The horrors of Cambodia

03 Aug 2015  2046 | Cambodia Travel News

Soon after we sent off yesterday's blog to the Times of Malta we headed for bed, knackered, only to find that one of the girls (again, I'm sworn to silence) had locked herself and her roommates out of the bedroom and with no master key available, we had to re-organise our sleeping arrangements and squash in.
It was the last thing we needed after our grueling journey from Malta but a great bonding opportunity. Sort of.
We don't start teaching till Monday so today was spent putting into context the recent history of Cambodia which we were already familiar with.
Going to Tuol Sleng, or S-21 as it is notoriously known, was never going to be easy. We'd been there before but the magnitude of the horrors and suffering of the Cambodians under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge remains as shocking as ever.
S-21 was originally a high school, a place of learning, but when the Khmer Rouge took over they transformed it into a frighteningly efficient torture factory like no other. 21,000 men, women and children lost their lives here or at Choeung Ek, the infamous Killing Fields, 15km South of the capital.
The intention behind the tortures - which included near drownings, beatings, electric shocks, hangings and even the tearing off of finger nails and nipples - was simply to extract more names of innocent people who couldn't possibly be, by any stretch of the imagination, Vietnamese or CIA agents.
But with dictatorial despots comes unreasonable paranoia, and Pol Pot's propaganda was that it was better to kill 100 innocents than let one agent live. They would tell their prisoners "To let you live is of no benefit. To let you die is no loss" and this would apply to the children and babies who, paranoia dictates, may have grown up wanting to avenge the cruel deaths of their parents and siblings.
Once the names of potential enemies of the State were extracted, the prisoners were transported by the truckload at night to The Killing Fields where they were bludgeoned to death and tossed into a mass grave. Those who survived the beatings would have their throats slit. Those who pretended to be dead were buried alive anyway.
By the time Vietnamese "liberated" Cambodia from the claws of the Khmer Rouge, according to figures issued by UNICEF, up to three million men, women, children and babies had perished.
I don't believe that there is anyone alive in Cambodia today who has not been directly affected by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The mother of our young guide, Vann, lost her parents, three sisters and one brother to the Khmer Rouge. She worked in the fields but with little sustenance soon fell ill and was taken to a make-shift clinic run by inexperienced teenagers.
Many of the patients there perished but Vann's mother had hidden her wedding ring which she was able to exchange for medicine. She returned to work before she had fully recovered because the sick were considered to be parasites of the State - eating with no contribution to the system.
Left with no money and no education to speak of Vann was raised in an orphanage run by Mr Chhiv, who will feature extensively in my blogs as he is the amazing and charismatic director of LRDE where we will be working as of Monday.
Physically drained, we returned to our residence at VCDO where we all tried to have a little nap. But it's been an emotional day and by the time I nodded off, the heavens opened and poured a deluge of rain onto the streets.
Monsoon season is fun because, simply, we're just not used to it, but the temperature does go down a notch after the rains, however, the humidity does rise, giving anybody with hair a bit of a frizz. Unfortunately this does not apply to me.
5.30 in the evening and we've just finished a very productive meeting with our friend and organiser, Pel Sophorn, The objective was to plan the days ahead, pack in some important meetings and decide on some special activities for the children we will be working with.
Mission accomplished, and we have some exciting times ahead.

sourced:timesofmalta.com

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