A weekend in Phnom Penh.

 

*** Musings over beer at the FCCC ***

 

Incongruous. I was drinking beer at a table overlooking the Tonle-Sap River, just before it flows in to the Mekong (or before the Mekong flows in to it, as happens sometime during the year). The table was on the second floor of an old French colonial building that now houses the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia (FCCC). The barman had selected Italian pop, of all things. I was probably the only person in the bar to have figured out that it was Italian pop; the melody was being sung by some woman I have never heard of. The music was quite soft and was nearly drowned by Buddhist chants being blasted out of the speakers at a temple across the river, over a mile away. Buddhist chants and Italian pop. Incongruous. The perfect adjective for Cambodia. In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge overpowered the last of the Lon Nol troops, and entered the capital Phnom Penh, they forcibly evacuated all the inhabitants, and sent them either to their deaths or to the countryside to work as slaves in the rice paddies (where most of them died anyway). The city was literally a ghost town in 1979, when the Vietnamese arrived, driving out the few remnants of the murderous Khmer Rouge administration. The photographs taken of the city just after the Vietnamese occupation show dilapidated buildings, overgrown with vegetation, and trees growing in the middle of what were once wide boulevards. A potentially new Angkor Wat Ð a city about to be covered by jungle. There were other, far more sinister things that were uncovered by the Vietnamese, but more on those later.

 

Since then people have returned. The Vietnamese eventually left in 1990 (after Gorbachev stopped funding them), and in 1992 Cambodia faced another invasion of sorts: the do-gooders of the United Nations. The ÒInternational CommunityÓ as the non-Cambodian (or non-Rwandan, or non-Balkan, or non-citizens-of-some-other-completely-screwed-up-place) taxpayers are called, decided that Cambodia needed Western democracy. Just like that. After centuries of corrupt monarchies, incompetent governments, and lastly the most unbelievably inhuman regime the world has ever seen, Cambodians were going to get on the right track at last because the UN had decided that free elections were going to bring instant happiness to the country. Cambodia needed (and still does need) infrastructure. The UN spent 2 billion US $ on elections, and amenities for the UN staff that would supervise them. Not sanitation, roads, mine clearing, schools, hospitals and just about a thousand other desperately lacking basic needs. Most of the money seems to have been spent on five star hotels, western style secure compounds, Land Cruisers and swimming pools. Then the UN shipped in people. Bangladeshi soldiers to keep the peace, who fled at the sound of distant gunfire, leaving the locals that they were there to protect, caught up in yet another bloody crossfire mess. Bulgarians (widely know here as Vulgarians) sent in as administrators and as a laughable police force; the Bulgarians worked hard to spread AIDS around Cambodia and proceeded to turn Phnom Penh in to the biggest whorehouse in South East Asia (and probably the world). And a whole lot of other assorted diplomats, election monitors, Jimmy Carter fans and other people with degrees in social science and politics that never ventured beyond the verandahs of the bar at the Royal Phnom Penh Hotel.

 

Before the elections in May 1993 the parts of the country not run by the Khmer Rouge, were run by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre who turned himself over to the Vietnamese when he realized he was about to fall out of favor with his upper management. I doubt that anyone could ever say anything kind about Hun Sen. He is the archetypal third world dictator. Bad is the best adjective that could be used to describe him, and that is when people are feeling charitable The subtleties of diplomacy, transparent and democratic governance, freedom of the press and other such motherhood and apple pie principles have somehow eluded him. Nevertheless, I think that he does deserve a few ticks in the box. Although many people have tried to find out dark and dirty secrets about his time as a mid-level manager in Pol PotÕs social re-engineering business, there appear to be none. Or at least none that register on a somewhat overwhelmed radar screen. In fact, it appears that the reason he defected to the Vietnamese is because he was given an order to execute a dozen hill tribe villagers who disliked the idea of being forcibly relocated to malaria infested rice paddies. The villagers voiced an objection to this request with the appropriate Khmer Rouge authorities, a strategically flawed decision, given the circumstances of the time. The order to explain to them who was in charge fell on Hun Sen. At the time he must have had his one and only pang of conscience, because he refused to carry out the executions. Being a pragmatic person, he realized that his future career prospects within the Khmer Rouge management echelons had thus evaporated, and therefore decided to look for further opportunities with the competition. Hence the move to the Vietnamese camp.

 

I realize at this point that I have somewhat digressed from what was supposed to have been a travelogue for people yearning for that Heart-of-Darkness-Apocalypse-Now feeling that Phnom Penh lays on you when you land there for the first time. After all, oregano is not the optional flavoring featured in the ÒPizza with herbsÓ served at the Foreign Correspondents Club. This culinary delight is the most popular dish there, even if there are filing deadlines to be met. Given the esoteric nature of food additives Ð or should I say addictives Ð deadlines tend to come and go, a bit like UN staff. However, I need to pontificate a little more on Cambodia in order to put you in the correct frame of mind for what is to come. Also, I need to explain about the Vietnamese.

