Commemoration for victims of the KR regime organized by the SRP at Choeung Ek Memorial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vniZMHt5oTE

Opposition Leader Sam Rainsy's Speech on 17 April 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uctJVVHMvw

SRP Commemoration of 17 April 1975 at Choeung Ek Memorial on 17 April 2012

Touring Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields

For a project exploring the "origins of evil," what could be more evil than the genocidal regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia? My talented, adventurous intern at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sarah Collman, recently visited the Cambodian killing fields. I invited her to contribute a guest blog post:

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

By Sarah Collma

Foreign Policy

Perpetrators of genocide use different methods to kill and maim. In Bosnia, Serb forces lined up Muslim men and boys at mass execution sites, and shot them through the head. In Rwanda, Hutu gangs hunted down their Tutsi neighbors with knives and machetes. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge tortured their fellow Cambodians with farming tools and bamboo sticks in prisons, before dumping their bodies in mass graves in the countryside. .

It is an eerie feeling to follow in the footsteps of the executioners and their victims, and stand in places that have witnessed so much pain, horror, and death.

I began my tour of the Cambodian "killing fields" by visiting Tuol Sleng, the death prison known as S-21, in Phnom Penh. I walked through each of the tiny rooms and cells in buildings A, B, C, and D, which were used for extreme torture and interrogation, detention, and extermination from 1975-1979. Guards at S-21 beat prisoners until they were nearly dead, pulled off their fingernails and toenails, forced them to eat human excrement, and poured salt water over their wounds -- in order to force confessions of non-existent crimes.

Buddhism ceremony at Chheng Ek Genocide Center Invitation Letter

Killing Fields tourism [- The Shameful COMMERCIALIZATION of Khmer Rouge Victims' Tragedy?]

Some of the 8000 skulls on display at the Killing Fields of Choeng Ek. (Photo: Brett Wortman)

20th September 2011Brett Wortman
Warwick Daily News

IT WAS only 7.30 in the morning but the heat oozing from the tarmac left me in no doubt that I had escaped an unusually cold Australian winter and landed firmly in the tropics.

Moments before, I had been gazing in awe out the plane window at the landscape of endless rice paddies as our plane descended over Cambodia's capital.

Threading its way through the patchwork of ponds and paddocks and palm trees was the mighty Mekong River. This massive brown artery connects Cambodia with Laos and China to the north and Vietnam to the south-east, where it drains into the South China Sea through the vast Mekong Delta.

Killing Field tourism: Haunting memorial or gratuitous commercialism?

According to the text on the US$2 entrance ticket, some of the proceeds from the 300-400 visitors per day goes to a charity called the Sun Fund, which helps send students on scholarship to Japan. The charity is linked to the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), whose insignia is seen all over the country, including here at the side-road leading into Cheoung Ek.

Complaints about the commercialization of Cheoung Ek first emerged in 2005. This bench on the walkway to the rear of the site carries an advertisement for one of Cambodia's well-known beer brands. Others say that commercialization is fine, so long as the money is used to help some of the victims and survivors of the Khmer Rouge. 

Visitors to Choeung Ek, Cambodia's most infamous Killing Field, learn about the Khmer Rouge's murderous past in graphic detail, but locals don't benefit

18 May, 2011

By Simon Roughneen

CNNgo

From 1975 to 1979 an estimated 1.4 million Cambodians were killed under the despotic rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

The executions took place on what have become known as Cambodia's Killing Fields. The best known of these is Choeung Ek, 17 kilometers from the center of Phnom Penh. Here, an estimated 17,000 men, women and children were butchered by the Khmer Rouge.

It is a suitably grim and eerie memorial to those who died, an Auschwitz-Birkenau for Asia.

But unlike the Holocaust memorial, Choeung Ek is not a UNESCO World Heritage site and today questions are being raised about the benefit of Killing Field tourism for local inhabitants.

Choeung Ek is run by Japanese company JC Royal, which pays the Cambodian Government an annual US$15,000 levy for the site. Meanwhile, the five million survivors of the Khmer Rouge era appear to derive little benefit from it.

Many live on less than US$1 per day, an injustice that adds to the upset caused by delays in punishing the perpetrators behind Cambodia's darkest era.

Click here for a virtual tour of Choeung Ek.

Echoes of the Killing Fields

How far can Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge tribunal go? 

Thursday, 21 April 2011
Written by Simon Roughneen
Asia Sentinel

It has been over three decades since the nightly convoys of trucks that carried the emaciated, the half-dead and the terrified from S-21 jail in Phnom Penh to Choeung Ek, 17 kilometers away, came to a halt.

Whether or not the blindfolded and shackled men, women and children knew in advance of their fate is unclear. Some surely did, but all were murdered in this flood-prone former orchard, mostly by a blow to the back of the neck with an iron bar, followed by a knife across the throat.

The dead and dying were piled in the freshly dug pits, as a generator ran in the background to drown out any screams.

Now, a Buddhist stupa dominates the Killing Fields, stacked with thousands of human skulls dug up from the ground around it, where some 17000 people were murdered. Most of the skulls are behind glass, but some, lower-down, can be touched. Visitors light incense and candles and wait their turn to photograph this gruesome memento of Cambodia's greatest tragedy.

