“You really can’t understand how someone call sell their daughter until you understand the history of this place,” Ali tells me.
Yesterday we went to the killing fields. A horrific genocide has just ended here in Cambodia, and the wound is still fresh. While the killing ended in 1979, the leaders of these crimes were never prosecuted. Three have died of old age, I am told, and one is still living. It’s no wonder there’s little understanding in this society about the right to justice.
When we arrive, I pay for my ticket and walk through the gates. I am very aware that my heart is not ready to deal with what I am about to see.
Hiding behind my camera, I know that my coping mechanism is to turn my attention towards finding the best shot, the best lighting, the right lens, etc. As I walk closer, I am almost enjoying my attempts at perfect exposure, the use of a little lens flare from the sun, and a beautiful composition. When I get to the monument, the sight of 8,000 human skulls still does not shake me out of my “photographer” mode.
The other tourists and myself are all silent, trying to digest that these were once living, breathing, loving human beings who were brutally killed. It’s only later that I learn about America’s role in all this, and how it’s little known and certainly not talked about. From 1975 to 1979, a man who went by the name of Pol Pot led the Khmer Rough in the evacuation of about 2 million people out of the city of Phnom Pehn, the capital. The wounded were forced out of the hospitals to make the trek on foot, and some were even wheeled in their hospital beds. I don’t think anyone had a clue what was coming next. Millions of people were brutally tortured, interrogated, and murdered. There was no mercy, not even for infants.
The latest estimates are that about 2.2 million people were brutally murdered in this genocide.
The 8,000 skulls before me seem like such a small number, in light of the end result, but I cannot seem to wrap my mind around what’s happened to even one skull that sits there before me. Knowing that my emotions would be too intense to fully process in the moment, I squeeze my way through the monument, camera in hand, trying to find the best angle. I even occasionally flash a half-smile to other tourists. It’s only later, back in my hotel room that my heart is able to process what it’s just seen and heard. There are many tears.
The skulls are arranged according to age, and the sign that reads, “from 15-20 years old” catches me off-guard. I am stunned. There are literally skulls piled on top of one another around this sign. What did they do that was so wrong? Why did they have to suffer such pain, and even death? Why were so many killed?
These are the same questions that the Cambodians are still asking today. No one seems to have answers.
I read about the physical suffering of many, the post-traumatic stress disorder of survivors, and the lack of justice to communicate to this nation that this genocide was wrong and will not be tolerated. A trial is still yet to be had. No justice has been brought.
A reporter for CBS news writes, “Underneath the suffering is a thirst for answers.” I find that I want answers for them just as much as they want answers. “Liberty and justice for all,” a phrase we Americans have grown up reciting, is surely something that I have taken for granted.
