The experiences of being witness to a genocide of a culture, translated…
A Man, starved, digging up the roots for food. Stealing the foods of the nation, was considered a crime, punishable by DEATH back then, this man was taken, to the depth of the woods, with his eyes blindfolded, his chest bare. Then, someone took a knife, opened him in the abdomen, and, cut off his liver, and shared it with the rest………
When we speak of Cambodia, other than Angkor Wat, it’s the Khmaey Krahom, Pol Pot, and massacre. They’d, recited time and time again, “during the time Cambodia was under communist rule, there were, 1.7 million Cambodians who’d died, one-fifth of the nation’s population………” the real-events were made into movies such as “The Killing Fields” in the earlier days, and Angelina Jolie had also bought the right to make the movie from the book, “First They Killed My Father”, which is supposed to be put forth by NetFlix at the end of this year. And yet, of the history of the tragedies in Cambodia, how much, do we, really know?
The earliest of the oral histories were from the refugee camps of the Thai-Cambodian borders. After Khmer Rouge took control of the government, the capital of Phnom Penh was evacuated, the assortment of diplomats and reporters who are interested and concerned about the goings on in Cambodia can only stay in Thailand, to see if they were able to, get some news of the area. They’d ridden small cars to the borderline towns, the Cambodians who were able to make it out barely told, that people were forced out of their hometowns, and into work camps in the countryside, to labor, worked for seventeen hours a day, with not enough food to go around. Some were beaten to death on the head by steel rods, some died of fatigue, some of starvation, some, of illnesses.
The Protesters Were the Enemies, the Challengers Became Corpses
Just like how the Nazis treated the Jews, the abusers and the victims are really clear-cut in Cambodia too—the source of evil was Pol Pot, the Khmaey Krahom’s communist makeover, murdering over millions of its citizens. What, was the purpose of doing this? What was the leader, Pol Pot thinking of? The western nations who’d not been informed for FOUR years on end, other than the shocks, they’d, worked hard, to research and understand this group of evil-doers.
looks bad, doesn’t it??? NOT my photograph…
The studies on the massacre in Cambodia at Yale University did a grand scale interview, the program had the historian, Ben Kiernan hand over volumes of related literatures, including the classic, “The Pol Pot Regime”, which told the tale, of how Pol Pot became, the leader of the communists in Cambodia, and the processes that it took him, to set up a more democratic Cambodia.
Brother Number One and Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare, biographies on Pol Pot, had given us more clues about this key character in Cambodia’s history. Pol Pot was born Saloth Sar, during his studies in France, he’d turned Communist, and worshipped Marxism, went to China, to interview Mao Zedong, to understand his actions in the Cultural Revolution. Waited until Pol Pot took control, he’d reformed Cambodia in an even more intense way, causing the country to return to relying on agriculture before the industrial revolution, calling it, Year Zero. In the forefront of not providing passage to transport the workers, in just a matter of a few days, it’d caused a huge number of the citizens to die all over the places.
“Keeping you wouldn’t do me any good, getting rid of you, wouldn’t be a loss to me”, these, were the claims of Pol Pot in the broadcasting systems, heard, by the survivors.
The Khmaey Krahom split people into two classes, new people and base people. The new people were also called people of April Seventeenth, after this date, the me of the past is already dead. Books, education, music, cultural arts, were now, pointless and useless, only work, work, work harder, laboring, to put forth products for the country, that, was what mattered most. “The hoe is your pen, the rice paddy fields are your pages”, Pol Pot told. Knowledge became, a source of cause of rebellions, Angkar (an organization in Cambodia) told, “the objecting are our enemies, the opposers, corpses”. In order to hide the fact that they’re literate, a lot of the people pretended to be dumb, to survive, became affected by post-traumatic stress disorder, lived out their lives in pain.
Why Did They Kill?
In 1979, the Vietnamese army fought through to Phnom Penh, chased the communists into the forests, and, the Vietnamese troops saw the city, broken, the abandoned buildings, the blood-stained torture tools in Tuol Sleng prison 21, the bones were piled up. And, it’s not possible, for a single human being, to cause so much damages.