While this grim memorial keeps the horrible memory of the Khmer Rouge alive and gathers a steady stream of several hundred visitors a day, the effort to find justice for the victims of Pol Pot and his ultra-left movement remains slow. So far, only one man, the commander of S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng, has been convicted in the UN-backed tribunal that is underway.

While Japan largely pays for the proceedings, both the government in Phnom Penh and its allies in Beijing are wary of going too far. The wounds in the society remain deep and the potential for political embarrassment is great.

Trying times in Cambodia [-The sickening commercialization of Choeung Ek memmorial by the Khmer Rouge No. 2 regime]

April 21st, 2011
Asia Sentinel

Hints of a diplomatic tussle behind Cambodia’s troubled tribunal find their way to the country’s best-known Killing Field, which with better management would be a must-see for any visitor

Skulls of the dead inside the stupa at Cheoung Ek (Photo: Simon Roughneen)

CHEOUNG EK, Cambodia. It has been over three decades since the night-time convoys of trucks bringing the emaciated, the half-dead and the terrified from S-21 jail in Phnom Penh rolled into Choeung Ek, 17 kilometers from the centre of what was then a deserted city, after the Khmer Rouge forced all residents out to rural labour camps.

Whether or not the blindfolded and shackled men, women and children knew in advance of their fate is unclear. Some surely did, but all were murdered in this flood-prone former orchard, mostly by a blow to the back of the neck with an iron bar, followed by a knife ran across the throat. The dead or almost-dead were piled in the freshly dug pits, as a generator ran in the background to drown out any screams or moans or death-throes.

In (Sacred) Memory: Must Politics Obstruct Honoring the Dead?

The following column was first published in June 2007 in The Phnom Penh Post.  Since its publication, the 30 March 1997 stupa has been preserved but the Choeung Ek Memorial continues to ridicule us with its ghastly indecency of commercialization, foreign privatization and unbridled greed.  As victim Civil Parties think through reparations of provincial learning (information) centers and memorials, here’s a “what not to do” in terms of lessons for the future.  Not only that, we should demand that the government redress the Choeung Ek ghastliness.  – Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 30 March 2011

. . . . .

IN (SACRED) MEMORY:

Must Politics Obstruct Honoring the Dead?

“To those who died, we remember, to those who survived, we hear you, to the next generations, we must never forget." - Elie Wiesel

Lest we forget

The above mentioned quote by famed Jewish holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel serves as a fresh reminder – not only for those who survived and experienced loss under the Khmer Rouge regime, but also for the new generation born in the aftermath of the tragedy – to remember, reflect, and understand.

Our remembrance encompasses a sense of reverence and contemplation for the sacredness of life and freedom. In the face of deep mourning and unimaginable loss, we recoil from ill-mannered blustering and crassness; these sentiments reflect disrespect for the significance of human life.

Too dearly loved to be forgotten

With this in mind, we Khmer should do all that we can to make sure that the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (formally, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, ECCC) works in accordance to what is true, just, right and admirable, thus affirming all the values of life.

We must ensure that the Tribunal is not manipulated by politics to become a charade of justice, thus perverting the memories of our loved ones – Papa Im, Maman Eat, Auntie Eap and her husband of one-month Veng; parents of Loung Ung, Dr. Im Francois and Reach Sambath; relatives of Chea Sophara, Om Yentieng, Roland Eng, Sok An; family of the King Father, Hun Sen and Sam Rainsy; and 1,700,000 others – who would otherwise have died in vain.

Cambodia to restore 'killing fields' memorial

Choeung Ek mass grave (AP)

Reach Sambath, spokesman for the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, speaks to media about the printing of a book on the recent verdict of Khmer Rouge leader Kaing Guek Eav, as his colleague Lars Olsen, from the legal communications office, looks on, at a printing house in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010. The tribunal began Thursday to print some 22,000 copies of its landmark verdict of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the first Khmer Rouge leader to be sentenced to 35 years in prison on July 26 on war crimes and crimes against humanity. The book will be distributed to Cambodians, a court official said. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Thursday, August 05, 2010
AP

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia plans to renovate the skull-filled memorial on the site of the Khmer Rouge's former "killing fields" for the first time since it was built two decades ago.

Now a grim tourist attraction, Choeung Ek outside the capital Phnom Penh was where most of the prisoners who were tortured at the regime's main prison, S-21, were taken to be killed.

The remains of some 8,900 human skulls and bones are displayed in glass cases inside a Buddhist stupa-style structure, a religious monument, that was built in 1988 and has never been renovated, said Chour Sokty, the site's director.

He said experts will begin cleaning the stupa's roof, repainting the structure's white facade, cleaning an accumulation of cobwebs and repaving the area outside the building.

"We will be painting and cleaning its roof and the grounds. We will not move any of the skulls and bones inside the stupa," Chour Sokty said. "We want to beautify the stupa so it stays strong forever."

The Khmer Rouge were responsible for killing an estimated 1.7 million people during their 1975-79 rule.

A U.N.-backed tribunal last month convicted the regime's chief jailer, Kaing Guek Eav — also known as Duch — of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in the first verdict against a major Khmer Rouge figure 30 years after the regime's downfall.

Duch was ordered to serve 19 years in prison, a sentence that has been criticized in Cambodia as insufficient given the magnitude of his crimes.

