The sun was setting as I stood alone on the rooftop deck of a downtown hotel and looked out over the Cambodian capitol city Phnom Penh. It was still hot as evening shadows began to fill the streets below and there was a gusty, unsettled wind that seemed to mirror my mood. It had been a day of intense emotions.
If you ask most westerners what they know about Cambodia, chances are they will say the killing fields. But they have no idea of what really happened or the role the United States played in paving the way for genocide to occur. A brief timeline is therefore useful:
1965: Vietnamese communists fighting the United States establish bases in eastern Cambodia. Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk breaks off relations with the US and throws his support behind the North Vietnamese.
1967: Pol Pot, a western trained teacher and former monk, initiates a rebellion against King Sihanouk. His forces adopt the name Khmer Rouge.
1969: The United States launches an illegal bombing campaign against Vietnamese bases in Cambodia. The bombing, which continues for many years, is kept secret from the US Congress and citizens. More bombs are dropped in Cambodia than in Germany during WWII. Minimally, 150,000 civilians, mostly non-combatant subsistence farmers, are killed. Pol Pot effectively uses the bombing as a recruitment tool for his Khmer Rouge rebels. At the same time, the US begins a covert campaign to overthrow King Sihanouk and replace him with a leader who will be easier to manipulate.
1970: US backed coup against King Sihanouk is successful. Lon Nol takes over control of the Cambodian government. King Sihanouk is exiled. Seeking a path back to the throne, Sihanouk throws his support behind Pol Pot. Pol Pot, seeing Sihanouk as a person who can be exploited, effectively incorporates those loyal to the king into the Khmer Rouge.
1975: Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge defeat the US backed forces of Lon Nol and initiate the genocide we associate with the killing fields. Sihanouk is betrayed and does not return to power. The expansion minded Khmer Rouge begin bloody border wars with Thailand, Laos and Viet Nam. Viet Nam fights back with an effective invasion of Cambodia.
1979: Vietnamese troops depose Pol Pot who escapes to the countryside and continues fighting with a dwindling band of loyalists until his death from natural causes in 1998.
The day began as one of those you just know is going to be hot. As I boarded the bus to the village of Choeung Ek I was grateful to be getting getting an early start. The trip took me past the dusty savannah I had come to associate with Cambodia. We passed a number of small farms separated by dry marshlands which fill with water during the rainy season. As the bus drew closer to my destination, we passed a number of large factories, Foxconn, Fuji, Samsung and others whose brand you would recognize. Finally, we turned down a wide dirt road and after a few minutes reached the Choeung Ek killing field; one of 150 mass grave sites located all across Cambodia.
Say what you will about Pol Pot, he was a man with a vision. He believed there once existed a Golden Age of Khmer culture in which all citizens were peasant farmers, living in peace and happiness in a wholly agricultural society free of all corrupting influences. To that end, he set about cleansing the country of anything and anyone he believed to be defiled. Cities were unnecessary in an agrarian paradise. Residents were forced from their homes onto rural collective farms where tens of thousands died from famine, disease and slave labor. Educated people were not useful. Anyone who could read, who had a white collar job or could speak a foreign language was killed. Simply wearing glasses was enough to label one an intellectual who must be eliminated. Religion was a corrupting influence. Monasteries were looted and burned. An estimated 95% of all the monks were killed. Modern conveniences were antithetical to a primitive agrarian utopia and were destroyed. Power plants, water filtration systems, motor vehicles, televisions, radios, phones, refrigerators, air conditioning units, books, newspapers, printing presses, anything modern had to go. In less that four years, approximately 2,000,000 people, one quarter of the Cambodian population, were killed and all of the systems and institutions normally associated with a functioning society collapsed.
