Another memorial for ‘Never Again.’ Genocides keep happening, following a similar blueprint.
Experiences over things. The mantra for my second half, because we learn.
Some of my most influential experiences have been at places I’d rather not have to go. I’d rather they did not have to exist. Battlefields. War Memorials. Concentration Camps. Killing Fields.
Reminders of how humanity has failed itself time after time.
Some places need to be experienced
These are places that should be experienced because they give a different perspective, a look at history with our own eyes. They make us think and feel. Mourn and empathize. Contemplate and appreciate.
So it was with that mindset that I found myself in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I knew only the basics of Pol Pot’s ruthless regime. I knew he killed millions to keep himself in power, and that most of the people lived in poverty and still do.
My little group stepped through the gate and into the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center. One of the many ‘Killing Fields’ that Pol Pot established throughout the country.
Of all the evil I saw that day, one moment stands out. Walking on a wooden path, we all came to an abrupt halt. Our hearts sank to the very pit of our stomachs.
There is a tree covered in little bracelets. The bracelets are of many fabrics and colours, representative of the different nationalities and creeds of those who have hung those bracelets.
We all mourn children.
A tall tree, with thick branches, green leaves, and a stout trunk that leans slightly to one side. The tree is very much alive, but if the tree had a soul, it would have died long ago.
The tree has a name. Chan Kiri. The Killing Tree.
The most striking reminder I’ve ever seen of the brutality humans can inflict on other humans.
No need to waste bullets on children. Pol Pot preferred bullets to be used only during combat. Bullets were a valuable resource. People were best killed slowly. As an example. As a message.
The children were swung by their feet. That way their heads would smash against the tree with great force.
The children’s screams would be heard all through the camp.
I cannot fathom finding out that your child died this way. I hope their parents never knew, although some might have been in the same camp. Parents would have heard the terror-filled screams, and even if their children were not there, I can’t imagine the thoughts they would have had. Somewhere, someone was doing that to their child. I don’t know the words.
Family separation is one of those mind-destroying tactics used by the worst people this world has ever seen. Sadly, it still happens today. Doesn’t even have to be war-time. The Trump administration separated over 5500 children from their parents along the southern border in the spring of 2018. Some of those children were never reunited with their families.
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime
One of the most evil genocides the world has ever known took place in Cambodia, not even fifty years ago. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime killed between three and four million of his people between 1975 and 1978.
Pol Pot saw a way to lifelong power and personal wealth by creating a nation of poor, repressed, peasant farmers in a one-society communist system. He correctly assumed that America had enough of the region after the failure of Vietnam. Cold War politics and a divided United Nations let Pol Pot ravage his people unchecked. The regime was eventually overthrown by the Vietnamese military.
It blows my mind that this atrocity against human beings occurred during my lifetime. I’m used to reading of these events in the annals of history, not happening when I was attending school. As my friend Renee put it, “So I’m watching Scooby Doo, eating my captain crunch, and this is happening?”
Yes. Anyone 50 years old or older was alive during this brutal extermination of human life.
Pol Pot dehumanized the enemy, convincing his followers that they were lesser beings than them. Vermin. He arrested teachers and banned books. He arrested the professional, educated people, and sent them to work in the fields. Schools were closed. Those remaining open taught a new curriculum designed to reinforce beliefs that would keep him in power.
Sound familiar? Hitler and Mussolini used the same tactics. Jews were ‘Vermin.’ Vermin needs to be exterminated. Trump now uses the term to attack his detractors and the media. This dehumanizing tactic has been proven to work in the past. Book bans are now normal in America. But never in history have the book banning people been on the good side of history. Go ahead, correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not. For once the suppression of ideas begins, the suppression of people is next.
Controlling the food supply in the Killing Fields
Pol Pot blamed outside forces for his country’s problems and recruited Cambodians to his regime with lies and rhetoric. The uneducated and poor gravitated to his lies, having no other voice to listen to. He completely controlled the limited media in the country. Pol Pot was following the examples of Hitler and Stalin, who did the same decades earlier.
Pol Pot took control of the food supply. A very effective way to force a population into submission is through starvation. It’s also a tactic Pol Pot used on those carrying out his atrocities. People will commit unspeakable evil if it means they will eat that day.
At the work camps in the fields, the workers received barely enough to live, and hundreds of thousands died from malnutrition. Anyone caught stealing so much as a mango would be killed. Slowly.
People do not kill masses of children by hand without having been forced to do so. By brainwashing (children of vermin are still vermin), by physical force (gunpoint or starvation), or through fear. (That child will grow up and kill you.)
Choeung Ek Genocidal Center
The site has been turned into a tourist and learning center. So that it may never happen again.
I wonder how many ‘Never Again’ learning centers humankind will need before we stop committing genocides.
An astonishing memorial of skulls
When you walk in the front gate, an astonishing memorial greets your eyes. Perhaps 60 feet high, made of concrete and glass.
Behind the glass sits thousands of skulls, neatly stacked.
The skulls have a coloured dot on the forehead. A chart tells you the cause of death of each of them. A purple dot meant death by hook knife. Blue dots referred to ear cutting. Yellow dots referred to neck cutting. Slowly. With a long stick shaved down to a dull sword.
As powerful a memorial as these eyes have ever seen.