Four other former senior leaders of the regime are in custody awaiting trial.

Tuol Sleng: Hill of the Poisonous Trees

Tuol Sleng (Photo: Tristan Clements)

Monday, May 10, 2010
Op-Ed by MP

There is a habit in most autocratic rules to invert conventional idioms and languages by hijacking their customary meanings and replacing those meanings with their exact opposite. Thus, we have ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, ‘People’s Republic of Kampuchea’, ‘State of Cambodia’ as well as ‘the Cambodian People’s Party’ just as we have ‘Security 21’ (S21 or Tuol Sleng), ‘Stupa’ of Choeung Ek, and now the excitingly named ‘Freedom Park’.

FROM a distance the Museum of Tuol Sleng looks much like most rundown building compounds in Phnom Penh. A former high school, the building was chosen by the Khmer Rouge to function as their foremost national security centre which they renamed S21 or Security 21 in 1975. It appeared where most prisons – referred to by the regime as ‘re-education centres’ – were spread throughout the country’s rural regions where virtually all of Cambodians were made to reside, Tuol Sleng was chosen for its physical proximity to the KR leadership as a soundboard for political activities being waged inside the regime in general, but more specifically, it provided the Pol Pot faction with a microcosm of what was at stake within the ranks of even this exclusive, tight band of close associates who had been together in one way or another since the 1950s. Among the thousands of victims who passed through the centre were also prominent figures and intellectuals such as Hu Nim who might have posed leadership contention threat to Pol Pot himself. Although, Pol Pot did lead a faction that decisively broke clear of the guidance and shadow of Hanoi and many commentators have since made references to ‘the Pol Pot faction’ as such, in reality, the man himself remained aloof and distrustful of most of his political colleagues and therefore the ascribed faction might well be – strictly speaking – misplaced.

There is something of a fateful coincidence that this aptly named location – Hill of the Poisonous Trees - was chosen as an incarceration site in the capital city otherwise emptied of its former inhabitants of 2 million plus. Yet there was certainly an irony in the fact that the leadership forcefully evacuated the city’s residents fearing espionage and enemies of the Revolution could be fermented and sheltered among the population, nevertheless, ensured that it had direct, personal command over its most feared dissidents by maintaining such an establishment in its own backyard. It was as if Pol Pot, himself used to a life of an incognito, could only feel ill at ease among the masses which had provided him what he most sought for his own personal security and protection: shelter and anonymity, yet at the same time dreading the same advantages that conceivably could be extended to his enemies, now that the table has been turned and he transformed from one of persecuted to Persecutor in Chief of the nation.

From this dialectic and pattern of thought beset by paranoia and fear that have underpinned Cambodian politics in the last 50 years; a perennial living condition that continues to shape present and foreseeable future political life, one discerns clear running parallels at work within the current leadership and its behavioural structure in terms of so-called national security decisions, notwithstanding its apparent relative openness and political inclusion. Where national leaders put in office through popular ballot in most genuine democracies have had to take up minimum precautions and means to protect their selves from possible assassination attempts or terrorist attacks, none to my knowledge has restricted public demonstrations to one confined single location, curiously named ‘Freedom Park’.

If the creation of the park is meant as a precursor of further reforms to come rather than a substitute for the citizens to bring their legitimate grievances to the notice of the government of the day by their preferred routes that could include marching in front of governing institutions like the National Assembly or the official residence of the PM, then it would be in line with democratic developments worldwide and accepted as within genuine national security and interest.

Many have pointed to the destabilising impact that on-going demonstrations in Thailand have exerted upon Thai society and well-being as an example to be avoided, but instances of violence apart, public protests and riots are the identifiable symptoms or indicators of a society in transition towards something far more substantive and wholesome than what it has hitherto been allowed to taste and enjoy: democratic freedom. In the 19th century the emergence of ‘Speakers’ Corners’ in a number of public parks and venues in England was also marked by public riots which led some observers to describe the event as the beginning of the English revolution, but if these observers were anticipating violence and bloodshed on the scale of the French Revolution, they would have been deeply disappointed.

There is a habit in most autocratic rules to invert conventional idioms and languages by hijacking their customary meanings and replacing those meanings with their exact opposite. Thus, we have ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, ‘People’s Republic of Kampuchea’, ‘State of Cambodia’ as well as ‘the Cambodian People’s Party’ just as we have ‘Security 21’ (S21 or Tuol Sleng), ‘Stupa’ of Choeung Ek, and now the excitingly named ‘Freedom Park’.

It is not comforting for individuals sympathetic to the current regime who otherwise feel they are nationalists or patriots, trying to do their bid to help the country advance socially to read this. However, overall reality presents them with a world far removed from their carefully inculcated dreams and indoctrinated visions. The country we know and love, the people and their smiles as well as their sorrows and tears are all real enough. But on the other hand, to suggest that the country is in their possession, that they have mastery over its destiny and fate, that the Party represents them nationally, that the Stupa is there to commemorate and honour the dead in the way traditional Khmer stupas do rather than exploiting their memory for political propaganda purposes, that Freedom Park denotes anything other than straight jacketing public expression of any kind deemed inimical to the stability of the regime, to assume all this is tantamount to taking a leap in imagination into the realm of pure make-belief.

