I went to Cambodia recently, and for the next several days the posts will be concerning that, as I transcribe my journal entries from those weeks.
If you’ve never been to the Killing Fields, this is the part where I explain it to you, minus the statistics. We’re supposed to remember the numbers, because the numbers give us the scale. It makes it all easier to process. We need to remember the scale in order to understand why all of this matters. It’s important to label the actions of the Khmer Rouge with the word genocide, because a genocide certainly took place. However, for too many of us, the word genocide sets things apart from the natural flow of history, as if the deaths of a few million in a few short years are a bizarre abberation, some sort of glitch in humanity’s natural programming. Maybe they are. But, then again, maybe they aren’t.So, forget what you already know for just a moment. From the entrance, what you’ll see is a simple field, the kind covered in weeds and wildflowers that you’ve probably seen a thousand times before. In places, the landscape is dotted with wooden signs in English and Khmer displaying background information and, of course, statistics. A beaten path leads you to a wooden bridge, and then the path continues, the dirt trail bending in a slow circle towards a wooded area. In the center of it all is a stupa filled with fractured skulls (8,895 of them) and faded clothing. These skulls belong to many of those whose who were executed here, from infants to the elderly. They were typically blind-folded and placed on their knees. Occasionally they were shot. More often, to save bullets, they were bludgeoned, stabbed, beheaded, or suffocated with plastic bags. Infants were either smashed against trees or tossed into the air and caught on bayonets.
It becomes more obvious as you continue along the path. Large craters that were once mass graves still contain scraps of clothing and shards of metal and bone; indeed, it’s not unusual to hear a crunch beneath you and look down to discover that you’ve stepped on a skull fragment. Further up the path is a glass case containing teeth pulled from the dirt, unbroken, yellow, looking deceptively canine. Soon, however, you’ve left the bones behind, and the path runs along a lily-covered pond. Trees bend outwards from its banks, forming a kind of canopy along its edges, and a gazebo is perched along one edge. Tourists stop and snap pictures. The thought hits you: This place is beautiful.
Before you’ve completed walking the main path, the children are upon you. They’re not allowed inside, but this doesn’t stop them from begging outside the chain-link fence that forms a perimeter. Shoeless and shirtless, they slide bone-thin arms through the fence, palms upward, issuing a chorus of “money please?” And, if you’re like me, you think: Maybe things don’t change that much.
Everyone who writes about the Killing Fields, the S-21 prison camp, or any f the many other sites at which the Khmer Rouge committed startling atrocities wants you to remember that the executioners were largely children. Scan a few articles about these places and count how many times you see the phrase “ages 9 to 15”. Maybe the first time you read this, it was shocking to you. Probably, you don’t blame these writers for including this detail. Child soldiers! The inhumanity of it is enough to make any of us hate the regime a little more. I don’t blame these writers either. I am one of them, I suppose.I thought like this too, not more than a few weeks ago. And as I stood in front of that skull-filled stupa, I heard someone much smarter than myself say the following:
It is the most unremarkable thing in history to make someone kill someone else.
Evaluate this statement for yourself. Consider that the watchdog organization Human Rights Watch estimates between 200,000 and 300,000 children are currently being used by paramilitary and government forces in armed conflicts in over 20 countries. Consider the experiments of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo. Consider that, under the right circumstances, anyone can break, just like a heart — quietly and easily.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/opinion/17bizot.html?8dpc
heard of this book? this guy? read your post and this piece at once.
a astand-still chill.
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