3 years, 8 months and 24 days

I’m writing this while it’s all still fresh in my mind but, truth be told, the experience is probably indelible. Yesterday we visited S21, former Khmer Rouge prison/interrogation center and current Cambodian Genocide Museum. Formerly a high school, the building was converted under the Pol Pot regime into a torture chamber, interrogation center and death camp for anyone who ran afoul of the Khmer Rouge. This included the educated, monks, those that spoke a foreign language, city dwellers, foreigners and even, eventually, Khmer Rouge combatants themselves. The place, essentially, has been left just as it was found by Vietnamese liberation troops when they discovered it, as testament to the atrocities of the regime; classrooms converted into miniscule prison cells with iron shackles attached to the floor and various instruments of torture scattered about. Amidst all this are the photographs. Those haunting, heart wrenching photographs. From infants to the elderly, both male and female. Thousands of black and white portraits starring back at you, photographed by the Khmer Rouge themselves to document these prisoners before taking them off to the killing fields to be bludgeoned to death with axe handles. Of the Fifteen to Twenty Thousand people processed through S21, less than a half dozen survived.

For those unsure about who or what the Khmer Rouge was, I’ll try to sum up it all up briefly. In 1970, Cambodian Army General Lon Nol successfully staged a coup (with a thumbs up from the US) to over throw the ruling Prince Sihanouk. The country soon fell into a civil war between Lon Nol’s men and the leftist guerillas of the Khmer Rouge. The capitol, Phnom Penh, fell to the KR in 1975 and held power, as any Cambodian can tell you, for the next 3 years, 8 months and 24 days. Headed by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge sought to rebuild Cambodia as a Maoist, agrarian culture after first destroying all aspects of traditional Cambodian culture… in effect, turning the clock back to “Year Zero”. They did this by evacuating the cities, abolishing money, separating families and turning the whole country into a forced labor camp while “disappearing” anyone who dared to question the revolution (and even many who supported it). Members of the former government and the educated where considered among the greatest threats and were dealt with first. By the end, though, they had even turned their attention towards their own comrades as paranoia grew within the regime. S21, or Security Center 21, was the primary facility for dealing with those that would thwart the revolution.

By the time the Vietnamese invasion in 1978 sent the Khmer Rouge retreating into the deep jungle, they had killed up to 2 million of their own country men and managed to destroy almost the whole infrastructure of the country along with most of its cultural heritage. The whole of the country remained highly unstable until the UN sent in peace keeping troops in 1993 (by most accounts, all they did was turn Phnom Penh into a drug and hooker fueled Asian frat party…but that’s a whole other story).

In light of its recent history, its amazing anything is left of the place. It’s a strong testament to the Cambodian peoples will and determination to witness the Phnom Penh of today. While there is still much to do, the city is moving steadily forward, happy to be at peace. The Cambodian people are among the friendliest we’ve met so far in our journeys…. just don’t get on the road with them!

We’ll stay here two more days (waiting on Radka’s Thai visa) before heading south to the beaches of Sihanoukville, near the Thai border.