This is far from implying that tyrants and autocrats lack conviction or belief in their own slogans - far from it. Belief can lead to conviction which could in turn harden into intolerance when confronted with contradiction or opposition where such a belief is held within, or derived from, narrow confines of temporal personal circumstances in combination with deep-seated insecurity and fear.

Take the issue being raised (legitimately, in my view) about the possibility of graffiti being applied inside the museum of Tuol Sleng itself. The man who brought his art to the museum is either being condemned for defacing this monument to human suffering or condoned for dramatising that tragedy by magnifying expressions of the dead on the walls of this former prison. The artist himself could have chosen a less sensitive place for showcasing his art, but whatever his motives, he would have found it exceedingly difficult - if not impossible - to do the same in other countries with a similiar past. Indeed everyone could have their piece of Cambodia if they are willing to go by the rules – Indian archaeologists and experts ruined most of the bas relief work at Angkor Wat with their acid like chemical substance that they used to ‘clean’ up the surface of the delicately carved gallery walls (why could not experiment be carried out on sample sandstones prior to the wholesale application of the chemical on the gallery proper itself?). After all, the artist worked in full view of the authority and therefore the weight of judgement (if graffiti has indeed resulted from his work) or censure falls heaviest upon the local authority that has allowed narrow political self-interest or manipulation to override considerations of national sentiment and collective values.

Cambodia stands today - three decades after the fall of the Pol Pot regime - like the Hill of the Poisonous Trees that is Tuol Sleng, a shattered, haunted society in desperate need of healing, but has instead found only the known certainty of its ill-fated past through tortured memory like the curse of the museum’s ill-fated name itself.

MP

IN (SACRED) MEMORY: Must Politics Obstruct Honoring the Dead?

First published in June 2007 in the Phnom Penh Post. May we be reminded of how precious is each life and do everything to preserve the sanctity of life. - thearyseng.com, temporarily from Boston/Manhattan.
-----

IN (SACRED) MEMORY: Must Politics Obstruct Honoring the Dead?

“To those who died, we remember, to those who survived, we hear you, to the next generations, we must never forget." - Elie Wiesel

Lest we forget

The above mentioned quote by famed Jewish holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel serves as a fresh reminder – not only for those who survived and experienced loss under the Khmer Rouge regime, but also for the new generation born in the aftermath of the tragedy – to remember, reflect, and understand.

Our remembrance encompasses a sense of reverence and contemplation for the sacredness of life and freedom. In the face of deep mourning and unimaginable loss, we recoil from ill-mannered blustering and crassness; these sentiments reflect disrespect for the significance of human life.

Too dearly loved to be forgotten

With this in mind, we Khmer should do all that we can to make sure that the Khmer Rouge Tribunal works in accordance to what is true, just, right and admirable, thus affirming all the values of life.

We must ensure that the tribunal is not manipulated by politics to become a charade of justice, thus perverting the memories of our loved ones – Papa Im, Maman Eat, Auntie Eap and her husband of one-month Veng; parents of Loung Ung, Dr. Im Francois and Reach Sambath; relatives of Chea Sophara, Roland Eng, Sok An; family of the King Father, Hun Sen and Sam Rainsy; and 1,700,000 others – who would otherwise have died in vain.

In this regard, we beseech once again the powers-that-be: please keep politics away from the KRT - for the dignity of my parents, your parents, your brothers, your sisters, our loved ones, and generally for our collective Khmer dignity.

Also, we beseech the powers-that-be: please de-commercialize the "killing fields" of Choeung Ek. The 30-year contract with Japanese-owned JC Royal Corporation to privatize this sacred ground is reprehensible and should be annulled. Please let the dead rest in peace.

The memory we hold of loved ones who have passed away is sacred. The memorial we erect in their honor is holy ground.

Easter Sunday 1997 Memorial

We, Khmer however, are in danger of ridiculing the memory of our dead, again.

On Easter Sunday morning 1997, four grenades ripped through a peaceful group of demonstrators in front of the National Assembly, killing 20 people and wounding 100 others. The demonstrators included garment workers, cyclo drivers, vendors, advocates of democracy, and political activists led by Sam Rainsy, demanding independence for the judiciary.

The first memorial, a stupa, was erected on 29 March 2000, the eve of the anniversary of the grenade attacks. Two days later, this stupa was found in a sewage-outlet on the banks of the Tonle Sap.

The following day, Sam Rainsy supporters retrieved the stupa memorial from the river and returned it to its original location outside the National Assembly.

On 30 April 2000, the stupa was destroyed on location, "pounded to rubble."

The stupa was rebuilt on May 16, some two weeks later, only to be taken and dumped over the Japanese Friendship Bridge later that night at 11 p.m.

The next day, the stupa was returned and re-erected for the fourth time. In the afternoon, it was "smashed by police who raced away with debris." Later that same afternoon, yet another stupa was erected, this time with victims' ashes and a Buddha statue placed inside.

On the evening of June 12, the stupa was destroyed by a bulldozer, injuring at least three people in the chaos. The injuries prompted the involvement of then US Ambassador Kent Wiedemann and a request to the King Father.

The municipality finally awarded permission to Sam Rainsy to build a new stupa, which was officially commemorated on 3 August 2000 and remains standing to this day.

