are fresh. Many of the murderers were just children then, and today are middle-aged farmers. Whereas Auschwitz is somehow divorced through the passage of history, visiting the Killing Fields is too real, too now. Whereas the Nazis had time to destroy so much of the evidence of their atrocities, the Khmer Rouge did not expect to be overthrown by the Vietnamese army, and left detailed records, mugshots, and blood-soaked mass graves. A former high school before it was turned into a horror house, Phnom Penh’s Toul Sleng (or S-21 Prison) saw twenty thousand prisoners tortured, abused, forced to confess and incriminate others before being sent off to be executed. Only seven prisoners survived its horrors, including brutal torture methods and instruments that will haunt me for years to come. Today it is a museum where negative energy echoes down the corridors. Thousands of mugshots show too-young, modern Cambodians, starving, on their way to have their heads caved in with bamboo sticks because bullets were too expensive. It is hard not to walk away in tears. Many of the locals I encounter lived through this. How could the world allow it to happen? How could we let Rwanda and Burundi happen fifteen years later? Can you blame children who were brainwashed, who did what they were ordered to do or else they themselves would be killed? After the Vietnamese installed a new communist government, Pol Pot escaped into to the jungles where he continued to influence violent insurgencies through much of the 1980’s. He was finally caught in 1996, refusing to repent or acknowledge any crimes against humanity. In 1998, he died of a heart attack at age 80, awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court, as have many of the genocide’s other key perpetrators. The wounds have not healed. Cambodians are rightly mistrustful of justice. Perhaps this is the reason behind their corruption, regarded as amongst the worst in the world. These are people who for decades have had to contend with survival and short-term gain. The idea of building something for future generations will first require those future generations to come and take it.

Despite heavy investment by NGO’s and government aid, there is still a feeling of desperation in the air. Maimed beggars line the tourist areas; children surround us asking for money or food. Unlike beggars I’ve come across in other countries, they eat the bananas I give them. But the warmth of the people is obvious every time I smile at them. They smile back with sincerity and hope, as if each smile is a small punch in the face of Pain and Misery. Sooner or later, they’re gonna knockout that sonofabitch and Cambodia will be on its way.

I only have two weeks in the country, and most travellers follow a similar route. Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, home of the incredible Angkor temple complex - on par with the Pyramids of Giza, Macchu Picchu and the Taj Mahal. Then south again, via Phnom Penh, to Sinoukville in the south, where the beaches are said to compete with the best of Thailand. Minesh and I gathered a new group; Hannah and Laura from Vancouver (I’m bumping into lots of Vancouverites of late), Brian from Glasgow, Isabelle from Belgium, and we hopped onto a bus north together with several hundred mosquitoes. iPods loaded up with new music thanks to the Boom Boom Room, a record store that loads music straight onto iPods for just $1 an album, the bus passed village after village, rice paddy after rice paddy. I was looking forward to seeing the deep fried hairy spiders for sale at the food stalls on the way, but incy-wincy spider was off the menu. Cambodians are renowned to eat anything; snakes, dogs, insects, which makes sense if you think about the famine they’ve been through in recent times. We arrived in Siem Reap to find touts more desperate and aggressive than any I’ve seen on my whole trip. It was time to explore the enormous, ancient temples of Cambodia’s illustrious past, and very possibly, its hope for the future.

Continental Hotel
Siem Reap, Cambodia

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