The Khmer Rouge preferred slow, agonizing death. That kept the people in line. Agonizing death also kept people from committing suicide by deliberately seeking the death punishment to end their suffering.
Walking through the ‘killing fields’
Our group walked through the graves, keeping to the path. I run out of words to describe the feelings that the site provokes. There are none. Similar to when I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich. The air has that same feeling of sadness and despair that I wrote about before. The link is below.
Sometimes during the rainy season, bones would emerge from the soft wet ground. A raised path has been constructed so visitors don’t walk on graves or exposed bones.
The site contained 86 graves with between 20 and 450 bodies.
There was a mass grave with 166 bodies missing heads.
There was a grave of naked women and children. While there is no physical proof, it is reported that they were raped before being killed.
There were no limits to the cruelty of the Khmer Rouge regime.
We slowly made our way along the boardwalk trails. At intervals, our guide would add some context to what we were looking at. It is something else, to see with your own eyes. The air had that familiar ‘heaviness,’ that I experienced in Dauchau.
I’ll let some pictures tell the story better than I can.
Our guide lived through Pol Pot
Our guide was a gentleman of about 60. His father was a teacher. When our guide was 7 years old, his father never came home from work. He never saw his father again. This was a common thing, people simply disappeared.
Decades later, he found his father’s name on the memorial at Tuol Sleng Prison. The Khmer Rouge converted the high school where he taught into a prison. The prison has now been turned into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, in Phnom Penh.
Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum
The prison lies in the city of Phnom Penh. It is now a memorial and learning center. It occurs to me that the Cambodian people are treating the regime similar to how Germans deal with Hitler and the Holocaust. They do not deny or sugarcoat it. Cambodians face the truth straight on.
They do not celebrate Pol Pot. They learn about him and his regime. When I was at the genocidal center, there were two groups of school children there, about age 8 to 13. My guide told me that learning about the Khmer Rouge regime is part of the curriculum.
More nasty mind-fuckery
Using the same mind-fucking tactics as dictators before him, Pol Pot had the prisoners build their own cells. Brick walls for the men on the first floor. Wooden walls for the women on the second floor.
There is a row of larger cells with a solitary bed in the middle of each one. The beds have an iron bar with places for the feet to be shackled. These rooms were for interrogation and confession.
There were simple, crude torture weapons. The Khmer Rouge would torture to get the confession. Then the confession would have to be approved. If the confession was not approved, more torture while the prisoner wrote a better one.
That’s right. Confess or be tortured, so that we can kill you. Hundreds of these confessions were found.
Forced confessions for the world to see
The only acceptable confessions were the admittance of working for the Vietnamese, CIA, or KGB.
This way, the regime could hold your confession up for the Cambodian people, to justify your murder. Those confessions were also held up for the world to see. Show the USSR confessions that the dead were working for the CIA. Justified killing. Show the West that the dead were working for the KGB. Justified killing. Cold War politics at its finest.
Our guide told us about a story when a guard found his brother in a cell, and tried to free him. He was ratted out by a fellow guard, and both were shot. The regime had used a similar tactic to the Germans. Sow division and untrust amongst the guards. A bonus meal ration for those who rat out any possible traitorous behavior.
Turning people against each other is a classic dictator move. Sow division and mistrust amongst every group of people. Prisoners, guards, soldiers, workers, you name it. People who trust each other might conspire together. People who are suspicious of each other won’t.
Powerful prisoner photos
One of the buildings housed large boards. Each board had black and white photos of the captives who passed through the prison on their way to be killed. I never learned why the regime took the photos, I assume it was for propaganda reasons. Maybe to put a face with a confession.
The expressions on the faces were fascinating to examine. Some were young and terrified. Some were defiant. A few simply had looks of resignation. Some faces looked angrier than any faces I’ve ever seen. Full of intense rage, their dark eyes pierced through the camera lens.
There is a very large picture at one end of the memorial. Out of the 4000 people held in the prison, only 7 survived. These men had something to offer the guards of the prison. For instance, one man was able to fix a broken typewriter, so he worked in the machine shop.
Seven. Out of 4000.
What’s most alarming is the obvious pattern. It seems clear that Pol Pot studied history. He used many of the same methods of control used by Hitler, Stalin, and others. Methods tried and tested throughout history.
It never starts with mass graves.
It is increasingly important to remember that it began with book bans and the arrest of teachers. Sowing hate and division with propaganda and lies. It’s happening now, to various degrees, in Canada, the UK, the EU, the United States, and around the globe.
Any American who enjoys their freedom needs to understand that Project 2025 is the blueprint for a Christian fascist dictatorship.
If I was an American woman, I would sure learn what the Heritage Foundation has in store for me. Remember, before the Islamic revolution in the late 70s, women in Iran and Afghanistan wore what they wanted, were educated as they wanted, and lived how they chose to live. Then religion took over, and women’s freedom disappeared.
Where are we building the next ‘NEVER AGAIN’ memorial?
I can’t help but wonder what preventable genocide I’ll be writing about in the future.
Too many choices. Sudan. Myanmar. Gaza. Yemen. The LGBTQ community in the fascist states of America?
It’s not crazy. The current speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, spent two decades trying to make homosexuality a crime in Louisiana. Trump has openly said he is in favor of concentration camps. Anyone who thinks those camps will only be used for illegal immigrants is not paying attention.
I wonder what the memorial will look like.
Thank you for reading.
