More WAR (again very graphic)
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
1
29
79
Trip End
Ongoing
Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Friday, October 3, 2008
we met a nice english girl working in australia. we ended up sharing info and staying at the same hotel. and with her suggestion, the three of us grabbed a tuk-tuk (its these motorized travel things... kinda like a hay ride, but much smaller and instead of being pulled by a tractor, it's pulled by a motorbike. anyways, i've attached a pic... so we dropped of stuff at the hotel and left with two specific goals in mind. 1. see the genocide museum and 2. visit the famous killing fields. (exactly like the book).
1. genocide museum. scary. very scary. so there is this guy Pol Pot. born and raised in Cambodia, finished his studies in France. he moves up the ranks of the then Cambodian or Khmer (as is what the kingdom of Cambodia is) Communist Party. then he and his brother in law decides to take over Cambodia and do with it as they wish. first they fake a state of emergency to clear out the capital city of Phnom Penh; they said that the US was on their way to bomb the city, so they need to evacuate.. pretty clever... this would never work today with the internet and all... anyways, with the educated people evacuated into the countryside, mr. pot, creates two social classes. the new more privilged class is now the poor, uneducated, peasant farming class... he calls them more "pure" and not tainted by education... and the less privilged new class, referred to as the "April 17th" people (the date of evacuation). he basically creates a civil war scenario pitting the two classes against each other. and furthermore he kills off most of the educated people who once lived in the city. you see, pol pot wanted the country to be an agricultural superpower. overnight he greatly increased the output of rice, for example. and when the people couldn't meet demands, they faked the numbers and instead of feeding themselves and the people, send out everything they had. insane. mind you, this was happening in the late 1970's and up until recently (like 10 years ago), cambodia was under the rule of the Khmer Rouge. although Pol Pot has passed, many of the leaders of this evil regime still live and have never been prosecuted.
the numbers are staggering. many experts approximate that during this time, up to 2 million people were killed and tortured. i can't begin to describe the horrible stories that were on display at the genocide museum. the museum itself was originally a high school. well, when the capital was evacuated, the Khmer Rouge turned it into a detention/torture center. and we're talking serious torture type stuff... i've attached photos.
2. the killing fields. although we were there for maybe 30 mins, and the place is rather small, what this place stands for is astronomical in its significance. you see, the killing fields is literal. its a field where people were killed. there were mass masacres that happened here daily... every day. the graves are pretty much huge craters where they found up to 400 bodies in each pit. the bones and remains are stored in a large memorial in the center of the killing fields.
eunice and i spend one night in phnom penh. the next morning, we had a quick look around the riverside city and boarded a bus for Siem Reap.
Comments
sad
That's pretty sad... I didn't even know so many people died in Cambodia recently. The sign that read 'The tree against which they beat children?!?' How horrible!!!
nice shirt
Crazy stuff you guys are seeing. Hey Byoung, you look thinner...you been working out? Don't come back skinner than me!