 

*** A condensed history of Cambodia ***

 

Cambodia is a messed up country; most people would accept this statement as true, given the current news coverage of the possibility of a war crimes tribunal for whatÕs left of the Khmer Rouge leadership. Probably what most people donÕt realize though, is that Cambodia has been a mess since the dawn of time. Well, almost. Just before the dawn of time (or roughly 1,000 years ago), Cambodia was known as the Khmer kingdom, and its borders stretched over most of South East Asia and Indochina. The country was rich and prosperous and rulers were benign and enlightened. The great city of Angkor was built. Then things started to go downhill. Complacency set in, and the kingdomÕs neighborÕs started looking hungrily at the poorly guarded spoils next door. From 1218 (the year of the death of the last great Khmer king Jayavarnam VII) to 1974, what eventually became Cambodia was raped and pillaged alternatively by the Siamese (the Thais of old) and the Vietnamese. Is was not until the 70s, as we know, that Cambodians finally progressed from being victims of foreign rape to being victims of domestic rape. The amazing thing about the rulers of Cambodia during all this time was that it never occurred to them to actually fight back on their own. No, they figured on a better strategy: when the Thais invaded from the West, the Cambodians turned to the Vietnamese for protection. The Vietnamese agreed to fight the Thais and demanded large swaths of land in the East as compensation. When the Vietnamese overstayed their visas, the Cambodians turned to the Thais, who happily obliged the request to kick some Vietnamese ass, in exchange for large swaths of land in the West. This went on to-and-fro for a few centuries. Centuries! You might be forgiven, at this point, for thinking that the Cambodian rulers of the time could not have been founding members of Mensa. As recently as 1907 Angkor was in Thai territory, such had been the Cambodian territorial loss (it was given back to them in that year by a Thai Ð French treaty).

 

The story gets more complicated as we get in to this century, with French colonization and the various wars that preceded (and eventually lead to) the Vietnam War. Cambodia was granted independence from the French in 1953 and King Sianouk ruled over a parliamentary democracy of sorts. Weak and corrupt as the government in the 60s and early 70s may have been, Cambodia was an oasis of relative tranquility as war raged on next door. There was some half-hearted opposition to SianoukÕs rule that was clumsily dealt with by his security forces. The term ÒKhmer RougeÓ was coined by the King as an endearing moniker for a movement of leftist French-trained students lead by a gentleman by the name of Saloth Sar. Mr. Sar would probably have faded in to obscurity, had it not been for a couple of events that took place in the early 70s. The first was the establishment of the route, known as the Ho Chi Min trail, which allowed the North Vietnamese Army to supply the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. The trail ran partly within Cambodian borders. The second was Lon NolÕs right wing coup, overthrowing King Sianouk. Lon Nol was another ruler schooled in the long tradition of Cambodian far-sighted and dynamic leadership. It is probably charitable just to say that Lon Nol and his cabinet had limited intellectual interests. Without having anything approaching an effective Army, he demanded the immediate withdrawal of all North Vietnamese Army forces from Cambodian soil. Yeah, right. The NVA, as history later demonstrated, was a effective combat force. Lon Nol was playing poker with no chips, and a visible hand holding a low pair. The NVA called his bluff and raised the stakes by taking over (yes, youÕve got it) large swaths of Cambodian territory to the North East of the country. Lon Nol ordered his troops to engage the NVA. Since his troops were largely unarmed, untrained, undisciplined and more importantly completely unwilling to fight an enemy that actually shot back when fired upon, the result was predictable. So, again following the time honored Cambodian leadership principles used in situations of this kind, Lon Nol called upon the Americans to do something about it. The Americans, reluctant initially to get involved in another hopeless South East Asian crisis, delegated the NVA interdiction job to the South Vietnamese Army, who (yes, youÕve guessed again) took over large swaths of land in the South East of the country. Eventually the Americans did put more effort in the resolution of this crisis, and sent some military advisors to Phnom Penh. They also decided on a surgical tactic of intervention: illegal carpet-bombing of the Ho Chi Min trail by squadrons of B52s. If this had been real surgery, it would have attracted malpractice suits. B52 bombing is not known to be an accurate endeavor. Several Cambodian villages were accidentally vaporized in the process.

 

Remember Mr. Sar? Up until then, the Cambodian farmers he was trying to convert to a Communist / collectivist cause were not buying in to his message: they were generally happy with their lot and did not have much time for politics. The feelings changed when their families started getting less than surgically removed from the planet by napalm. All of a sudden, Mr. Sar had disciples. Oh, and by the way, Mr. SarÕs nom-de-guerre was Pol Pot, AKA ÒBrother number OneÓ.

