How the Historical Facts of Cambodia Impacted Cambodians

By what reason Cambodians live in such a bad condition of living? Coming back to Korea, we tried to figure out the reason by reminding what we saw and listened in Toul Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields.

In Vietnam War 1960s, the United States needed a political power to contain North Vietnam. An armed radical political organization in Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (KR), was suitable to the aim of the United States. Received a magnificent financial support of Nixon administration, KR tried to spread out its power from countryside of Cambodia. In 1975, finally, KR led by Pol Pot (1925~1998) succeeded to hold dominion over Cambodia.

After grabbing its political power in Cambodia, KR started to arrest and to torture the people whom it considered as intellectuals or bourgeois. The standards to pick out intellectuals were ridiculous: the intellectuals for them were the people who had smooth hand, who wore glasses, who knew foreign languages, and so on. They arrested and killed the people over 1.7 million. Considering that the population of Cambodia then was 7 million, about 25% of Cambodian population was killed in KR regime, which lasted only for 4 years. We arrived at Toul Sleng Genocide Museum in the afternoon of June 4, 2007. Although it was a ��genocide�� museum, white big flowers bloomed under the hot but bright sunshine.

Arrested people had to live in very pitiful living conditions of the prison like Toul Sleng. Toul Sleng consisted of 3 buildings: Building A, B, and C. In building A, there were a number of rooms, which each had a wooden bed and an iron equipment to tie prisoners�� hands and feet. It was said that the rooms were used to torture the officials before KR regime. A photograph which depicted dead officials on the bed was hung on the wall of each room. It was a horrible scene.

The photographs of the victims were displayed in Building B. KR regime thought that the clothes of the prisoners have germs of bourgeoisie, so it made the prisoners take off all of their clothes except underwear and offered a uniform for prisoners. The clothes in a box which was made of glasses seemed to tell us the miserable lives of the prisoners before 30 years.

There were a great number of rooms which had area of under 2 square meters in Building C. Also, pictures depicting how KR regime officials tortured the prisoners were displayed there. The officials tortured prisoners on the gallows of the school, and carried them hanging on the stick like a barbeque. There were big photographs of Pol Pot and his followers on the second floor of the building. We found many words of curse and abuse written on them in Khmer. Pol Pot��s photograph had not been there already.

KR regime officials killed a great number of people in the Killing Fields. The Killing Fields were fields where numerous people killed in very cruel ways and buried. When we approached to the Killing Fields, we found a tall monument of the victims overwhelm us. In the monument, skulls of the victims were displayed according to the victims�� ages. A sentence on the monument made us solemn: ��Would you please kindly show your respect to many million people who were killed under the genocidal Pol Pot regime?��

The prisoners drove loaded on the truck from the prisons like Toul Sleng were killed and buried here. Since the people had to kill were over 300 per day, even a detention was made. We saw there were several deep hollows on the ground. A Cambodian university student said to us that these hollows were where the victims had been buried with hundreds of people. KR regime officials killed women naked, infants beaten on a tree. Any loudspeaker was hanged to die.

From 1978, KR regime started to arrest and kill most of teachers and doctors throughout the nation. As a result, human resources to teach young Cambodians and to give medical treatment were almost depleted. Especially, the percentage of the teachers who were killed by KR regime was over 90% of the whole number of the teachers then.

KR regime committed several more acts of brutality. First, KR regime forced the citizens over 2 million who were living in Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia) to migrate to countryside and to serve KR. While migrate, many infants and old people died because of hunger and malaria. Second, KR regime destroyed a great number of municipal facilities. Third, KR regime destroyed many systems of religions and economies. Fourth, they enforced to process a wrong construction plan of aqueduct; many lands to farm were destroyed. We thought about our concern of leadership.

Although it was fact that the U.S. provided the power of Khmer Rouge at the beginning, the problem was in Pol Pot��s hand. His tyranny evolved from his torturing of executives in his party who had different opinion from his. From that point, Pol Pot started to believe that some kinds of germs of thought invaded their society and infected it. So he started to commit his terrible genocide. Did the 1.7 million have to die for such a small reason?