Black trash bags bump against the burgundy vinyl bus seats as she makes her way up the aisle. The bag in the left hand is full of cold hard cash, courtesy of each and every passenger on the bus. The bag in the right hand is full of passports. I am sure those go for a nice price on the black market.

Is this actually happening?!

This is real life. This is also how we are getting our Cambodian visa. The bus company we book has someone that helps the passengers acquire their visa and cross the border into Cambodia. The above paragraph explains their Six-Sigma approved trash bag process of collecting passports and visa fees. Albeit not the most efficient way of getting across the border, we do make it without any issues.

Genocide

Before arriving in Cambodia, I knew very little about its history. In the weeks leading up to our arrival, I started to learn about the genocide that happened in Cambodia during the late 1970s. The Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot took over the country in 1975. The goal was to turn Cambodia into a sort of communist farming utopia.

Over the next 4 years, Cambodian people were evacuated from cities and forced into labor camps. Mass executions took place within the educated community. Doctors, teachers, people with glasses, individuals with smooth skin, someone who could read and write well, and foreign language speakers were all sent to security prisons that were set up throughout Cambodia. The majority of these people did not make it out of these prisons. Over 4 years, almost 2 million people were tortured and killed under the regime. Many also died of starvation. This was roughly 25% of the population. UNICEF estimates that as many as 3 million died under the regime of Pol Pot (38% of the population).

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians were ordered to prisons around the country by the Khmer Rouge. One of the most brutal and infamous of these is named Security Prison 21. S-21 was one of 200 prisons scattered around the country. Of the 14,000 people that were known to have entered this prison, only 7 survived.

Today the prison is now a museum (Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum). Our tour guide explains how, as a child, she fled with her mother from the work camp where they were assigned near the Vietnamese border. They traveled in a big group at night and ended up making it to Vietnam. The refugees that ended up in Thailand were the lucky ones because they had a better chance of immigrating to Australia or the UK. Unfortunately for our guide, her brother, father, and sister did not make it out of Cambodia and were killed during the regime.

Survivors

Towards the end of the tour, our guide brings us by a few tables where people are selling books. Sitting behind these tables are three of the seven survivors of the prison. We purchase two of their books and I read both over the next week. These biographies are devastating. They give you a glimpse into the torture that took place in the prison. Normal everyday citizens were taken away from their family and chained up in a room. Every day they were beaten and interrogated, accused of being a CIA agent, not even knowing what a CIA agent is.

Bou Meng (pictured above) would have ended up in the killing fields if it wasn’t for his skills as a painter. The Khmer Rouge was looking for an artist to paint portraits of their leader Pol Pot. This is a difficult thing to find when a regime is executing everyone in the art community. The guards in S-21 made it known they needed an artist and Bou Meng raised his hand. In his new job, his treatment at the prison became less harsh.

He was needed up until the very last moment of the regime. At the arrival of Vietnamese forces, he was able to escape the guards and the prison just hours before being sent to the Killing Fields. Unfortunately, Bou Meng’s wife was another victim of the Khmer Rouge. His children are thought to have died of starvation in a forced labor center. Sadly, this story is just one of thousands.

Killing Fields

Killing Field is the term used for the many sites where Cambodians were killed and buried under the Khmer Rouge regime. The Choeung Ek Killing Field is 15 km outside of Phnom Penh.

This former orchard was the final destination of many prisoners from S-21. Brought in by truck at night, they were then led to pits in the ground and executed. Walking through the Choeung Ek, we both have an audio guide in our ear and learn that almost 9,000 bodies have been discovered here.

Genocide Effects Today

One of the more infuriating things we hear from our guide at S-21 is that many of the leaders of the regime did not face any consequences and continued to work in the government throughout the ’80s and ’90s. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge is said to have died of a heart attack in 1998. He was supposedly in a secluded part of the jungle surrounded by land mines. Whatever happened to tribunals and crimes against humanity?

This genocide wiped out an entire generation of doctors, professors, scholars, and people of many other crucial professions. It left countless orphans and widows in its wake. It really makes me wonder why I didn’t learn about this in any of my public education.

Phnom Penh

The city of Phnom Penh has a myriad of things to offer. Delicious food at Friends Cafe. An Art Deco Central Market with everything you need. Live performances at the Night Market. An explosion of culture with puppet theatres, traditional music, folklore, and dancing events. You can even grab a coffee and hang out at their cat cafe. My memory of these things will fade as the years go by, but Cambodia’s stories of human suffering and genocide will always remain crystal clear and have a lasting impact.