Nomadic Narrative

Walking down the dry earthen path, human bones and tattered clothes bubbled from the hardened surface. A white-plastic, chain link rope sectioned off most of the visible remains along one part of the trail at the Chheung Ek Killing Field just outside of Phnom Penh. Walking paths encircled the 129 mass graves which scar the earth’s surface. Signs try to keep visitors on the trail and out of the graves. Thousands of men, women and children bludgeoned to death. The Killing Fields, a silent sea of inhumanity. I lurched, my heart sank while my chest tightened; at times, there was just no way to avoid stepping on the remains.

The Khmer Rouge revolution crippled Cambodia for three years, eight months and twenty five days. Pol Pot, a name associated with unspeakable atrocities, was known as Brother No 1 in the regime. In an attempt to completely restructure Cambodian society into a peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative, the Khmer Rouge purged the country of its intellectuals and perceived opponents. Many of their remains now sit enshrined within a tall glass tower tucked inside of a small temple.

“There was a lot of corruption and inequality,” said a guide who led me on a private museum tour. The Khmer Rouge “wanted the rich and poor to be equal, so we were all sent into the countryside to work, but equal meaning we would all be slaves!”

“The people who survived took care of their mouth,” said my guide. “My brother couldn’t lie. He said he was a police, and he was killed.”

The Khmer Rouge slogan: “clearing grasses, it shall dig its entire root off,” justified the slaughter of entire families to avoid revenge in later life. My guide considered herself a lucky survivor. There are different estimates about how many people died during this period. According to the recent United States Department of State-funded Yale Cambodian Genocide Project, the total death toll stands between 1.2 million and 1.7 million. To put those figures into perspective, the population of Cambodia was eight million.

Raw and un-sanitized, the Chheung Ek Killing Field brings you into an uncomfortable intimacy with the atrocity. While time has sealed the mass graves, the memory lives on with the hope of never seeing history repeat itself.
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