Tragedy in Cambodia

Call Sam and Dean to burn some bones of Cambodia’s angry ghosts from the Khmer rouge regime. Ok maybe I obsess a little bit about the show Supernatural lately but, this story is nor funny neither was the experience.

To give you a heads up on the Khmer Rouge regime. I need to tell you first about the head of this inhuman regime. Leader Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in China.

Mao's "Great Leap Forward" economic program included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies." Pol Pot following the leads of China , attempted to control every individual who might have been a threat to him and his new plan for Cambodia, which he renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.

He began by declaring, "This is Year Zero," and that society was about to be "purified." Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism.All foreigners were thus expelled, embassies, newspaper andTv station, were closed. Radios and bicycles were confiscated.Money was forbidden. All businesses were shuttered Thus Cambodia was sealed off from the outside world.



All of Cambodia's cities were then forcibly evacuated. Millions of Cambodians accustomed to city life were now forced into slave labor in Pol Pot's "killing fields" where they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease, on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every two days.

Workdays in the fields began around 4 a.m. and lasted until 10 p.m.
Pol Pot was determined to eliminate remnants of the "old society" - the educated, the wealthy, Buddhist monks, police, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and former government officials. Ex-soldiers were killed along with their wives and children. Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. "What is rotten must be removed," a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.
After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, Saloth Sar aka Pol POT (war name) finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-79. Source: History place 1999)


                  What You will see when visiting Cambodia

A dreadful reminder of the suffering that still goes on every time you visit what's so called now "Cambodia's attractions" Oh what an attraction! The name doesn't even begin to describe the horror of it.The killing fields, the S21 torture prison. that expose you to the unburried skeletons of people who died suffering from all sorts of torture. Or even worse. teh killing tree. Each "attraction" has a story to tell.

                                  Choeung Ek Genocidal Center 

       One of the various killing fields in Cambodia 

From the distance you will see a beautiful towering structure looking very huge  But as you enter, you see the ugliness and cruelty inside. Blame the irony. A building  full of human skulls at every level, from top to bottom you see only human skulls! displayed behind glass windows , and it doesn't end there. 

They also expose the victims clothes soaked in blood from torture. You would never imagine the horror inside that building because it was never imagination, it was real and you can see it and feel the pain of those victims as you walk by the displayed torture tools

As more people needed to be killed every day,there are many mass grave , people killed by chemicals and buried alive or beaten up to death. 

Who has the heart to beat up children to death on a tree? 

kids posing to my friends Camera

Kids Killing tree

                     Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum aka s 21 prison

 

A high school turned into a torture facility . The museum's walls are decorated by the horrifying real photos of victims as well as paintings by survivors. Torture can make you creative in so many ways.

The following pictures will certainly paint thousands of words, but will never succeed to do these tortured souls justice.

Writing the article was not easy for me, as I picture the horror, the pain and the cries of the victims in my head
I heard and read a lot about the Nazi Camps of Hitler, cruelty of Stalin, dictatorship of Napoleon,  War in Palestine, Riots and Human Slaughter, but never heard of the tragedy of Cambodian people nor felt its impact so closely.  what's worse is that it was only  less than 38 years ago!

Pictures taken by Bill

The Moroccan Bird

So I was  called  by  the  Morcocan Time newspaper. An article written by the very young and promising writer Cholay Amine.  Amine  took the time to unbark my tree and make my story known to the public. Quoting every word I said and giving me the chance to unfold my story the way I see it, the way I feel  it as I answered all of his triggering questions. I was glad he didn't rephrase it, because that might have stripped off
 the feelings I put in each word.


Traveling is a big school where experiences are your best teachers. You should go on and try it. Maybe then, we'll have more Moroccan birds to be proud of.