Trip to ‘The Killing Fields’

Georgetown University students on a trip to Cambodia

Monday 12/3/2012
Gulf Times

Students, faculty, and staff from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service – Qatar (SFS-Q) have touched down in Doha after completing a Zones of Conflict, Zones of Peace (ZCZP) learning trip to Cambodia, along with guests from participating universities.

The excursion provided students with real-life exposure to conflict zones and the methods and theories of conflict resolution which they have been examining in the classroom context in preceding months. SFS-Q students and guests encountered both the darker side of Cambodian history, and a lighter and more hopeful outlook in the recovering nation.

Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge, a political party developed along Marxist-Leninist ideological lines to achieve modernisation while forgoing the intermittent steps of industrialisation and urbanisation, and enacted genocidal agrarian reform policies in Cambodia after accession to power.

A romanticised version of peasant-led development and dogmatic self-reliance resulted in the absorption of urban-dwellers into the agricultural production sector without the tools and knowledge-base necessary for the shift. Along with drastic social engineering, Khmer Rouge policies lead to mass executions, torture, starvation and forced labour.

The Yale Cambodian Genocide Programme estimates the total death toll during the tenure of this brutal regime to be about 1.7mn, or 21% of the nation’s population.

The second day of scheduled activities began with a lesson at the Khmer School of Language. Locally-sourced mangoes were served alongside fresh verbs and new nouns. ZCZP group members were also able to visit the National Museum and Royal Palace, and in the evening they strolled through the Night Market, a riverside attraction for both Cambodians and tourists.

The third day saw the ZCZP group pay their respects at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Formerly a high school in central Phnom Penh, it was converted into a centre for interrogations and torture in which classrooms held up to fifty prisoners at a time. It now serves as a memorial and warning to future generations, through which 17,000 people passed on the way to their deaths. ZCZP group members were also able to speak to some of the seven sole survivors of the Tuol Sleng genocide.

Mass graves at Choeung Ek, made notorious under the term “The Killing Fields”, were visited with the guidance of knowledgeable Cambodian experts, who explained the historical context of the sites and artifacts.

“Walking on ground where recent rains revealed tattered clothes and shards of bones of people who had been piled into mass graves over forty years ago was a very powerful experience, to say the least, and it yielded some thought-provoking discussion at our nightly debrief,” explained Erica Haviland, SFS-Q Student Development Officer.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), in which individuals personally responsible for Khmer Rouge brutality are being tried. The ZCZP group was given a tour of the courts and met with the UN representatives of both the prosecution and the defense, both of whom were very forthcoming, providing insights into the intricacies of trying war criminals 40 years after the fact.