De-politicize, de-commercialize memorials – they are holy grounds

I take pain to put into detailed chronology the efforts in establishing this stupa because the persistence and energy of those who fought to build it reflect deep respect and acknowledgement of the courage and sacrifices of the lives lost. Now, this stupa is under threat of removal to Wat Botum where it will be lost in the forest of other stupas.

Remembrance is commemoration. A memorial is designed to preserve the memory of a person, a place, an event, a moment.

The removal of this memorial to a new location will remove all traces of the event from the sight of the grenade attacks, and thus defeat the purpose of remembrance and a memorial. It will diminish the symbolic meaning of "honoring" those who died in the grenade attacks.

The stupa is not a war memorial; it should not be a political issue. The deceased were high school students, garment workers – simple ordinary citizens, not politicians – exercising their right to demand greater justice and democracy. Yes, the peaceful gatherers were led by Sam Rainsy, but their memories should not be politicized. Moreover, the place of the tragedy is sacred ground and should be treated as such in its remembrance.

The degree to which we value and treasure life is reflected in the way we remember our loved ones.

Whatever our political affiliation or inclination may be, we can join in the commemoration of these precious lives for their bravery and yearning for a better society. These are the values that all individuals and political parties – SRP, CPP, NRP or Funcinpec – should share and desire.

Hence, let us preserve this stupa in its present sacred ground.

Let us claim back the Choeung Ek killing fields for the dignity and honor of our loved ones who passed away.

Let us work to uphold the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to high standards of quality and integrity in hallowed remembrance of our parents, our siblings, our relatives and country men who presence we miss, memory we treasure, loving them always, forgetting them never.

Tribute inscribed on stupa those who died

"To the heroic demonstrators who lost their lives on 30 March 1997 for the cause of justice and democracy. The tragedy occurred 60 meters from this monument on the sidewalk of the park across from the National Assembly.”

• Chet Duong Dara, medical doctor/journalist, 29
• Hann Muny, bodyguard, 32
• Yung Srey, female garment worker, 21
• Yos Siem, female garment worker, 36
• Sam Sarin, bicycle repairer, 50
• Ros Sir, high school boy, 13
• Sok Kheng, female student, 18
• Yoeun Yon, high school boy, 17
• Yung Sok Nov, female garment worker, 20
• Chea Nang, high school teacher (passerby), 28
• Nam Thy, motodop driver, 37
• Chanty Pheakdey, high school girl, 13
• Unknown others.

We honor your courage and will not forget you, for “remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away" (Jean Paul Richter)

Theary C. SENG, a member of the New York Bar Association, former director of Center for Social Development (March 2006—July 2009), founder and Board of the Center for Justice & Reconciliation (www.cjr-cambodia.org), founding adviser of the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims (www.akrvc.org), is currently writing her second book, under a grant, amidst her speaking engagements. For additional information, please visit Theary's website at thearyseng.com.

Home Fires: Shaking All Over

February 9, 2010
By BRIAN TURNER
Opinionator
The New York Times

Home Fires features the writing of men and women who have returned from wartime service in the United States military.

PHNOM PENH — It’s mid-afternoon. From my hotel room at the Bright Lotus Lodge — only a block from where the Tonle Sap converges with the Mekong River — I can hear the keyboard strains of The Doors’ “Light My Fire” drifting out from one of the bars on the riverfront.

I’m lying in bed with a blanket pulled up over my shoulders, arms and legs shivering with fever, my forehead hot, my internal thermostat all screwed up. I don’t have a cough or a sore throat or diarrhea, thankfully — it’s a traveler’s cold, I think. The symptoms at the moment include fever, muscle tremors, fatigue, lack of appetite, nausea. What I would’ve called a really bad case of “the crud” back when I was in the military.

Outside, the riverside boulevard, Sisowath Quay, temporarily closes down until the king and his entourage drive by from the nearby Royal Palace. Things return to normal soon afterward. The tour buses unload their passengers near the palace entrance. Most of the foreigners try to ignore the man in the wheelchair, the man without legs who told me he lost them to a mine in Battambang province back in 1995. He wears a cardboard sign on his chest that explains he’s not begging, just trying to earn a living selling books (some of which I highly recommend, like “The Gate” by Francois Bizot and Jon Swain’s “River of Time.”)

Somewhere nearby a young woman in rags pulls a broken-down wood and metal vegetable cart with a man — or the remnants of a man — strapped to the wooden top. The man is moaning in a high tenor — an incomprehensible and yet fully recognizable pain, both of his legs permanently wrecked, bent out of plane by polio, perhaps, or some other disfigurement of birth or bad fortune, though I don’t really know.

There are a long line of people like this, street by street, trying to scratch out a living.

---------------

Photographs of prisoners at Cambodia’s S-21 on display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. (All photos by Brian Turner)

Earlier in the day, I went to S-21 at Tuol Sleng, the former high school that was turned into a prison and death camp by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s. Of the some 17,000 prisoners that passed through the S-21, only a handful survived. It is now part of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Raksmey, one of the drivers who sleeps in his motoremorque, drove me out there early in the morning.