 

Well, from this point you all know how the story goes. The Americans wanted to get out of what, at that time finally, looked like a war they could not win. They pulled out of Cambodia leaving Lon Nol with the task of defending the country from Pol PotÕs advancing revolutionary troops and the NVA regulars. The Cambodian army performed predictably, and Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 17, 1975. Day one of year zero, in the Khmer RougeÕs plan to begin history anew.

 

The wholesale evacuation of the city followed within days. In a dissertation written in 1959, Khieu Samphan, one of Pol PotÕs inner circle comrades (and still alive today, but we will come back to that), argued that cities were inhabited by ÒparasitesÓ and the way to socialist Utopia was to transport them to the country where they could be put to better use as farm labor. And once the Khmer Rouge soldiers took over Phnom Penh, SamphanÕs Sorbonne pseudo-Marxist ramblings were turned in to reality. Over the course of the next five years between one and two million people died because of the practical implementation of a deranged doctoral thesis. I wonderÉ did Khieu Samphan graduate? And which idiot professor in France was responsible for that?

 

The Khmer Rouge imprisoned, tortured, starved and bludgeoned to death city dwellers, anyone with an education beyond high school (including desperately needed doctors) and anyone who wore eyeglasses. Cambodians were divided in to three classes: Khmer ÒbaseÓ people, who were the original countryside folk; Khmer ÒApril 17Ó people who were the city dwellers; and non-Khmer people, who were by large the ethnic Vietnamese population. Although a large number of the ÒbaseÓ people suffered and died as well, the Khmer reserved their most brutal treatment for the other two groups. Because bullets were to be saved for the war against Vietnam that eventually began in 1978, the ÒApril 17Ó and non-Khmer people were dispatched using more proletarian tools such as shovels and hoes. There is a graphic testament to such novel use of garden tools in the Choeng Ek extermination site.

 

We need to get back to the Vietnamese now. You see, although in theory Pol Pot and the eventually unified Communist Vietnam professed themselves to be of the same school of Marxist thought, 1,000 years of Cambodian mistrust for its neighbor could not be suppressed. After the wholesale slaughter of their own country folk was well under way, the Khmer Rouge turned on their former allies, and waged war with the Vietnamese. This was to be as cruel and unforgiving as the war they waged against their own people. Understandably, the Vietnamese didnÕt take too kindly to this. It may have surprised those unaware of the subtleties of Khmer tragic history, but the eventual war between the Khmer Rouge and Communist Vietnam was inevitable. It had nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with warped nationalism and ethnic hatred. The Vietnamese have been the Khmer peopleÕs natural scapegoats for centuries. In spite of commerce- (and war-) instigated migrations around the Mekong delta, the Vietnamese and the Khmer (being from distinct ethic origins) never integrated their cultures or ways of life.

 

The Khmer Rouge were a reasonably well trained fighting force, but up until 1978 they had only faced the ill-trained army of Lon Nol in active combat. The unified Vietnamese army was something much different. Weakened by continuous internal purges and defections, the Khmer Rouge lost Phnom Penh to the Vietnamese on January 7, 1979. At this point the world cried foul: China, the US and Western Europe denounced the Vietnamese invasion as an act of aggression against a sovereign country. In what has got to be one of the sickest twists of reality by policymakers, NATO countries and China started providing military and logistic help to the Khmer Rouge, now portrayed as victims of aggression! The geopolitical realities of the time completely ignored the fact that the Vietnamese invasion should have been seen as an act of mercy. But nobody outside of Cambodia had yet seen Tuol Sleng.

 

*** Cheap thrills in the Heart of Darkness ***

 

Through the proliferation of staff from the UN, NGOs and other employees of acronym-defined organizations, Phnom Penh has acquired a somewhat schizophrenic personality. In fairness, the UN cannot be the only source of blame for this. From 1979, when people started to repopulate this city of wide boulevards and French colonial architecture, Phnom Penh has hosted Vietnamese occupation forces, puppet governments, the UN and NGO invasion, a few revolutions, coups and attempted coups, foreign businessmen representing industries with a wide degree of legitimacy, Oddjob-lookalike North Korean royal bodyguards, feuding politicians, Tamil Tigers and Mohajedin gun-runners, Triad drug dealers, Thai military officers running illegal logging ventures, Vietnamese prostitutes, stoned Western backpackers looking for employment as ÒEnglishÓ teachers, mercenary soldiers, and what else? Is there anyone else left?

