Withstanding the trials of time and nature’s relentless drive, the spectacular temples of Angkor stand out as the undisputed pinnacle of Khmer civilisation. Angkor Wat, the jewel in the crown of all the temple complexes, is the single most important symbol that is one and the same with the history of past and present day Cambodia. Angkor Wat embodies the heartbeat of the nation.
Marching intently through the war-torn streets of Phnom Penh, the euphoria evaporated soon after the Khmer Rouge seized control from the administration headed by Lon Nol. On that crucial morning of the 17 April 1975, there was tension in the air as the ominous signs unfurled amid the chaos. The Khmer Rouge wasted no time to put into practice their variety of firebrand Maoist agendas. Thousands upon thousands of women, children, men, old, young, sick, rich, poor, it mattered not, were marched out of Phnom Penh to some unknown location in the countryside and forced to work the rice fields. Cambodia renamed Democratic Kampuchea, past history erased and the beginning of the “Year Zero” proclaimed, Pol Pot’s plan to transform the nation into a peasant-dominated agrarian society was decisively set in motion.
Although the Angkorian rulers dominated and vanquished other cultures, ultimately Angkor evolved and a glorious legacy was established. At the other end of the spectrum, 1975 -1979 represent years in which death and destruction were unleashed. Everything significant prior to the 17 April 1975 systematically and vehemently “smashed”.
It is somewhat of a paradox that the United States, the watchdog against the rise of communism, may have inadvertently served to radically bolster the ranks of Cambodia’s then disjointed communist rebel units, reforming into what became collectively known as the Khmer Rouge. During the Vietnam War, an offensive launched against the North Vietnamese troops along the Ho Chi Minh Trail weaved its way through neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. In 1969, Cambodia became embroiled in the Vietnam War when the United States covertly started carpet-bombing suspected communist strongholds.
The following year, American and South Vietnamese forces infiltrated Cambodia, attacking the bases at ground level. This joint operation was destined to fail. In the ensuing carnage, Cambodia’s communists, aided by their (North) Vietnamese counterparts, increased their popularity among the peasant and rural communities of the countryside. Infuriated by the American intervention, peasants and farmers pledged their allegiance to the Khmer Rouge in a savage insurgency war, initially to overthrow King Norodom Sihanouk (who at a later stage in the conflict became an ally) and subsequently the government of Lon Nol.
The afternoon I visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the heavy overcast sky sent out a warning it could pour down at any minute. Having just arrived back to the capital from Sihanoukville, I wanted to make something out of this brief interval in Phnom Penh. The lofty Royal Palace, the ornate Silver Pagoda or the National Museum replete with pre-Angkorian and Angkorian works of art, would have probably been more pleasing to the eye. Opting to go to Tuol Sleng instead, I thought it would be worth visiting a place which is equally part of history as the others, albeit a part that’s been written by the hand of evil.
Ironically Tuol Sleng, codenamed S-21 (Security Prison 21), was formerly the Tuol Svey Prey High School. Tuol Sleng, meaning “hill of the poison tree”, was transformed into the largest detention and interrogation centre four months after the Khmer Rouge took control. The majority of the estimated 17,000 to 20,000 people known to have been imprisoned in Tuol Sleng were transferred to Choeung Ek for execution after being exhaustively interrogated, tortured without mercy and almost starved to death.
Many died while being questioned and only a handful of people have come out of Tuol Sleng alive. Vann Nath, whose artistic talent was taken advantage of by the regime to paint pictures of Khmer Rouge leaders, is perhaps the most recognized of these survivors. Depicting the barbaric torture methods endured by inmates, the Museum is at present home to many of Vann Nath’s paintings.
Wandering inside the complex, trailing along the corridors across the main courtyard, the setting is nearly identical in most of the rooms on the ground floor. Peering through barred windows a rusting iron bed-frame used for torture stands underneath a black and white photograph. Enclosed between blood-stained walls, the only clue this was once a classroom were the checked tile floors.
Barely an hour before Phnom Penh fell under the control of former Vietnamese allies, guards still found the time to brutally slaughter the last prisoners at Tuol Sleng. Grisly pictures of mutilated bodies hang over the bed-frames exposing the final display of bloodlust by the fleeing Khmer Rouge. The Museum today stands in much the same way as it was discovered by the Vietnamese back in 1979. The crumbling state of the ceilings, staircases, walls and floors evoke the oppressive conditions still lingering around S-21.
Passing by a board along one side of the courtyard, I paused to read a list of ten rules prisoners were subjected to obey without question. “Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor”, venomously stated one of the rules. The translation might not have been the most grammatically correct, but the meaning was clear and chilling. In the early days of the regime, arrests were mainly political; officials from Lon Nol’s administration, soldiers, monks, teachers, students and people not affiliated with the Communist Party of Kampuchea. In the following years when the paranoia soared, almost everyone was feared of being a threat to this obscure entity called Angkar. Angkar had eyes everywhere and nothing went overlooked. The fear that an “enemy from within” was polluting the revolution made exceptions for no one, not even high-ranking officials. Purging became the norm.