Alexander Laban Hinton ins “Why Did They Kill?”, interviewed the prison guard in prison 21, Lor. People stated, that he’d, murdered countless others, but Lor described his job in the prison system was paperwork, that he wasn’t some blood-thirsty psychokiller. He’d described the only time he’d ever killed someone, “My superior wanted me to kill someone for him. And so, he took the steel rod from the soldier who was executed, and beaten the prisoner so we can see how it was done. I’d swung the steel rod over the prisoner’s head, he’d fallen to the ground………when my superior wanted me to do this, if I didn’t………there was no way, I was going to, disobey his orders.”, if you don’t obey the order to kill someone, then, you will, get killed.
This had been, the claims used by those charged with mass murders, I’m merely killing, because I was ordered to do so. Even the man in charge, Pol Pot, in the broadcasting, talked of the organizations, he’d said to the Cambodians, “there are ills in the organization, enemies hidden within, we needed to clean it up, and suppress it.” Hinton reminded his readers, that if he’d left after this particular end of the stories, the greater cultural meanings would’ve been missed out on.
He’d used another story told by one of the survivors. There was a survivor, recalling, that he’d witnessed a man from the same camp who couldn’t cope with the hunger anymore, and started digging up the jicamas to eat. Back then, stealing the foods from the nation is considered a crime punishable by death, this man was taken into the depth of the woods, the executioner tied him to a tree, covered his eyes, exposed his chest. Then the executioner took a knife, cut into his stomach, cut off his liver, roasted it to share it with his comrades. The organization had, ordered them to kill, but didn’t tell them to eat the prisoners’ livers. Hinton analyzed, that in the culture of Cambodia, the liver symbolized courage. By eating the liver of someone else, it’d meant, that you will have NO hesitations, no doubts, in the operations of the organizations in the future.
If you’d lengthened the timelines, the Khmaey Krahom soldiers were fighting, to overturn the ruling of the Lon Nol military government. In the civil wars that continued on for years before this, Lon Nol had taken all oppositions out, and now, the soldiers not only just shouldered their ordered actions, but also, avenging one’s own losses too. And, willing to abuse and torture and murder the prisoners, meant, that the soldiers wanted to gain a higher status in the organization. And, with the countless number of mixed reasons, another firewood was added, to the boiling pot of massacres, which then, caused the collective abuse and murders.
Writing Diaries While Working
“If we’d disappeared, then, we’re dead”. In the extreme fear conditions, some of the brave people left the accords. Through the Australian writer, McKay’s interview notes, we’d read about the Cambodian girl, Oum Sophany’s story. The twenty-nine-year-old woman was originally studying archaeology in the Royal Arts University of Phnom Penh. It’s the Cambodian New Years in mid-April, but in 1975, there was something in the air, the calls of cicadas had the sound of the distant cannons. A few years ago, the ruler who was closer to Americans went abroad, causing a takeover, the Khmaey Krahom started absorbing the farmers who were displeased at the emperor and how rich the cities are becoming, they’d started the fight, all the way from Phnom Penh.
Sophany wrote on the seventeenth in her diary, “The white flags flew outside of all the houses, celebrating this event in history………they’d told, that they’d, won over the Americans. What does that mean? Outside my doors, we’d also tied that white flag to show we’d surrendered, and celebrated the new government. I think, maybe, now, we’d finally achieved peace, and there will be, NO more wars from here on out.”
So, this, would be the history of a nation, of how people who were uneducated, who just wanted a better life for themselves, of how they’re willing to, blindly, follow a dictator, without realizing, that they have better options in life, and that, is just what a lack of education, contact with the outside world can cause, the effect of the uneducated, but because people in these places are living in the lower status quo, that, is why they’d followed that man who promised them a better life, not realizing, that they’re getting involved in the murders themselves, but that, is just a part of making progress, and yet, look at these nations, did they come far from where they’d first started???