As soon as I took the photograph above I wondered to myself whether or not I was repeating a kind of violence against these Cambodians. If you look at the boy in the middle row, third from the left, you can see how each person had a kind of brace against their neck to keep them placed for the photographer, for uniformity. I kept the photo — and I share it with you now — because Cambodians who survived the Khmer Rouge want all to remember what happened here, who suffered and who was lost. And to remind us that each generation needs to remain vigilant to keep it from happening again.

A former torture room at the S-21 prison.

I’m not one to talk about ghosts much, but there was a moment in the prison when one of the wooden shutters slowly opened up to allow more sunlight in. I thought maybe someone was outside, but of course there was no one. None of the other shutters moved at all.

There were bats, though, in broad daylight. Even at a high shutter speed it was difficult to get a clear, sharp image of them; they were shivering on the wall. It seem liked fear and stress and the spirit of the place had sunk into their bones.

Bats at S-21 prison.

After the museum, Raksmey drove me to Choeung Ek, the killing fields, on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Skulls of victims at the Choeung Ek memorial.

By the time I returned in the afternoon the shivers had already begun.

----------

As the sun falls at dusk and the twilight deepens into night, and I continue to sweat the fever out, I can’t help but think I am in the throes of a physical reaction to S-21. After walking through the prison, standing in the rooms of torture and death, the long hallways where bodies must have been dragged in and dragged out, where the photographs of prisoners stare within those walls both day and night, their eyes never closing, waiting for the world to recognize them and remember, how could I not be sick?

When I went to Auschwitz and Birkenau not too long ago I had a similar reaction. I didn’t get physically sick, but I couldn’t get the smell of human hair and death out of my nostrils for at least a week afterward. In fact, whenever I think of it, that smell returns.

As I head towards sleep, pale yellow geckos stalk mosquitoes and other night fliers with the pads of their feet suctioned to the windowpane. I know that as the bars shut down and the tourists stagger back to their rooms, the motoremorque drivers will tout for their last fare for the night, and, failing that, whisper “marijuana,” or “you want lady tonight?” But there won’t be any takers. The streets will empty of tourists and the rats will come out from their holes in the walls — I’ve seen them working the shadows behind the line of tuk-tuks and cyclos, scrabbling for remainders of produce dropped throughout the day from the pushcart kitchens. And as the rats begin to feed, the drivers somehow perch themselves for the night on top of their motorbikes and cyclos, swaybacked, reclining, some of them with thin, white blankets covering them, like dead bodies with sheets pulled up over their eyes.

---------------------

Brian Turner served seven years in the Army, most recently in 2004 as an infantry team leader in Mosul with the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division. His 2005 book of poems, “Here, Bullet,” has won several awards. He is the recipient of the 2009-2010 Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship and teaches at Sierra Nevada College.

Cambodians mark 'Day of Anger' at Khmer Rouge killing fields

Wed, 20 May 2009
DPA

Phnom Penh - More than 1,000 Cambodians gathered at one of the Khmer Rouge's notorious killing fields Wednesday to observe an annual "Day of Anger" and remember the almost 2 million people killed during the regime's 1975-79 rule. A crowd of government officials, Buddhist monks, survivors of the regime and victims' families watched high school students re-enact scenes of torture and execution at the Choeng Ek killing fields, where up to 15,000 men, women and children were murdered and buried in mass graves.

The May 20 ceremony marks the day in 1976 when it is believed Khmer Rouge leaders decided to transform Cambodia into a completely agrarian society - a policy that led to mass deaths through execution, starvation and overwork.

During Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia from 1979 to 1989, the event was a well-organized public holiday with ceremonies held throughout the country.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an archival organization dedicated to documenting the history of the Khmer Rouge, said the day was a hugely significant part of the country's path towards reconciliation.

"The anger has faded somewhat because young people today were not around during that period and did not witness what happened," he said. "But it is important to have this day so we can remember what happened and how the millions of deaths made us so angry."

This year's ceremony was held as the trial of the Khmer Rouge's former chief torturer continued before Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes tribunal.

Kaing Guek Eav, known by his revolutionary alias Duch, faces charges of crimes against humanity, torture, premeditated murder and breeches of the Geneva Conventions, allegedly committed while he was warden of the Tuol Sleng torture prison in Phnom Penh.

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Youk Chhang said the first trial before the court was an important part of reconciling Cambodia's troubled past.

"We have taken military action against the Khmer Rouge as well as social action, such as today's event, and now the time has come to take legal action," he said. "This must occur for us to become a truly democratic society."

Prisoners at Tuol Sleng were sent to their deaths at Choeng Ek, but the site has since been transformed into a genocide museum and memorial that receives thousands of visitors each year.

'Day of Anger' in Cambodia

Cambodian students (left) take part in a performance to mark the annual 'Day of Anger' at the Choeung Ek killing fields memorial near Phnom Penh. Thousands of people gathered to commemorate the millions of people who died from starvation, overwork or execution during the 1975-79 rule of the Khmer Rouge. -- PHOTO: AFP

May 20, 2009
AFP

CHOEUNG EK (Cambodia) - CAMBODIANS marked the annual 'Day of Anger' Wednesday to remember victims of the Khmer Rouge terror as the regime's top torturer was tried by a UN-backed genocide tribunal.

About 2,000 Cambodians, including hundreds of Buddhist monks, gathered at Choeung Ek, a former Khmer Rouge 'killing field' dotted with mass graves about nine miles (15 kilometres) south of Phnom Penh.

