One of the fishing villages we visited

-Last blog 1 of 2-

As we completed our last two clinics, I began realizing our time in Cambodia was winding down, and I didn't want to leave. In the two short weeks we had been there, I had fallen in love with the country and its people.

As we said goodbye to our friends in Koh Kong in both Khmer and English, we exchanged contact information and added each other on Facebook to make sure we stayed in touch. That day, Thursday, February 5th, we loaded up our things and took a bus back to Phnom Penh, where we spent the night in a hotel. The next day, we spent with each other looking around at the market, and then we visited a museum.

In the 1970s, a communist leader took over the country and sealed its borders off. The leaders of this communist regime wanted to create a "agrarian-based Communist society," and so they began by killing off the "intellectuals"- leaders, lawyers, doctors, teachers, the educated, etc., in order to create an equal, agricultural society. Well, the leaders obviously were paranoid about losing their power, because they began mass arresting people and imprisoning them, and then subjecting them to torture, in order to obtain "confessions" from them (of being traitors to the government), after which they would be executed. This made sense in the leaders' minds, because, as they would say, it was better to accidentally kill an "innocent" than it was to accidentally leave a "traitor" alive. Not only this, but usually entire families were killed, so as to not leave anyone alive to seek revenge on their loved one's deaths.

The museum we visited used to be a school, but the communist party, or "Khmer Rough," as they were known, took it over and created a prison out of it. They were in power from 1975 to 1979.

The school/prison camp

Horrendous atrocities were committed here. An estimated 17,000 prisoners in total were jailed here and subjected to torture. I was shocked and practically dazed by the horrors described to me that happened here. Perhaps it is best to have the pictures tell most of the story.

Barbed wire on the upper floors kept prisoners from escaping the horrors there (by committing suicide)

The prison's "rules" (click to expand)

Upon entering the prison, each prisoner was photographed and then had to write their own autobiography beginning at their childhood and ending at their arrest. Oddly and eerily, everything at the prison was thoroughly documented.

This was only one portion of literally walls of pictures of prisoners

A jail cell

Some of the torture instruments 

Outside was an old swing set, which was used to hoist people into the air by their arms (tied behind their back) until they passed out, at which point they were lowed and revived by being doused in cold water, after which the process started all over again.

The swing set

The torture people were subjected to was unbearable, and people eventually confessed to crimes they didn't commit and to being traitors. At this point, they were sent by the masses to a nearby field, "The Killing Fields," which is also now a genocide museum, and also one which we visited. Here, 20,000 people were executed. Ammo was expensive, so the soldiers instead beat the people to death with clubs and tools, and then buried them in pits. 

The entrance

"Mass grace of 166 victims without heads"

Human remains

More remains

"Mass grave of more than 100 victims- children and women whose majority were naked."

"The Magic Tree- The tree was used as a tool to hang a loudspeaker which make[s] sound louder to avoid the moan of victims while they were being executed."

35+ years later, human bone is still showing up in the dirt as erosion exposes them. 

This tree, when discovered by survivors later, was covered in human hair, blood, and brain matter. The above sign explains why.

Finally, in 1979, Vietnamese soldiers liberated the country and overthrew the government. But the damage already done was incalculable.

In total, it is estimated that 1.7+ million Cambodians were murdered under this regime. 

When the Vietnamese liberated the prison I mentioned earlier (the one that housed 17,000 in total), they found seven survivors. For you mathematicians out there, by my calculations, that means one person survived for about every 2,427 that were murdered at just this one prison (there were many other sites of mass imprisonment and execution in Cambodia).

One of the last living prisoners, Chum Mey (now 85 years old), was there at the prison the same day we were, where he survived two years of torture. Chum Mey was literally tortured for 10 days straight, including being electrocuted in his head and having his toe nails pulled out with pliers. He held on in hopes of seeing his wife and family again, but after 10 days, he confessed to working for the CIA (something he didn't even know what it was). However, instead of being sent to the Killing Fields like everyone else, he was kept alive because it was discovered that he could fix typewriters, a skill that was needed for the soldiers and interrogators to continue their documenting. 

I don't know how he was able to be at the prison now, even 35+ years later, but I had the privilege of meeting him in person, and he told me through a translator that he wanted his story told so others could learn from the past. I bought a copy of his story, "Survivor," had it signed, and read it later, which is where a lot of this information comes from. He was very kind and talked to us for a while.

Chum Mey and I

Although these terrible acts of evil happened in the 1970s, they still affect the country today. Even when we were leaving on our flight back to the U.S., we met a middle-aged Cambodian gentleman who fled the country during the genocide as a child and escaped to the U.S., where he has lived since. He told us his parents and sister weren't so fortunate- they were murdered during the genocide.

Few times in my life have I experienced such a visceral, soul-crushing feeling as I did at those museums.

A four-sided glass memorial at the Killing Fields

Each skull was part of a person, with their own story, feelings, and souls. Each life was taken from them, each voice was silenced, as the clubs fell upon them repeatedly.

These were not the first in history, however, to suffer needlessly, to be beaten and killed:

Isaiah 53:5~ "But He [Christ] was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed."

Ephesians 2:4-9~ "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

If you haven't already, won't you accept Christ as your Savior? He loves you so much. Indeed- endlessly.