When I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh in 2019, I had no clue of the horror that awaited me.
I stumbled around the former secondary school, which was used as Security Prison 21 by the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 until its fall in 1979, for a few hours, taking it all in. Hundreds of portrait photos of some of the 20,000 Cambodians who were imprisoned, held, and brutally tortured in the building stared back at me as I walked through their metre-squared prison cells and crammed wooden bunks. I could feel my gut dropping and a rising urge to be sick. After a few hours of listening to a private audio tour that cost the equivalent of a few Australian dollars, I sat down with a German girl who I had met at my hostel. I can't remember what we talked about. I doubt we said much at all.
It is estimated that the Cambodian Genocide led to the death of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population. The perpetrator: Pol Pot.
Pol Pot governed Cambodia as prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea (the one-party state he formed) between 1976 and 1979. Ideologically, he was a Marxist-Leninist (whom we discussed last week) and a Khmer nationalist. He was responsible for the forcible removal of Cambodia's urban population to the countryside, seeking to create an agrarian socialist society with the vision that it would evolve into a true communist society, inspired by ultra-Maoism and the Cultural Revolution. On these 'collective farms', forced labor, malnutrition, disease, physical abuse, and mass executions were rampant. This event later came to be known as the Cambodian Genocide.
After the Cambodia-Vietnamese War brought the Khmer Rouge's reign to an end, Cambodia has had to deal with task of rebuilding their country. Although it is an incredibly beautiful country, with rich cultural and historical heritage, and some of the kindest and friendliest people I have come across during my travels, several foreign organisations still report that Cambodia struggles with widespread poverty, lack of political freedoms, pervasive corruption, and low human development. Additionally, Cambodia has been described by Human Rights Watch's Southeast Asian Director, David Roberts, as a "relatively authoritarian coalition via a superficial democracy". A Western analysis, but perhaps a fair one. The Covid-19 pandemic also hit Cambodia hard, both economically and socially.
This is a rather heavy topic and I apologise if this upset anyone or caught anyone off guard. But it is an example of how our globe is much more complicated than we often think in our everyday lives. To me, this is important to be aware of, if not for our own sakes, but to remember the lives lost to a radical, totalitarian, xenophobic, political regime.
This brings us to the end of our Communism saga. Although it is a sad note to end on for this saga, I hope you learned something and found this useful. Next week, we'll be moving onto our final political saga: Nationalism.