 

LetÕs meet some of these characters. Mr. Ly, our driver, lost his father, his father-in-law and his brother during the Khmer Rouge attempt to re-write history. Yet he seems to have come out of the ordeal relatively well, compared to others like him. He drives a five-year-old Toyota Corolla, has a hand-phone, and is involved in a number of ÒbusinessesÓ that he did not define further. He belongs to the small but up-and-rising middle class of Phnom Penh. He speaks good English and fluent French. He must have been seven or eight during the Khmer Rouge era. So how did he get to where he is now? One must remember that not all well educated people were killed during the Cambodian dark years. Some of those educated people were part of the ruling elite. However being part of this exclusive club of psychopaths did not guarantee immunity from torture and death. Eventually internal politics and Machiavellian intrigue decimated even those people that were close to the top. I mentioned Tuol Sleng earlier. This infamous prison in Phnom Penh, about which I will talk about more later, was the last stop before execution by shovel for many of Khmer Rouge cadres who had fallen out of favor. So what of Mr. Ly past? We didnÕt ask and he didnÕt tell much.

 

We went to the DMZ Bar to meet Ian. The bar is aptly named being situated as it is between the headquarters of Hun SenÕs Cambodian PeopleÕs Party (CPP) and Prince RanariddhÕs FUNCINPEC (the acronym is too long for me to expand Ð itÕs French anyway, so who cares). Between 1997 and 1998 Hun Sen and Ranariddh, who were unwilling partners in a coalition government, had their party people resolve political conflicts by the use of such common third world dialectic tools as the hand grenade and the AK47. Actually, during that time, there wasnÕt much of Phnom Penh (or indeed of the rest of Cambodia) that could have been defined as demilitarized. Come to think of it, I am not sure that there has been a period in the last 700 years in Cambodia that could be defined as such. However, I digress again. Ian[1] is an interesting character: he is an Australian who looks like he is in his early thirties. Then he starts talking about his life, and you start wondering. He talks about the time when he was in Africa as a ÒconsultantÓ during RhodesiaÕs last few white-rule years. Richard, who is traveling with us and is a Rhodesian-born South African Brit (apparently there are such things), asks him if he was serving in the Selous Scouts. ÒNo, but we were training themÓ is the answer. ÒWeÓ turns out to be the Australian SAS. So Ian is more like pushing 50. But what is he doing in Phnom Penh? The cover story is that he is running the bar. We are the only customers there. His Thai wife pours the beers. He shows us his photo albums of trips and treks around South East Asia. It is when he starts talking about Hun SenÕs government that you start getting an idea of his real job. ÒHun Sen is greatly misunderstood in the West.Ó Well, I would probably go along with that. ÒHe is CambodiaÕs only hope, and foreign journalists should stop looking at all the bad things that have happened in Cambodia, and look at the good things he has done.Ó Huh, OK Ian, name a few. Name one. Actually, I didnÕt say that. Last year I was in Cambodia, and I met Hun Sen at a press conference he gave in Siem Reap. IanÕs words were the exact ones spoken by Hun Sen at the time. A few beers and some further prodding later reveal that Ian is providing similar ÒconsultingÓ services to Hun SenÕs forces as the ones he was providing to Ian SmithÕs government some twenty-five years ago. Oh well, you gotta make a living somehow. Actually, it may not be a bad idea to provide some Western military training to troops many of whom used garden tools as weapons fifteen years ago. The news also goes a long way towards explaining why nobody messes with the DMZ Bar.

 

Michael Hayes is the publisher of the Phnom Penh Post, one of CambodiaÕs two English language newspapers. The Post is not exactly a daily (it comes out every two weeks), but it makes a great read, and gives you a good insight in to life in Cambodia. They even have a web site: look it up at www.newspapers.com.kh/PhnomPenhPost. We meet Michael at the FCCC. He is an American in his late forties, and he is as laid back as you would expect someone who eats FCCC Happy Pizzas to be. The Post is an interesting exercise in press freedom in a land that has never known what the concept means. Michael treads a thin line between accurate journalism and life-shortening reports on government actions. But the fun in reading the Post doesnÕt come from Pulitzer-winning reports on government corruption. That is a given, so thereÕs no need to write much about it. ItÕs the reporting on CambodiaÕs daily life that is far more interesting. The ÒPolice BlotterÓ section at the end of the paper is dark as it is telling. A few extracts:

ÒFeb 6: A photographer was shot dead by his drunken friendÉ.Ó

ÒFeb 7: The body of an unidentified man was found in the Tonle SapÉÓ

ÒFeb 7: A watch repairer was shot dead by his friendÉthe friend said he did not know why he killed him because he was drunk at the timeÉÓ

ÒFeb 7: A policeman was stabbed to deathÉÓ

ÒFeb 9: Ms. Mao Taing Khim was stabbed to death yesterdayÉÓ

This goes on and onÉ In a society that has never seen peace, where weapons are as available as onions in a market, and where one in five of the population was brutally killed within the last generation, the only way people know how to resolve the smallest conflict is through violence. Michael confirmed this. He spoke of arguments between neighbors ending with hand grenades being thrown to settle the issue.

