What follows is another in the series of notes that can be construed as my efforts to make some sense of what is essentially a lot of contradictions. The fact that the same contradictions exist in our own culture only serves to remind me how much alike we are the world over and that we need to travel or experience other peoples and cultures to understand our own better. I will try to share with you some of the observations I have made of the curious, the impressive and the not so admirable. In this particular note I will share some of the horrific as well with the caution that it will not be a standard of my notes. The only reason I am including it inthis one is because it is such an integral part of this countries recent history. The rest of the note will be the traditional travelogue without pictures or film (until later in my sojourn) and will definitely be more upbeat.Yesterday, on “Bastille Day” I thought it would be appropriate to visit Toul Sleng, the former high school that was transformed into a torture center and detention jail by the Khmer Rouge during the years1976 to 1979. During that time somewhere around 12000to 15000 Cambodians were processed and about 15 to 17survived. I don’t know how. It was designed and operated to be an arm of the angkar (organization),which was what the Khmer Rouge called itself. There was no other name used, no individuals named, no other formal government listed. Pol Pot was not mentioned until later but he ran the whole show with the assistance of a few others. His wife was been described as having gone insane but not him, but I can’t believe that anyone who feared “enemies” as much he did, was anything less than totally crazy. And I mean that in the most clinical of terms.
My visit to the prison was made in the late morning on Saturday, July 14th, “Bastille Day” as I mentioned earlier. It was cloudy and looked like rain but thisis the rainy season and it looks like rain every day. I arrived at the front gate and saw two or three beggars, guys with missing limbs and prosthetic devices, holding out their caps and pleading for donations. This is not too common a sight in Phnom Penh or maybe I am just getting more used to it and can ignore it better. I entered the front yard and was impressed by ordinary everything looked. It had been a high school, a big high school built be the French several decades ago. It covered many acres andhad three main large buildings. Each building was three stories and had included 30 to 40 classrooms in each. My figures are approximate. There was a large central courtyard with paths like a campus and benches and some exercise equipment like chin-up bars and low stretching stations for what were probably physical education classes. All of the buildings are white and rather tawdry now since the museum people apparently want to present a less than attractive image and also to save money. It is called a Genocide Museum although these were Cambodians who were killing Cambodians. Maybe it was a suicide effort.
It is definitely a low-keyed operation. A guide was offered but was no doubt, an entrepreneur who is self-employed and not a member of the museum staff. I turned the offer down ad told the ticket seller that I might take one on my next visit but this time I just wanted to look around on my own. There is no system to follow not signs saying “Start here” or Arrows pointing right or left. It is a lot like the traffic on the streets, just go where you want to go. I went one building and read from a brochure I was given when I paid my $2 admission that the Khmer Rouge had cut holes in the walls to allow access from room to room. The first floors were primarily interrogation and torture cells and the upstairs were holding cells. Most of the rooms on the first floor had a single iron bed in them with an ammunition box and some shackles on the bed. I don’t know why the ammunition boxes were so common; maybe they just had a lot of them and they used them for food rations or body waste since there were no toilets or other conveniences. From the first few rooms I wandered about, occasionally there would be a large photo or drawing on the wall. The drawings were child like but showed a prisoner in a stage of torture or confinement. The photographs were badly done and the lighting made the images difficult to see. When you got close or studied it further it would show a person manacled to a bed or the floor with terrible wounds on its body. I have depersonalized the pronouns because in the pictures it is impossible to tell if the body is male or female. Children were not immune from these punishments either.
The focus was to obtain confessions about how the prisoner had conspired with the CIA or the Vietnamese to challenge the government (once again, no names just the leaders). You were guided in your confession by very strict rules:
1. You must answer directly my questions. Do not turn them away.
2. Do not try to hide the facts by making pretexts of this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Do not be a fool for you are a chap who dares to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Do not tell me either about your immoralities or the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification, you must not cry at all.
7. Do nothing. Sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you do to do something You must do it right away without protesting.
8. Do not make protests about Kampuchea Krom (an area of Viet Nam where Cambodians had lived) to hide your jaw of traitor.
9. If you do not follow all the above rules, you will get many lashes of electric wire.
10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.
These rules were posted and on large signs in Khmer. For the benefit of visitors, translations in French and English were provided. The entire operation was done with Teutonic efficiency. You would think that the Nazis had trained the guards and administrators. Photographs of every prisoner were taken and a list of the charges made. Clothes were collected and kept in piles. Photographs of the guards, the cadre, were made. Hundreds of these photos were posted in display cases in many of the other cells around the buildings. A display case of the torture weapons was featured. Perhaps the most amazing display was the bones and skulls of the victims.
I think I have given you enough details for this segment of my trip. It was discouraging and disheartening. I never felt any communion with the souls or spirits of the victims and I confess to having confusion about our (America’s) role in all of this. To describe these actions as criminal or bestial doesn’t begin to describe what happened. The pictures are forbidding; all of these prisoners looking straight at the camera, with wide-open eyes. I have no idea what they were seeing or what they were thinking. The pictures are of men, women and children. Young pre-teen children. Many of the guards were children, young pre-teen children.
I will end now, and promise that there will be no more missives like this one. I will tell you about the bumper-car traffic and my vow never to ride a bicycle or drive anything in this city. I will share some thoughts on food and how varied and plentiful and cheap it is. But, I will never go back to this museum and I don’t think I will ever be able to forget the impact it made on me or the questions about basic humanity it raised in me.