Some 40 students re-enacted the torture and executions inflicted by the ultra-communists under whose mid-1970s rule about 1.7 million people perished.

Performers wore black uniforms, the standard attire of the Maoist-inspired movement. Some acted as executioners, swinging bamboo sticks at the heads of victims whose arms were bound behind their backs.

The performance was staged just yards (meters) away from a memorial filled with victims' skulls and mass graves where thousands of the executed were buried.

Relatives of the victims expressed hope that some of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders would finally be punished by the ongoing tribunal.

Now being tried is Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, who commanded the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh from where as many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been tortured before being sent to Choeung Ek for execution.

Duch (pronounced Doik) is the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial, and the only one to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. Senior leaders Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Ieng Sary's wife, who are all detained, are likely to be tried in the next year or two.

'Why is the court taking so long to prosecute these leaders?' asked Tat Seang Lay, 47, whose two brothers were killed by the Khmer Rouge. 'I want to see justice. I wish the court could end up its trial process within the next few months.' A 50-year-old man, Chhiv Neth, who lost three brothers and his father during Khmer Rouge rule, said the leaders must be heavily punished.

'They are more cruel than tigers. They killed their own people like butchers kill animals,' he said, looking at the mass graves he believes holds one of his brothers executed at Choeung Ek.

April 17 Memorial for the victims of the KR regime in Choeung Ek

Cambodian Buddhist monks sit at Choeung Ek memorial complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009, during a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the start of the Khmer Rouge regime. Hundreds of Cambodians joined the ceremony, bringing foods for monks, to dedicate to those who died during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 regime, Kampuchea Democratic. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Chan Kim Soung, 63, weeps as she talks about her history during the Khmer Rouge time at Choeung Ek memorial complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009, in a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the start of the Khmer Rouge regime. Hundreds of Cambodians joined the ceremony, bringing foods for monks to dedicate to those who died during the Khmer Rouge 1975-1979 regime, Kampuchea Democratic. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A Cambodian woman prays Buddhist monks at Choeung Ek memorial complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009, in a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the start of the Khmer Rouge regime. Hundreds of Cambodians joined the ceremony, bringing foods for monks, to dedicate to those who died during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 regime, Kampuchea Democratic. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A Cambodian man and a boy walk in front of human skulls that are displayed in a stupa of Choeung Ek memorial on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. April 17 marks the 34th anniversary that the Khmer Rouge defeated the Cambodian government in 1975. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A Cambodian Buddhist nun, left, reads a sign for a grave at Choeung Ek memorial on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. April 17 marks the 34th anniversary that the Khmer Rouge defeated the Cambodian government in 1975. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Buddhist nuns contribute their donations in front of the human skulls that are displayed in a stupa of Choeung Ek memorial on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. April 17 marks the 34th anniversary that the Khmer Rouge defeated the Cambodian government in 1975. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Buddhist monks walk through the former Khmer Rouge victim graves with a stupa in the background, are loaded hundreds of the human skulls of Choeung Ek memorial in outskirt of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Binh Danh daguerreotypes of Khmer Rouge victims

Binh Danh created his "Ghost of Tuol Sleng" daguerreotype from archives the Khmer Rouge kept of its victims. (binh danh / haines gallery, s.f.)

Friday, January 16, 2009
Kenneth Baker
Excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle (California, USA)

Binh Danh's exhibition in the small room at Haines Gallery appears to present three walls lined with framed silver mirrors. But draw close to any piece and it reveals itself as only a daguerreotype can, its inherently negative image turning positive by reflecting your physical presence. Dark clothing makes the effect most dramatic.

This passage from foggy obscurity to knife-edge clarity has particular meaning with respect to the artist's background and subject matter.

Born in Vietnam, Danh has spent most of his brief career as an artist investigating, directly or obliquely, the human and spiritual aftermath of the American War, as they call it in Southeast Asia.

Several of the source images for Danh's new daguerreotypes, such as "Ghost of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum #1" (2008), come from the archives of the Khmer Rouge, the revolutionaries who took power in Cambodia and executed legions of innocent civilians, after carefully documenting them.

That the Khmer Rouge captives knew they faced imminent annihilation adds emotional heat to our view of their individual expressions. "Ghost of Tuol Sleng ... #1" shows a young man whose dignity appears impressively undimmed by his fate.

The Tuol Sleng daguerreotypes will strike with exceptional force American viewers old enough to remember that the Khmer Rouge, a fringe group of extremists, gained political traction only after the Nixon administration extended its already catastrophic anti-Viet Cong bombing campaign into Cambodia.

The antiquated daguerreotype process - which yields a unique artifact, not an edition - seems to set Danh's images even further back in time than the decades that separate them from the events they commemorate. He has complicated this effect by mingling images of Khmer Rouge victims with daguerreotypes based on his own photographs of contemporary Buddhist monks and ancient Cambodian temples.

Danh's picture of a Khmer region temple sculpture of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, brings to mind the question why spiritual forces did not intercede in the killing fields. Because of their subject matter, Danh's daguerreotypes reveal themselves, at least to American eyes, with the impact of memories, or faded nightmares, escaping repression.