 

Michael had to leave, and we went to find a hotel. There is no shortage of accommodation in Phnom Penh, from the Raffles managed Hotel Royal Phnom Penh to the most humble hovels. The Royal has a rack rate of around 300 US$. However, if you walk in, and you can impress the front desk manager, you can negotiate a rate of less than half of that. We did that for the sport of it, but ended up at the second best hotel, reputedly owned by the creator of the Asian crisis, the former Prime Minister of Thailand Chavalit Yongchaiud. His place is confusingly called the Royal Phnom Penh Hotel and cost 20 US $ less than a negotiated rate at the Hotel Royal Phnom Penh. The only other guests there seemed to be French NGO employees and their families.

 

Nighttime falls, and its time to see another angle of Phnom Penh. The starting point is the FCCC as usual (also because Ron had the hots for one of the waitresses there). We drink Martinis and Bloody Marys on the verandah overlooking the river. Most of the Western NGO population of the city is here. Next door is a Thai / French / Vietnamese restaurant run by a stunning Malay woman with a Western last name. Shafrida SmithÕs husband is nowhere to be seen, so she flirts with customers, but the restaurant is excellent anyway. There is a reasonable choice of French wines, and the food is delicious. The tables are laid out on yet another verandah cooled by the obligatory ceiling fans. We can look down at the real world below. Reality is never far away in Cambodia. The contrast between the opulence of our dinner and the state in which most people live in Cambodia is the stuff revolutions are made for. However, in spite of this, most Cambodians see Westerners as a benign presence. First of all, they can make money out of us. Our driver is rich, relative to the cyclo (a sort of rickshaw) drivers that wait beside him at the entrance to the restaurant. But in order to park in their spot Mr. Ly has had to pay them something that will be passed on to our bill. Asians love to talk about these Friedman / Thatcher Òtrickle downÓ economy scenarios. For the time being this seems to work in places like Phnom Penh, because a ÒtrickleÓ is all that is needed to feed a cyclo driver. The problem is that the ÒtrickleÓ remains such, and the disparity between the haves and have-nots is maintained. Minimum wage is as foreign a concept in Cambodia as is gun control legislation.

 

There is another reason why Westerners are appreciated. NGO employees who volunteer to work in the brutal (and in some cases extremely dangerous) conditions of the rural areas, are unwittingly running a pro-government hearts-and-minds campaign that is weakening the ties between what is left of the Khmer Rouge and their ÒbaseÓ support. Organizations such as ÒMedecins sans FrontieresÓ provide desperately needed practical relief to villagers, who otherwise would just get propaganda and hate messages from the Khmer Rouge guerillas. Because the government encourages NGOs to come to Cambodia, the villagers are starting to loosen their ties with the Khmer Rouge. This is why it is still so dangerous for Westerners to venture too far in to the countryside. The Khmer Rouge donÕt like the idea of losing control.

 

Now hereÕs something to think about: Western governments have become increasingly reluctant to put their armed forces in harmÕs way. Even when there are fairly obvious situations of extreme human rights abuses, that could possibly be resolved (or at least defused) with armed intervention by ground forces, our governments take the cowardly approach and either ignore the problem, hoping that it will go away, or choose to use prolonged air strike campaigns. On the other hand, there are today new breeds of courageous interventionists: NGO workers. These people will work in sometime terrible conditions, exposed to enemy fire, with no backup, no air cover, and in most cases with only the half hearted support of their governments. Yet, they are probably responsible for more peacekeeping operations than the UN military. Unsung heroes of the late 20^th century.

 

Richard, Ron and I were no such heroes. After dinner, we went drinking. There is something for everyone in this department in Phnom Penh. At this point you probably would want a detailed description of the places we went to, but for some reason, memories of the evening get a little fuzzy from this point onwards. Some names do surface from the fog: The Cathouse Bar, the DMZ, the Duck Tub, SharkeyÕsÉ Martini Pub and Heart of Darkness are remarkable for different reasons.

 

Martini Pub is a huge disco and beer garden that also shows awful Cantonese movies (no one speaks Cantonese in Phnom Penh). There are probably over three hundred hookers sitting around waiting for customers. The place would not have been that remarkable (by Phnom Penh standards anyway), had it not been for the apartheid policy practiced by the working girls. Khmer girls sit on one side of the bar, and Vietnamese girls sit on the other. No words are exchanged between them. Plenty of hateful stares are. Sit down with a Khmer girl and she will tell you how cheap, ugly and dirty the Vietnamese girls are. Have a drink with a Vietnamese girl, and you will get a sense that she is scared of the Khmer girls, though she will volunteer that the Vietnamese race is far more beautiful than the Khmer race. The tension is obvious, but we saw no fights.

