Holiday in Cambodia: a crash course on the Khmer Rouge Genocide (Pol Pot, It's Hot)

Sign at the Killing Fields that I think says all it needs to.

Seus-Day, or hello, in Khmer. I’m writing to you from Battambang, Cambodia’s second biggest city (I guess Siem Reap, where I’m going next doesn’t count as a real city since it was all created to accommodate the tourists going to Angkor Wat. It’s really hot and humid in Cambodia right now - when I left my room this morning at 8:00 am my phone said it was 80 degrees, and felt like 86. When I wrote most of this post last night at 8:00 PM it was 80 degrees and still muggy. There are all kinds of bug and bird noises. It reminds me of being in Atlanta or St. Louis in the summer, but with karaoke pop soundtrack.

When I first sat down to write this post it was going to be about what I saw while touring the S-21 Torture Museum and the Killing Fields. But as I got to writing I realized what I really wanted to talk about was the but Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Genocide in part because I knew little about it before coming here. The Khmer Rouge were the paramilitary group that held control of Cambodia for four years in the 1970s. They were led by Pol Pot and managed to be quite destructive. In Phnom Penh there are two attractions that most visitors to the city visit, the S21 Torture Museum and the Killing Fields. I decided it would be a great idea to join the group from my hostel on the audioguide tour through both sites for my second day in SE Asia...

To understand this tour you first need to know a little bit about the power struggle that’s unfolded in Cambodia over time. The first significant civilization in the area were the Khmer people who’s empire began in 870 and controlled most of SE Asia. Eventually they were overthrown by the Siamese empire and then starting in the 1800s everyone’s third favorite colonial overlords, the French took over. Full disclosure I actually don’t hate the French. I studied abroad there and was at a time somewhat fluent in their language. It was always rewarding when I would ask a French person a fully formed question with a passable accent and get a response back in English that was usually just “I do not speek zee Engleesh.” It’s as if they were trying to say “how dare you butcher mine, the most pure of languages.” I say all this because there are a lot of Frenchies here, and this has happened to me several times, though I will admit that on two occasions these these people responding to my French question in English had much better 2nd language skills than I do.

Anyway, back to Genocide. The French left this area shortly after World War II and just as nations were starting to be built good old Uncle Sam got involved in an attempt to stop the spread of Communism. We all know about Vietnam but fewer people know about the Secret War, when the American Government dropped a shit load (the technical term is more than they dropped over Germany and Japan combined during WWII) of carpet bombs on Laos and then Cambodia. The Secret War began in Laos in 1964. Unhappy with progress there the US decided to double the shit load and started dropping bombs in Cambodia in 1969. This continued until 1973. If you want to read more about the Secret War, Google helped me find this article.

The Secret War was basically a complete disaster and in Cambodia the chaos that ensued enabled the rise to power of Pol Pot, a brutal, sociopathic, quasi Communist dictator who was the head of the Khmer Rouge. Until recently all I knew about Pol Pot came from that Dead Kennedy’s song “Holiday in Cambodia.” Like most Communist dictators he believed the urban professional class were enemies of the people, but unlike traditional Communists he idealized peasant life. He wanted to completely destroy existing Cambodian society and rebuild it and called the beginning of his revolution Year Zero, a concept he borrowed from the, wait for it French Revolutionaries. Talk about nut job. I mean what kind of leader wants to steal the revolutionary ideas of former colonial overlords??

In practice this meant rounding up enemies of the state (professionals with glasses and soft hands like myself) and putting them in forced labor camps where they would grow rice. You can just imagine how well that went. It’s like a bad joke “what happens when you get an accountant, lawyer, computer programmer, and mid level manager together?” I don’t know what the punchline is maybe pets.com, but it most certainly is not rice. Oh and he also brutally tortured and killed people at hundreds of sites around the country. In his five years in power from 1975 to 1979 his regime oversaw the killing of 3 million Cambodians, about ¼ the country’s total population. To make an analogy for those of you from Oregon it’s like if wiped out the City of Portland and Washington County. For those of you not from Oregon, it would mean there would be no more food carts, no Nike Swooshes, or bird images. Ever.

Many of the genocide’s victims were executed in the Killing Fields, more starved to death, and others fled. In 1979 the Vietnamese army came and liberated Cambodia from Pol Pot and his followers. Pol Pot died in 1995 but Comrade Duch who oversaw the secret police that ran the S-21 torture site, and the Killing Fields, was tried in the UN Criminal Court. He is currently in prison where he will likely die.

A lot of the info I recited to you was relayed to me on a very well produced audio tour that consisted of somber stories accompanying gruesome facts. The audio tour ended saying that the Cambodian Genocide was not unique. Similar events have played out in Rwanda in the 1990s, Germany in WWII, and with Native Americans in the United States from about 1600 to, well I don’t know if that’s technically ended yet.

Back at the hostel, I wasn’t sure exactly what to think about all this so I ordered a $1 beer and talked to some of the folks I had just met. Later that night, when I woke up way before I wanted to on account of jet lag I looked at my phone to see that Trump tweeted that there would be no DACA deal and the floodgates opened. Like most guys I’m not much of a crier and I certainly don’t bawl much. I haven’t cried like that since the early stages of my separation. During this genocide over 200,000 people fled Cambodia for Thailand and about half of them were resettled in the United States. Fun fact, this is why donut boxes are pink (pink was the official color of Cambodia before this whole mess and many Cambodian immigrants opened donut shops). To think that our government is turning it’s back on Dreamers, who are basically Americans save the paperwork, is tragic.

And with that, I’d like to give a final note on the purpose of this blog from here on out. I am going to use this space to publicly share the observations and thoughts I have while traveling rather than a list of the places I am going. I may also delve into a little history lesson like what is above. I am realizing I could spend all my time on this blog and it would become a noose around my neck that at the end of the day I don’t get anything out of. Plus, I’ll still put photos up on Instagram of the cooler things I will be doing. I’m going to try to step away from posting on Facebook (yes I know they are both part of the Zuckerberg family of companies). Plus it’s very easy to upload a photo on Instagram but with the spotty internet here uploads are frustrating on Wix. I recently made my Instagram account public, meaning you don’t need to have an account to access it, and changed the handle to @brettsbatical (if you ever want to go to there from blog just click on the little IG icon at the top of the blog). The Instagram post that goes along with the S-21 and the Killing Fields is up here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhEOOtRHq-K/?taken-by=brettsbattical

Also, I had a few more thoughts about my post on Dubai thanks to some of you and have posted a summary comment there if you want to take a look. Tomorrow, I’m taking a 9 hour boat ride in the scorching heat to Siem Reap, the tourist trap that has grown up around Angkor Wat. I’m looking forward to hearing Ed Sheeran and Despacito and stepping back into the backpacker circuit. Wish me luck!

My temporary office

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