3 Years, 8 months and 20 days

On Saturday March 1st, we spent the morning at the Cambodian King’s palace.  There are 3 thrones in the throne room.  One for the King that he sits on once on his coronation day, one that the King sits on daily and one raised above the others is for the Queen. However, the Queen is the mother of the King, never the wife of the King.  They revere the mother of the King above all. Also, the new King is chosen by a group of (I believe) Cambodian nobles when the old King retires. The King now happens to be the son of the former and beloved previous King, but that is not always the case.  It seems that this King, who is 60 and not married, will not have children but because the crown is not inherited, it is not an issue to the people of Cambodia.

In the afternoon, we went to a Killing Field and S-21 prison. If you do not know, on April 17, 1975, after the American forces pulled out of southeast Asia, the communists of the Khmer Rouge took over  Cambodia.  There has been a lot written about this time but simply put, one quarter of the population were slaughtered after being brutally tortured to “confess” their crimes. Another million fled the country. If you were a teacher, engineer, doctor, lawyer, wealthy businessman, dancer for the King, worked in any government office or looked cross eyed at the wrong person, you were arrested.

The guide said all the confessions were written down for each victim as they were tortured and that for example a 19 year old girl once confessed to being a spy for the CIA and the KGB before being taken from the S-21 prison (which was a high school before 1975) to the “Killing Field” which was a place where they killed the people and buried them in mass graves. The Khmer "did not arrest innocent people” so very few survived and only 2 are alive today.  We saw one that was signing his autobiography at the S-21 prison.  He said in his book that he felt he must tell his story to try to insure it doesn’t happen again.

Those who were not being arrested did not have it much better. They evacuated all the cities and forced everyone to work long hot grueling hours farming in rice fields.   Anyone sick, weak or elderly were working slowly because they were a spy and they were undermining the work ethic of the country. So, they were sent arrested too. Children were taught to spy, even against their own family.  Families were separated and one had no idea what had happened to their loved ones.  The Khmer Rouge built things like channels and ducts for irrigating the rice fields based on theory without engineers or anyone who knew what the hell they were doing and so most of their creations did not last long. Idiots.

On January 7, 1979, the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea was able to chase the Khmer Rouge into the jungle.  All documents, books, records, history of Cambodia that the Khmer Rouge could get their hands on had been destroyed.  When the people returned to the cities, there was no record of who owned a house or property. The new government had to say the house belongs to the person who is living in it. People would live close to their original home in hopes that love ones would return, one day.  Some are still waiting.