 

Heart of Darkness is the place for Coppola and Conrad fans. Marijuana, whiskey and beer are on sale behind the bar. All are consumed liberally in front of it. Hendrix, The Doors and CCR blast out of the speakers. The place is poorly lit and the walls are painted crimson and black. Some of the people sitting at the tables looked like they had not moved in weeks. This is the sort of place you come to if you never did fight in Vietnam and are stupid enough to think that you missed out on something. Yeah man, groovy, Purple Haze, Run through the JungleÉ

 

*** Fear and loathing in Phnom Penh ***

 

A shower the next morning helped soften the blows from the man with the jackhammer inside my head. Three coffees later and he was quiet. It was time for some tourism. You can be a regular tourist in Cambodia, but youÕd have to go to Angkor Wat to do that. The sites in Phnom Penh are more esoteric. You can go to the General Market, housed in a horrendous Soviet Òode to concreteÓ style building. The variety of goods sold here is not as great as what youÕd see at the Chatuchack weekend market in Bangkok. You used to be able to buy Kalashnikovs and RPGs in the Russian Market, but, in deference to foreign aid donorÕs sensitivities, the sale of weapons is subtler these days. I am sure that if you were buying weapons for ArkanÕs Tigers, Osama Bin Laden, or the Taliban you would not go to the markets anyway. So we didnÕt see anything interesting for sale. Someone should give the NRA a call. Imagine that: the sale of weapons is not allowed in Cambodia! Where is Charlton Heston when you need him? If you really do have itchy trigger fingers, you can go to the MarksmenÕs Club and let rip with AK47s set to full auto. Rumor has it you can also blast targets with RPGs. We declined Mr. LyÕs offer to take us there. We had darker places to visit.

 

Between April 17, 1975 and January 7, 1979 up to 20,000 people were taken to the S-21 Re-education Center in Phnom Penh. The center was housed in a former high school called Tuol Sleng. Of the 20,000, only six are known to have come out of there alive. Obviously, the Khmer Rouge re-education system will not be challenging Montessori any time soon. The administrator of this facility was a man by the name of Kang Kek Ieu, AKA ÒDuchÓ (pronounced ÒDookÓ). You can see his happy, toothy smile on photographs taken of him at the time and on display in Tuol Sleng today. You should look at this manÕs face. He is obviously a happy fellow. This man was personally responsible for every gruesome death at Tuol Sleng and the killing fields in Choeng Ek. Once processed in at Tuol Sleng, your fate was death by torture in the prison grounds. Those who survived the torture were taken out to the Choeng Ek mass gravesite, about nine miles from Phnom Penh, and butchered by knife, shovel and hoe wielding teenagers.

 

We went to Choeng Ek first. This is where the Vietnamese first discovered the Killing Fields. The site is an unremarkable field surrounded by fences. It is now a museum, and there is a history of the site on signboards. An angry history. Most Cambodians are angry about their recent past. May 20 is the National Day of Hate, when survivors of the Pol Pot adventure remember the past and try to explain it to the new generations. Many people may have seen the photos of the skulls at Choeng Ek, collected and displayed on wooden trellises. Now there is a mausoleum made of stone and glass in which these gruesome remains are displayed and cataloged by age and sex. This is both a terrible and extremely moving display. Children as young as five years old were butchered at Choeng Ek. The methods by which all were dispatched are barbaric. Most skulls are fractured by what can only be a blunt instrument. As an interesting footnote, did you know that Errol FlynnÕs son was killed at Choeng Ek? He was a war photographer who entered Cambodia at the wrong time.

 

As I walked around the site, past the open graves that contained thousands of bodies I realized that the display in the mausoleum was only a fraction of what had been buried there. You canÕt avoid stepping on shards of bone, a femur here, a piece of jawbone there. You wonderÉ whom am I stepping on now? Who was this guy? Yet, the whole experience still leaves you detached, as if you are walking through an ancient archeological site. The victims of this horrific experiment in social engineering are no closer to you than the fragments of skeletons you would see in a museumÕs anthropological displays. In order to get a much closer understanding of this horror you need to go back in to town to Tuol Sleng itself.

 

When we got there, the guards were closing the place for lunch. But such is the wish of ordinary Cambodians to let the world know what went on during the Khmer Rouge time that we were let in even though we were the only visitors there.

 

Tuol Sleng is surrounded by a wall topped by razor wire. The compound houses three main buildings that used to be a high school. The buildings are four stories tall. External corridors on each floor allow access to what used to be classrooms. The open corridors on the upper floors are covered with razor wire; this was put there to prevent desperate prisoners from committing suicide by jumping over the walls. The yard in front of the buildings, presumably a playground once, is where the gallows were erected, and are still standing. Inside the buildings there are two types of rooms that you can see: the cells, constructed by the crude brick partitioning of each classroom in to areas where an adult could not possibly lie down; and the torture chambers, equipped with a metal bed frame to which prisoners were tied down. There are no bones, skulls or any other obvious trace of past human life as there is at Choeng Ek. However, this place is far more sinister. When the Vietnamese discovered Tuol Sleng, they recorded what they saw on the day the entered the compound by photographing every room. These photographs now hang in the rooms that they were taken in. What they show is horrific. Tied to the bed frames in each torture room was a corpse. Obviously the Khmer Rouge didnÕt have time to clear any evidence in their panicked flight from Phnom Penh. What the Vietnamese, and later the Cambodians did to keep the atmosphere of this place exactly as it had been when it was operational, was absolutely nothing. The place has not been sanitized by a paint job, or even by the occasional dusting. If you look carefully, you can still see bloodstains on the walls.