In truth, the majority of people incarcerated at Tuol Sleng were the innocent victims of a twisted and demented regime. Confessions were obtained by means of extreme torture. In this way the largest part of the statements were imagined accounts rather than upholding sentiments or actually being involved in activities considered treasonous towards Angkar. Physically and psychologically destroyed, prisoners denounced family members, friends and other associates. A terrible fate loomed for those implicated. To vindicate their actions, the Khmer Rouge required a reason. Believing their own fabrication that a web of conspiracy against Angkar, against the revolution was operating, more and more arrests were made spreading the bloodshed far and wide.
Built along the length of some larger classrooms, the “difficult” cases were confined to spend time in solitary brick compartments. Battered and shackled, prisoners were deliberately left to fester in their own faeces and urine. The isolation was perhaps just as agonizing as the torture inflicted in the flesh. Dying would have been a relief. Barbed wire placed along parts of the complex was one of various measures intended primarily to deter prisoners from taking their own lives. In the depths of despair, many eventually found a way to end their life.
“I am not a human being, I am an animal” concluded his confession Hu Nim, a former senior member of the CPK. Behind this crude revolting structure, the conviction was to annihilate emotions, to completely “smash” any form of humanity…..to leave the prisoner chained to the walls, broken and soulless…..an animal.
Blunt and rusting, knives, axes, spades, prods, shackles, iron bars, and other instruments of torture, are haphazardly exhibited inside a wooden cabinet.
“While getting lashes or electrocution you must not cry at all”, stated another regulation. How could it be possible not to? I wish I had the chance to meet Vann Nath and pose the question directly to him. A look at his paintings is the closest I could get; close enough to understand the message he so thoughtfully communicates. He wants us, the visitors, to spare a moment of consideration for those who suffered in silence for crimes they never committed. For crimes that were not even crimes in the first place.
Records of Jewish, Polish and prisoners from other nations, herded through the gates of concentration camps like Dachau, Auschwitz or Treblinka, were obsessively kept by their Nazi persecutors.
Imposing totally opposite, but equally repulsive beliefs, the Khmer Rouge to some extent followed the Nazis in fastidiously maintaining extensive accounts of prisoners’ identities and their confessions. Profile and frontal pictures taken of all new arrivals at Tuol Sleng, sadly thousands of these photographs were lost due to deterioration. Yet thousands of others have survived to tell their part of the story. Some faces stare with bemused detachment, others glare boldly through the lens, but almost all look back at you terrified and at a loss.
Possibly to compile information about human experimentation, mangled bodies of prisoners dying under torture were also photographed before being unceremoniously dumped in the prison’s back yards. The Khmer Rouge knew no boundaries when it came to insolence.
Cambodian film director Rithy Panh, who in his adolescence suffered immensely at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, has directed a dozen or so documentaries about the regime. In what was once a large detention room on the third floor, excerpts from Panh’s S-21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Bophana : A Cambodian Tragedy were being screened.
The most powerful element of Panh’s work is the reality with which the stories are delivered. No script written and no scene rehearsed, the camera is focused on the thoughts and feelings expressed by the guards and Vann Nath inside the prison itself.
Sitting around a table laden with documents, confessions and photographs, Nath confronts the guards that two decades earlier instilled so much fear and hatred within the walls of this dreadful place. In one discussion, Nath asks the guards what was it that drove them to commit all those horrible acts. Almost unanimously, came the answer they were acting under direct orders to destroy the “enemies” of Angkar. Upset by their reply, Nath again presses the issue. Why did they kill young children and babies? “Were they also the “enemies” of Angkar?” probes the soft-spoken gentle man.
Young men, as young as fourteen years old if not younger, were moulded into vicious killing machines who took the lives of even their close relatives without flinching. At one point or the other, most guards admit to wrongdoing. They were programmed to believe everything in the name of the revolution. In a sense, even the guards live with the spectres of this senseless genocide. They have their own demons to exorcise.
The driving rain was nothing short of a deluge. Having no umbrella or plastic cape, I decided to hang around until the downpour relented. As it was almost closing time, only a handful of visitors remained at the Museum. In the silent eerie atmosphere, the expressions of the people with no name seemed to come into being.
No doubt if they could speak, these people would impart the most heart-wrenching of stories. It is after all the rows of faces whose names most of whom we will never know that make Tuol Sleng what it is today. It is a trip down one of humanity’s darkest hours. Yet also one in which those who paid the price with their life plead for our sympathy and understanding. To remember that between being a victim and being a perpetrator only the finest of lines exists. Tuol Sleng will torment the soul, a revelation for us all and a mark of respect to never again.
Spending most of his life on the run since the Vietnamese takeover back in 1979, Comrade Duch, the notorious chief officer at Tuol Sleng is the foremost of a small number of Khmer Rouge members to be formally charged with crimes against humanity. There are differing opinions whether or not a small number of aging, ailing and unapologetic Khmer Rouge officers are tried before a UN endorsed tribunal composed of Cambodian and international judges. The Khmer Rouge still garners a fair amount of sympathizers and for this reason the trials have met with some opposition.
The fear that out of resentment these sympathizers might take up arms again and resume where they left off back in 1998 is a plausible concern. But what if they do take up arms again? Will the international community stand by and sit on the fence, just like they did the first time around? And shouldn’t the aging and bitter perpetrators pay for the heinous crimes they committed? Shouldn’t those who survived the hardships of the regime be appeased in some form or the other? Will the Cambodia Tribunal achieve one of its aims in teaching the younger generation about the terrible recent past?
Only time will tell.