It will surprise anyone who thinks that size matters in art to find that Max Gimblett's perfectly respectable paintings, which take up most of the space at Haines, are eclipsed in impact and meaning by Danh's much more intimate works.

Binh Danh: In the Eclipse of Angkor: Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek and Khmer Temples: Daguerreotypes. Max Gimblett: The Midnight Sun: Paintings. Through Feb. 28. Haines Gallery, 49 Geary St., San Francisco. (415) 397-8114, www.hainesgallery.com.

Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek, Cambodia: Asia's Heart Of Darkness

Choeung Ek: Magic tree (All photos: Sean Paul Kelley)
Choeung Ek: Shallow graves
Tuol Sleng: Nameless victim
Tuol Sleng: Nameless mother and infant

11/26/2008
The Young Turks (California, USA)

Today, with much reluctance, I visited the killing fields of Cambodia and the Tuol Sleng prison in downtown Phnom Penh. What I found there was a gruesome reminder that we are only one war, one catastrophe, one single mistake away from the cruelties than man inflicts upon his fellows. Today was a tour of the darkness reaching out for the darkness.

A note of caution, some of the photos linked to in this essay are not easy to look at. Click at your own risk.

I began my day in an internet cafe right off the main boulevard here in Phnom Penh. I spent the morning there wasting time, not wanting to visit the places I came here to see. Actually, seeing is an incorrect word, it was more of a witnessing. I'd had no plans to stop here in the capital and visit the sites of Cambodia's haunting past. I'd intended to move straight on to Siem Reap and see Angkor Wat. But Cenk convinced me otherwise and I am glad he did. When I finally plucked up enough momentum to go the day started out nicely enough, as I drove through downtown towards the outskirts. The poverty here is intense, as urban poverty always is. And the difference between wealthy and poor is a yawning chasm, shanties are perched over the river and lake but the wealthy hide behind huge barricades and live in palatial homes that would make any 'gated community' back home blush.

Soon we were out in the countryside. Flat, broken, fallow in many places, but ripe with rice in others all that greeted me was the dust in my eyes, screeching tires and horns and school children riding their bikes home.

We turned the corner past a huge cement plant down a gravel lane. There a large, modern stupa rose up off the Mekong plain. But this was no ordinary stupa, no place of Buddhist worship, but something far more grim and solemn.

The stupa is a monument raised up in honor of those who died in the surrounding 'killing fields.' It's about four stories tall and is literally full of glass cases filled with human skulls. These are real skulls, the last remains of the victims of Pol Pot's regime.

Lizards scurry across the dusty paths, a cool breeze ripples through the trees, a school playground filled with the noises of happy children surround me. But none of it drowns out the roaring echo of suffering emiting from this place. It is immense and total in its enormity.

The site occupies about 15 acres of land and is pockmarked with shallow crater-like holes, which once held the remains of the dead. There is a tree, marked by a sign, where children were murdered, and another where a loudspeaker hung, better to drown out the moans of the dying. A chemical plant once stood on the grounds, better to sanitize the inevitable illnesses that breed in such horrible places. In one spot is a glass full of human teeth, all that remains of several hundred victims, all women and children found naked.

I'm not sure what I found more disturbing, the sense of loss the place conjured up or the poor children just outside the grounds, begging for a dollar in exchange for a photo.

* * * *

After Choeung Ek I traveled back into town to the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Here is where the many of the victims found in the shallow graves of Choeung Ek were 'processed.' Tuol Sleng used to be a school, and I try to imagine the carefree voices of children in the front yard of the school, but I cannot. It is too grave, too solemn a place. Too haunted. The 'processing rooms' are awful. Many remain in the same condition they were in at the fall of the regime. A lone, metal bed standing in the middle of the room, the rules of torture spelled out clearly. All that is missing are the electrical wires attached to the bed for 'shock therapy.'

There are many photos of the victims here. Some are clearly terrified, aware of the fate that awaits them. Others are children, old women, young men and boys, all gone. Nothing is left but a echo of their life ricocheting off the walls filled with the grainy black and white photos of the dead.

Outside in the yard is a gallows--a gruesome reminder of what torture really is, not to mention a painting of a man being waterboarded.

Is there a lesson here? I don't know. How did it happen? Why? What was this young man's crime? Or this woman's? All I can say is that I left here grateful for the luck of my birth and continuing gratitude for each breath I take, as so many had both stolen from them far too soon.

A Day to Remember the Killing

A Cambodian villager prays at a memorial stupa filled with the skulls of thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge on display at Choeung Ek, a "Killing Fields" site located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, during a "Remembrance Day" ceremony May 20, 2008. Thousands of Cambodians including 500 monks gathered at the site to remember those who perished during the radical communist group's 1975-79 regime. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
20 May 2008

Thousands of Cambodians gathered for a Buddhist ceremony at the Choeung Ek “killing fields” Tuesday, in a day of remembarence.

As many as 20,000 were dumped in the mass graves outside in Phnom Penh under the Khmer Rouge. They were memorialized by a giant glass stupa full of skulls, where Cambodians made offerings Tuesday.

Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema said the day was necessary to ensure atrocities did not occur in the future.

“I cannot forget the brutality of the Khmer Rouge,” said Ou Savorn, whose parents, brothers and sisters were killed by the regime. “I pray for the killing fields not to return to Cambodia.”