 

There is a sign on the walls near the administration office, originally written in Khmer, and translated in to poor English, but it is worth replicating here:

 

ÒSecurity regulations. Answer accordingly to my questions. DonÕt try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that. It is prohibited to contest me. You are a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution. Immediately answer my questions without wasting time argue either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution. When getting lashes or electrification you must not cry. Sit still and wait for my orders. If you do not follow the above rules you will get many lashes of electric cableÓ.

 

Fanatics usually take pride in their jobs. In Tuol Sleng this pride is reflected in the meticulous documentation of inmates and their interrogation procedures by the prison administrators. Every prisoner had his or her photo taken at some point during his or her stay. These photos are now hanging from the cell walls. Thousands of them. There are only two emotions that can be seen in the faces of these poor people: abject fear and beyond caring complete passiveness. In some cases, the Khmer Rouge photographed the faces of corpses. This bureaucratic zeal will hopefully be the undoing of at least one of the bastards responsible for this obscene horror. More on that further onÉ

 

I was filming and taking photos, and was moving from room to room. Moving from left to right, from the administration offices, to the cells and on to the torture rooms, the sense of desperation gets greater and greater.  Eventually I got to the main interrogation room. I mentioned the six survivors of Tuol Sleng. One of them was an artist called Van Nhat. When the Vietnamese occupied Phnom Penh, they asked him to document in pictures what went on in the prison. He did this as wall paintings. It was at this point that I could not bring myself to film or photograph any more. After seeing the tools that were used on the prisoners and the pictures on the wall that graphically depict how they were used, I had to run outside. I challenge anyone with the slightest ounce of compassion to enter this place and not leave with eyes welled with tears.

 

CompassionÉ I had to wonder, looking at the most depraved thing I have ever seen in my life, how on earth could anyone be responsible for the acts of savagery that were committed in Tuol Sleng? Do you go back home in the evening and sit down on the couch with a beer, and say to your wife: ÒJeez hon, tough day at the office today. We had to kill 137 revisionists. I think we did 30 kids as well. WhatÕs for dinner?Ó

 

Duch overlooked the facility, but there were others who did the manual work. Who? The answer is even more terrifying than what you see on the walls: children did it. The Khmer Rouge took Lord of the Flies to an unimaginably warped extreme. The children, who they did not kill outright, were taken away from their parents and educated by sick cadres. They were taught only to hate and were turned in to killing machines. Compassion is not instinctive, it is taught. The Khmer Rouge simply built on the curiosity to tear wings off flies and fry ants with a magnifying lens. This was partly done to create better soldiers. Children obey orders and donÕt have the moral reservations that adults do. In Tuol Sleng, the result was children torturers. As the father of a young five-year-old boy, I could not help feel a deep emotional rage at the idea of a child torn away from his parents and turned in to a cold-hearted mass murderer. What could be worse?

 

I will never forget what I saw at Tuol Sleng and Choeng Ek. Cambodians are right not to sanitize these places. The few that make the sad visit to these museums of the horrific should see them as close to what they were when operational. The sites of genocide since after the Second World War have been too far off the beaten track for most people to see. If you have an interest in finding out more about what went on in Cambodia in the Seventies, Yale University has a web site devoted to the Cambodia Genocide Program. They are attempting to document the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. Look them up at www.yale.edu/cgp/.

 

*** Born again Christians, cripples, animal lovers and other assorted scum ***

 

Retribution for some of the pain inflicted on the Cambodian may yet come to pass. The Khmer Rouge ran out of friends last year. For a while, Hun Sen and Ranariddh vied with what was left of them in the forests around Battambang near the Thai border, in an attempt to get control of their arms and militias for their own political advantage. After the election (that turned out to be a waste of time since Hun Sen forced himself back in to government after losing), China and Thailand finally stopped the flow of arms and support to Pol Pot. Finding themselves running out of toys and playgrounds, Son Sen, one of Pol PotÕs lieutenants, recommended talks with Hun Sen. Whoops! Bad mistake. Pol Pot had Son Sen, his wife and his children murdered. DonÕt you love Khmer Rouge dialectics? Can you imagine the Varsity Debate Society in a Khmer Rouge world? You would have to wear Kevlar to come out of a meeting alive. However, this time Pol Pot went too far even for his own kind. The remaining lieutenants, Khieu Samphan, and Nuong Chea (AKA ÒBrother Number TwoÓ) decided to ÒretireÓ Pol Pot. He was ÒtriedÓ in a Khmer Rouge court (in front of Nate Thayer, the only independent witness to this event, and a journalist for the Far Eastern Economic Review), and sentenced to house arrest. By Khmer Rouge standards, this must have been the most lenient sentence ever passed.

