Indochina's Dark Past

Skulls of the killing field victims at the memorial

 Beneath the smiling, relaxed air, Indochina (The former French colonies of Lao, Vietnam and Cambodia) hides a history of sadness and tragedy. From French oppression in the mid 19th Century to the period of civil wars and American intervention in Vietnam in the 70s spilling  over into Lao and Cambodia, the regions troubles would be brought to a climax in the genocidal rule of the Khmere Rouge in 1975. As I sit and write beneath a beach umbrella upon a stretch of white sandy beach eating a mango, such tragedy seems so far away. Yet it was not long ago that this country was wreaked by one of the most brutal regimes in history.

 I arrived in Cambodia a few days ago, crossing between the two countries was like stepping into another world, a poorer and browner world, but one that puts on a brave smile. On my first full day in Cambodia I visited what was the most emotionally difficult place I have been thus far. Simply referred to as the killing fields, these were just one of the facilities the Khmere Rouge used to exterminate thousands upon thousands of their citizens in their four year rule from 1975. Today the mass graves where victims of the genocide were bludgeoned to death before pits at night are mere shallow depressions in the ground, but if you look closely the ground is littered with fragments of human bone, teeth. Every few months the bones are cleared from the surface, but they keep on surfacing, year after year, as if the ground is trying to purge itself of the evil buried within. It was a place of great sadness and quiet reflection on the atrocities committed here. In the center of the fields is a large stupa that houses the bones of exhumed victims piled high. It was a difficult sight to behold, but served as an important reminder as to the devastating effects of extreme ideologies when enforced upon populations and the danger of the decent into genocidal policies.

Faces line the halls

Next stop on my tour of Cambodia's terrible past was prison S-21, a former high school converted into prison, torture and execution center. It was so sad to see what this former place of learning had become. Today the faces of the Khmere Rouge's madness stare out from the walls of the classrooms, a product of the regimes meticulous record keeping, photographing every prisoner. Only a handful of the thousands of people who went in here ever came out alive.

These are my first experiences of Cambodia, but on the beach I see it is a land that both shocks and delights. Swimming, fruit shakes on the beach, dinner on the beach, actually I have spent the last 24 hours or more almost entirely on the beach relaxing, leaving only to sleep. It is an idyllic spot, it is hard to reconcile it's beauty with the depths of sorrow suffered here.