About the genocide

The past weeks Ingrid and I have held presentations at schools and NGOs about our stay in Cambodia. It has been an educational process to make these 45 minute long accounts of our expreriences. What do I remember, what seems distant already, what is it that I want to tell these people about the country I've spent half a year in. The kids in high school are at the age of 16-18 years old, so I try to ask myself what I would have found interesting at this age. I actually think it would have seemed very interesting and exciting for me at 16 to go and do something like we have done.

The people have usually been pretty quiet after our presentations, maybe a few questions, no big discussions or anything like that. After the last talk we had, a German came up to us and wanted to know a bit more about the genocide during the Khmer Rouge regime. We have a relatively brief summary of the historical and gruesome events during those years, but we don't go in debth on how this affects the society today. He himself said that it took Germans about 25 years to be able to talk about and discuss the Holocaust  thoroughly (or maybe everything regarding the Second World War).

He had also spent some time in Ukraine, and there he felt that there was a lot of tension surrounding the topic of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. There was a huge explosion at a nuclear power plant, spreading radio active particles over large parts of Europe (a Greenpeace report estimates that as many as 200 000 people may die of cancer as a result of this). Many Ukrainians he met avoided the sensitive subject altogether, some were able to talk vaguely about it.

One of my Cambodian friends said that it wasn't until he spent some time abroad, that he really got to know what happened during the reign of Khmer Rouge. In school he had learnt that there was a genocide, it was bad, but now it was in the past. When he tried asking his parents about it, they refused to talk about it. Other young people I met, said that their parents on the contrary thought it was important that the new generation Cambodians also carry with them the memories of the persecution and injustice.

In Phnom Penh the most common tourist sights to visit are the S21 prison, where an unknown number of prisoners were tortured and killed, and the Choeung Ek killings fields. There are many "killing fields" in Cambodia, where mass executions took place, and the bodies were put in mass graves afterwards. The Choeung Ek is the most famous one, and it is a very calm place surrounded by trees a little trip outside the capital. Unlike the S21, Choeung Ek is a less intrusive place to visit, you can walk around at your own pace and read the information signs when you want to... It gives the occasion to reflect upon the violence and the tragedy without having the horrible photos and blood splatter on the walls that you see in S21.



The memorial building at the very calm Choeung Ek killings fields.




You remove your shoes in respect to the spirits in the memorial building. (I trust that the spirits didn't see my mismatching socks as offensive.)




Memories of the mass killings. The skulls are displayed to remember the many victims in the mass graves.

I would also strongly recommend to visit the S21 prison, or Tuol Sleng as it is called in Khmer, just braise yourself before you go. You can also get very good guides when you get there, who can often tell about personal experiences from the regime. Some Cambodians don't want to go into the prison, because they believe there are evil spirits there. Remember to treat the subject of the genocide with respect, it can be highly sensitive for some people.

I read a lot about the genocide that took place in Rwanda, after seing the powerful movie "Hotel Rwanda".

 The two ethnic groups hutu and tutsi had for a long time had tensions and conflicts between them, and in 1994 hutu groups started the mass murder of both tutsies and moderate hutus. The government now states that about 1,1 million people were killed, and that possibly as many as 500 000 women and girls were systematically raped.

A friend of mine was in Rwanda a few years ago, and noticed how there was still tension between the two ethnic groups. One day she was with a Rwandese friend, and she looked at the people in the street. She asked the friend if it was possible to see who was hutu and who was tutsi. Of course, he said, "the tutsies are in cars or on scooters. The hutus walk."

Cambodia is a relatively homogenous society ethnically, so you don't have the same situation where one specific ethnic group is the perpetrator (even though the Cham muslims and the Chinese were especially persecuted during the regime). A good friend of mine told me that even though Cambodia has many problems, he is proud of how well it's going considering how recent the genocide is.