 

Nate managed to get the one and only interview ever with Pol Pot, after which he died of causes unknown (very conveniently: no autopsy was ever carried out, and he was cremated in a hurry). The world was cheated, as it was cheated when Hitler committed suicide. Pol Pot escaped his deserved fate: a trial by the people he so brutally repressed for over twenty years. No doubt that many people in prominent positions in the US, China, Thailand and elsewhere were relieved. Pol Pot would have made sure to implicate many others in his trial. His death was much too convenient.

 

Khieu Samphan and Nuong Chea were now free to pursue cease-fire negotiations with Hun Sen. The only other remaining high-ranking Khmer Rouge officer who didnÕt enter in to negotiations was the one-legged Ta Mok, considered to be the most brutal of all Pol PotÕs generals. He continued to fight until early this year, when he was captured near the Thai border. Because he refused to surrender, he is now the only high-ranking officer who is in jail awaiting trial. LetÕs hope he will burn.

 

Nuong Chea and Khieu Samphan probably wonÕt burn. They agreed to a cease-fire, and were welcomed back to Phnom Penh by Hun Sen last year. Hun Sen is a pragmatic person. He needed a cease-fire, since it was realistically the only way he could control the whole country. However, he didnÕt count on the outrage provoked in ordinary Cambodians by the sight of the two of the most despised men in the country, whooping it up at the Hotel Royal.

 

Khieu Samphan and Nuong Chea spoke to the press. Khieu Samphan admitted to Òerrors and poor judgmentsÓ and pleaded to let Òbygones be bygonesÓ. Yeah, OK, OK, we butchered 2 million people, but hey, it was a long time ago, so why canÕt we just get along now, huh? Nuong Chea admitted to nothing. Before becoming Brother number Two, he was some sort of veterinary something or other. The only thing he said he regretted was that Òsome pain was inflicted to animalsÓ and he was sorry about that. Sorry about the animals?!? These guys donÕt get it, do they? Are there any people on this planet more deserving of being skinned alive and dropped in a vat of salt?

 

Maybe one is: Duch. Happy, smiling Duch, the butcher or Tuol Sleng. Nate Thayer caught up with him as well last year, as he was hiding in some village outside of Phnom Penh. Nate interviewed him, and guess what? HeÕs a born again Christian! No shit, he is. Now, if this isnÕt the best reason to become a Satanist, I donÕt know what is. The Prince of Darkness doesnÕt hold a candle on this guy.

 

He disappeared shortly after the interview, but Cambodian authorities soon caught up with him. He is now Ta MokÕs neighbor, in a Phnom Penh prison. His bureaucratic abilities in the documentation of Tuol Sleng inmates will be his undoing. His name is on all the death warrants. Because of these infamous prisoners, Hun Sen has been exposed again to the pressure of the desire to convene an International tribunal that would deal with the Khmer Rouge crimes. His on-again, off-again attitude on this has probably more to do with security worries than anything else. There are still a lot of guns in the Cambodian countryside, and what is left of the Khmer Rouge know how to use them.

 

I would suggest that a lynch mob might be cheaper.

 

Nobody could suggest seriously that Phnom Penh is a desirable holiday location. It is just an hourÕs hop away from Bangkok with a Thai Airways 737, so it was easy for me to get there. My long-suffering wife is used to my less-than-inspired holiday choices, and although I do invite her to come with me on these occasional pilgrimages, she just shakes her head and walks away, wondering where she went wrong. But I think that if you are in the neighborhood, and you do have a couple of days to spare, Cambodia is worth a shot. The obvious destination there is Angkor, an place of beauty and history that easily rivals the Taj Mahal and the Vatican in its splendor. Phnom Penh is quite different. Nevertheless, I think that if you see the beauty, every now and again you should remind yourself of the darker turns of history. Not everywhere you can see beauty and horror side by side. But then, as I said, Cambodia is incongruous.

 

 

Note: this article was written in 1999. A lot of things have happened since then. Although Hun Sen's PR firm (should he have one) might struggle to define Cambodia as democratic, he (Hun Sen) on balance has probably been good for Cambodia's development (something that is much needed). The tourist industry is booming around Siem Reap and the Angkor temples. There appears to be a lot less lawlessness (apart from that conducted by Hun Sen's party goons). Prostitution is less rampant. Foreign investment is up. Infrastructure is improving. Sadly, however, "Pizza with herbs" is no longer served at the FCCC. Oh well, one must move with the times I suppose.