Cambodian museum a chilling sight

By David S Potts, 

AAP May 18, 2012,  

 

Most visitors to Cambodia will, inevitably, encounter stories, and probably visit remnants, of the brutal four-year rule in the 1970s of the Khmer Rouge.

As a world traveller, I have seen many examples of man's inhumanity to man. I have visited the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw, and walked around the gas chambers of Auschwitz. I saw the building, and destruction, of the infamous Berlin wall.

But nothing quite prepared me for a visit to Phnom Penh's former Khmer Rouge prison Tuol Sleng, now a genocide museum, and nearby, the so-called Killing Fields of Cambodia. You have to have a strong stomach to be there.

On the itinerary of most visitors to the Cambodian capital, the museum has become a shrine. Today's generation of Cambodians are determined to maintain it as a reminder not only of Cambodia's recent history but of the inhumanity that sometimes overwhelms ordinary beings.

Nobody knows how many Cambodians were killed or died of starvation under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge but estimates reach around two million - about a third of the population at the time. What's more, the Khmer Rouge ordered most of Phnom Penh's residents out of the city to work on growing rice. It became a ghost city.

Talk to almost anyone over the age of 30 in Cambodia and you'll hear a story of great personal tragedy.

And the Tuol Sleng prison has come to symbolise the suffering under the Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1979 more than 17,000 Cambodians were tortured and killed there or in the killing fields at Choeung Ek, about 15km from central Phnom Penh. They were often bludgeoned to death to avoid wasting bullets - and to keep the noise from alerting the nearby population.

At Choeung Ek, we walk over a field no larger than a football pitch. It is marked by huge craters, mass burial sites from where bodies have been recovered or decomposed and the land sunk. We thread our way past fragments of human bone and bits of cloth which are surfacing as years go by and the elements disturb the soil.

Central to the site is a Memorial Stupa in which more than 8000 skulls are visible behind glass panels. They are all that remain of the 8985 bodies, many found bound and blindfolded, exhumed from the mass graves.

The skulls speak more loudly than words can of the horror of those years under the Khmer Rouge.

Many of the victims were trucked from Tuol Sleng. In an ordinary suburban setting, Tuol Sleng was a former high school which the Khmer Rouge turned into a horrific secret prison to detain, interrogate, torture and, finally, execute prisoners. Up to 1500 prisoners were kept here at any one time.

It is not difficult to picture an earlier time when children kicked a football around the school playground which later became the scene of unimaginable crimes.

Our guide is Vann Nath, the last of only seven survivors of Tuol Sleng. He was taken to the prison in 1978 and spent a year there before the country was liberated. Now 66, Vann Nath and his fellow captives vowed in 1978 that whoever survived would tell the world about the atrocities. In 1993, he took to painting scenes from the prison.

The four school buildings are much as they were when the Khmer Rouge were defeated in 1979, with classrooms divided into prison cells.

The Khmer Rouge photographed every victim - among them two Australians - and many of the photographs are displayed, tacked to boards like a gallery of rogues. In the playground, and in some rooms, are items of torture - including a galley where prisoners were hung upside down and dunked in filthy water, and a 'bed' for immersing victims in water. There are cabinets full of other items of torture.

The museum's charter says: 'Keeping the memory of the atrocities committed on Cambodia soil alive is the key to build a new strong and just state.'

Prosecution of some of the jailers continues today.

But, fortunately, there are happier experiences to be had in Phnom Penh. A gem of a city, it was once known as the 'Pearl of Asia'.

It has risen from the ashes of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime to boast some of Asia's most beautiful modern architecture. Its busy, crowded streets are filled with the roar of motorbikes that somehow thread their way among a moving mass of cars, buses and trucks.

The contrast between the squalor and horror of the Tuol Sleng museum and the glimmering spires of the Royal Palace could not be greater. Showing striking similarity to the ornate, gold palace in Bangkok, it is hidden behind protective walls and dominates the city skyline.

The palace is home to King Sihamoni but some of the buildings - including the fabulous Silver Pagoda - are open to the public.

The floor of the pagoda is covered in more than 5000 silver tiles each weighing 1kg. You can't walk on it but you can get a peek from the entrance. The pagoda stands in the groomed gardens and lawns of the palace.

Built of wood in 1892 and rebuilt in 1962, it was preserved by the Khmer Rouge to show the world the regime cared about conserving Cambodia's culture.

However, more than half the pagoda's invaluable contents were lost, stolen or destroyed at that time.

Two of the must-see items are the Emerald Buddha and a life-size gold Buddha decorated with 9584 diamonds.

The city is built on a numbered grid which makes it easy to find your way, although the building numbering can be baffling. Tuk-tuks (three-wheel motorcycle rickshaws) are cheap and a good way to move around.

For shopping you can't go past the Psar Tuol Tom Pong market - better known as the Russian market, a maze of stalls selling everything from Cambodian handicraft, locally made clothing, and foods. But don't forget to bargain.

Watch out for bag-snatchers, particularly around the riverfront and popular markets. Riding motorbikes, they swoop past foreign tourists who might carelessly have a bag or a camera slung across a shoulder. It makes for easy - and fast - pickings.

If you are going on from Phnom Penh to see the ancient civilisation at Angkor Wat - or even if you are not - a good place to bone up on Cambodia's history of sculptures, pottery and bronzes is the National Museum of Cambodia. The building itself is a graceful terracotta structure with a central courtyard.

Finish the day off on a sunset cruise on the Mekong River from which you get a great view of the magnificent Royal Palace.

Best time to visit Cambodia is in the cooler season, from November to March.

IF YOU GO: A four-day Helen Wong Phnom Penh/Koh Kong tour costs from $AUD1090 per person, twin share (land only).

More information: www.helenwongstours.com

• The writer was a guest of Helen Wong's Tours