Two senior officials of Cambodia’s former Khmer Rouge genocidal regime were found guilty today in Phnom Penh of crimes against humanity. The UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) (similar to the courts at Nuremburg) found Nuon Chea, 88 and Khieu Samphan, 83, guilty for their role in the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh and subsequent genocide more than 30 years ago.
Chea was the number 2 man under Pol Pot during the reign of the Khmer Rouge and Samphan was the former head of state. Many of the perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide have never stood trial due to ill health, death or political finagling that has left them exempt from punishment. The trial that concluded today took more than three years to reach a verdict. Pol Pot never stood trial and died in 1998.
The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, terrorized the people of Cambodia from 1975 – 1979. Approximately 1.7 million Cambodians were murdered through execution, torture, forced labor, disease and starvation. Sadly, it was a genocide most of the world turned away from, including the United States. We were still in the thick of the Cold War and had just wrapped up our wars in both Vietnam and Cambodia. Southeast Asia was no longer a place we wanted to be despite the overwhelming evidence that a genocide was taking place.
I was lucky enough to travel to Cambodia a few years ago with one of my best friends from college who was living in Shanghai, China at the time. Her then boyfriend, now husband, traveled with us along with another friend from college. While we were in Phnom Penh we visited the killing fields outside of the city. The Khmer Rouge targeted anyone they deemed to be an intellectual – if you wore glasses you were dead, professor, teacher, lived in the city you were dead. They forcibly evacuated the entire capitol of Phnom Penh marching people out into the countryside to work on collective farms where many of them starved to death or died from disease. Families were separated and people would disappear for “reeducation,” many at the notorious Toul Sleng, or S21, prison.
On our way to the killing fields our guide told us her own story of life under the Khmer Rouge. She was four years old at the time when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge. She, along with her family, were force marched out of the city and separated into different work camps. She was alone and she told us of being caught one night in the camp digging for worms by the river; she was starving and she was only five years old. She was incredibly lucky that the Khmer Rouge did not kill her on the spot; any type of foraging was forbidden and basically seen as stealing. She never told us what happened to her family and I didn’t want to pry.
In the center of the killing fields is a large stupa that contains the clothing and skulls of some of the people murdered at that site. The surrounding fields of bright green grass have a gentle roll to them and it’s almost peaceful if you didn’t know that the sunken-in areas are the mass graves of countless innocent Cambodians. Due to Cambodia’s wet and humid climate bone fragments and pieces of clothing work their way up to the surface from time to time. As I walked along the pathways I looked down to see a pair of men’s red running shorts partially submerged in the mud.
Later on in the trip I was chatting with my friend’s boyfriend who is half Jewish. I could tell when we were at the killing fields that the experience was upsetting. We were in Siem Reap swimming after a long day of hiking at the temples and I asked if he was ok. He said yes and said that my friend had told him about our travels through Eastern Europe and Auschwitz; he asked me how I was able to go to these places and come out fine. I told him that when I’m there I’m very aware that every single step I take I am walking where someone suffered tremendously. Their fate was more horrific than what I have ever experienced, or can imagine, and while I’m there I say a prayer for all the people who are gone. I treat these places and the people in them with as much respect as possible.
The reason I go to these places and spend so much time in these dark recesses of humanity is that I want to understand why we do these horrible things to each other, how can we stop them from happening again and how do we help the victims of these crimes. After the Holocaust the world said “Never Again,” sadly that’s turned into “until next time.”
Do All the Good That You Can 