Twisted Lodgic, Genocide, and the

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  Siem Reap, Cambodia
Wednesday, September 6, 2006

OK people, here I am in Cambodia. Cambodia is one of the most interesting/difficult places I have ever experienced. I have never been to a place where I feel so sorry for the people that I want to give them a hug, and on the other hand I would like to stab them in the neck with a dull #2 pencil. They can drive you up the wall trying to sell you anything and everything from postcards to prostitutes. The poverty level is high here. I have spent the better part of the last 2 years in 3rd world countries so the poverty is not the issue for me. It is the aftermath of years of bloody war that is so hard to swallow. Land mine victims young and old are everywhere. A legless kid begging for change to eat in the street is a numbing thing to see. The only other place that I have personally been to that is even comparable to this type of post war suffering is Bosnia and Herzegovina. For you to understand what I am experiencing here, you must first know a little about the situation going on in Cambodia

A site to see - Killing Fields

. For some reason I never learned about this in school? I think everyone in the world needs to be aware of what has happened here! Here is my best attempt at explaining this!

I am starting half way into the story for the sake of time. Fast forward to 1970 > Of course the USA was involved! The war in Vietnam is going on at this time. The US is doing the same type of secret carpet bombings in the East of Cambodia that I talked about happening in Laos. The death toll of this type of thing is hard to come up with? I saw a figure that as many as 250,000 Cambodian people died associated deaths to the Vietnam bombings? Anyway of course this type of thing will create desperate people. Desperate people in turn, do desperate things! In comes the unlikely front runner for the peoples affection > enter the Khmer Rouge! They start gaining support among the underclass and the victims of the bombings. And now people you have a peasant uprising! They eventually overthrow the existing US supported government and gain power of Cambodia in 1975.

And you ask who is the Khmer Rouge? The Khmer Rouge was the Maoist-extremist organization that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge was the mastermind of one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century. Keep in mind this is the century that brought the world the Holocaust

Cambodian Countryside near Killing Fields

. These nut jobs wanted to "reeducate the population" and start over at what they referred to as "year zero." The purpose of this policy was to turn Cambodians into "new people" through agricultural labor. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians including the vast majority of the country's educated were relocated into the countryside to work in the fields. Basically it was a really twisted experiment in socialism. They wanted to do away with class systems and make everyone equal common labors. Which in the case of Cambodia for the most part would be rice farmers. During their four years in power, the Khmer Rouge overworked and starved the population, closed schools, outlawed religion, did away with currency and banks, confiscated all private property, at the same time executing selected groups (including intellectuals)and killing many others for even minor breaches of rules. Thousands of people were branded as "parasites" and were systematically killed solely because they had confections to the previous government or spoke another language. Estimates of the number of dead range from 1.5 to 3 million out of a population of nearly 8 million people. While all of this was happening the rest of the world turned a blind eye. The Khmer Rouge regime was removed from power in 1979 as a result of an invasion by Vietnamese troops. A guerilla war lasted throughout the 1980's through indirect support going to the Khmer Rouge from the US government to fight the new Vietnamese-backed government. That is just crazy to think about

Country Side Outside of Killing Fields

! In just 4 short years as much as 1/3 of a countries population was murdered. And it all happened in recent history. The country/people is still suffering in many different ways. The most obvious is the land mine victims. And there is a good chance you never heard about any of this!

I visited the "Killing Fields" a few days ago. It is a mass grave site of almost 17,000 victims. They have on display over 8000 skulls of the victims. It was a shocking experience! Comparable to Auschwitz (I visited last year.)During the Khmer Rouge regime the death toll was so high that the executed were buried in mass graves. The site I visited was just one of many mass grave sites in Cambodia. In order to save ammunition, the convicted were often executed using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. The soldiers who committed the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families.
*Anyone interested it this topic can see a film by same title directed by Roland Joffe.
And also there is a documentary called "S-21, la machine de mort Khmère Rouge"(2003)

"Tell me all your thoughts on God? Cause I'd really like to meet Her." ~Dishwalla

I am blessed (if that is what you want to call it)to experience the beautiful/ugly realities of the world first hand. The purpose of my keeping a online journal is to share these experiences and my feelings about it. I have been taking pics of the land mine victims. I will post the pics when I have enough. Hope this finds you well wherever you are in the world. ~Johnny Nomad



I collected this info from a few books and movies as well as from an Encyclopedia. Check out the facts at http://www.wikipedia.org/

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

S-21 Death Camp (was a highschool before)

Victims (S-21)

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