It was quiet at the Choeung Ek killing field. The tour busses had not yet arrived and there were only a few vendors setting up their stalls. Birds were singing and wind rustled in the dry leaves. I was struck by the peacefulness of the place yet keenly aware of the horror that had occurred here. The area encompassed several acres and was a moonscape of shallow pits which once served as mass graves. Boardwalks and dirt paths led between the pits. Signs in English and Cambodian identified certain landmarks… This is the tree from which they hung loud speakers to drown out the sounds of the massacres…. Here is a pit that was filled with headless bodies thought to be Khmer Rouge soldiers who refused to take part in the killings…. This is a pit where only bodies of women and children were found. In recent times, effort was made to exhume the remains from these mass graves but it is said that after each rain, new discoveries are made. This was much in evidence as I walked the fields. Scattered here and there were piles of human bones and stacks of tattered clothing that had been removed from the pits by volunteers. And in many of the pits one could see bones and rags awaiting removal. At the center of the field was a ten story high rise ossuary filled with the bones of those who died here.
By noon, the temperature had risen to over 100F. The humidity was oppressive and my mood was dark. Pol Pot’s mood must have been dark, too, when the anticipated agrarian paradise failed to materialize. The failure, he concluded was not the result of any flaw in his vision. It was due to enemies in the ranks of the Khmer Rouge who were sabotaging his work. The traitors must be identified and eliminated. To that end, he began a purge of the Khmer Rouge ranks that became the second phase of the genocide.
The Tuol Sleng or S-21 prison sits in the middle of a working class neighborhood in Phenom Penh. In Pol Pot’s day, it was outside of town. The complex consists of three, 3-story buildings surrounding a grassy central courtyard. Before the Khmer Rouge, it served as a high school. But try as I might, I could not visualize students at their lessons, playing soccer on the green or socializing between classes. The classrooms themselves were subdivided into cells scarcely large enough for one person. Ground floor classrooms were converted to torture chambers. Other rooms were lined, floor to ceiling with the photographs of prisoners and guards. Like the Nazis before them, the Khmer Rouge kept detailed records of everyone who passed through this horrible place. Of the estimated 20,000 prisoners who entered the complex, only seven are known to have survived. It is worth mentioning that over 80% of the prisoners who passed through S-21 were loyal members of the Khmer Rouge who had been instrumental in helping carry out the genocide. Their crime was failing to deliver on Pol Pot’s utopian vision.
As I stood alone the dark, watching the lights come on all across Phenom Penh, I tried in vain to imagine what this city must have looked like in the late 1970’s when it was completely deserted. And in doing so, my thoughts turned to Preah Maha Ghosananda. Preah Maha Ghosananda was a Cambodian monk in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. He survived the genocide by virtue of the fact he was studying in Thailand when the massacres occurred. His entire family down to his uncles and aunties were killed. After witnessing the dire circumstances of the refugees streaming into Thailand, Venerable Ghosananda established humanitarian systems in the refugee camps. Later, he set off on a peace march through Khmer Rouge occupied areas of Cambodia accompanied by other monks and committed lay people. At the time, simply wearing monk’s robes in Cambodia was grounds for imprisonment, torture and execution. Several marchers were shot and killed. Others died when they stepped on land mines or received crippling injuries. But they persevered and walked across the entire country from Thailand to Viet Nam. And along the way, Vernerable Ghosananda talked to the traumatized villagers about Dhamma including mindfulness and loving kindness. Each year thereafter until he was no longer physically able, Venerable Ghosananda repeated this peace walk bringing his message of kindness to a people who had known only cruelty and death.
So, as I watched the stars come out over Phenom Penh, I struggled with the question: How can a species that produced Pol Pot also produce Preah Maha Ghosananda? In a 2003 interview, Venerable Ghosananda himself was asked a similar question. His response was simple and to the point: “Great compassion makes a peaceful heart. A peaceful heart makes a peaceful person. A peaceful person makes a peaceful family. A peaceful family makes a peaceful community. A peaceful community makes a peaceful nation. A peaceful nation makes a peaceful world. Everything comes from the Dhamma.”
But don’t take my word for it. Investigate for yourselves.
Take care.