Facing Cambodia’s Past at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Posted on by Laughingnomad

7VJvlOW1A5Ali2rnovusuM-2006216180228245.gif

We got our second wind and almost reluctantly mounted a motorcycle taxi to do what we (or at least I) came here to do and that is to see, after more than 30 years of war and terror, what has finally happened to this country that has survived carpet bombing under Nixon’s secret orders to go after Viet Cong in the 70’s.

Remember Nixon told us we were not bombing Cambodia. We weren’t-officially-our pilots and “advisors” dressed in T shirts and shorts, along with Cambodian pilots, were. Cambodia has somehow survived four years of Pol Pot’s murderous regime and his attempt to completely erase Cambodia’s past by outlawing money and dismantling the entire education system and then another 20 years of political instability and armed insurgencies and coups by various political aspirants, including former president Sihanouk and his own son.

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, opened in 1980, is a former high school that became the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 secret prison. After the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries under Pol Pot and inspired by Chairman Mao took over the city in April 1975, they immediately forced the entire population into the countryside as part of its radical social program to turn the country into an agrarian society.

Young children were trained as guards that became exceptionally cruel to the engineers, technicians, intellectuals, professors, teachers, students and ministers and diplomats that ended up in mass graves in the extermination camps of Choeng Ek. As the revolution reached greater heights of insanity the torturers and executioners who worked here killed their predecessors and were in turned killed by those who replaced them. When asked if the guards knew they would end up being killed the tour guide said they probably did not owing to the paranoia and secrecy of the regime. S-21 and all its many branches was headed by a former mathematics teacher by the name of Kang Kek Ieu or Comrade Duk.

When asked, our guide said that the movie “The Killing Fields” was only about 40% true…suggesting that the horror was about 60% greater than the film allowed. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis, were meticulous in keeping records and the walls of the school-turned-prison and now museum is covered with the photographs of the men, women and children who were later killed or sent to the countryside to work in the rice fields. Incidentally, several foreigners from Australia, France and the US were also held here and tortured before being murdered.

The situation was made especially complex by the fact that China supported not only Pol Pot but also Sihanouk who is still living in Beijing after all these years. Thailand supported the Khmer Rouge and harbored Pol Pot in a fenced compound throughout the 80’s, the Soviet Union supported Vietnam-a historical enemy of Cambodia’s-and the US and the UN supported anyone that was anti-Vietnamese, including the Khmer Rouge, because after all the Vietnamese were communist. Never mind that the Khmer Rouge was communist too…so the Western world stood by silently while Vietnam intervened in 1979 to help insurgency groups try to kick out the Khmer Rouge.

But the Vietnamese stayed. Finally in 1989, when, suffering with it’s own disastrous economic experiment, it withdrew it’s troops. However, with most of the Vietnamese gone, the opposition coalition, still dominated by the Khmer Rouge, launched a series of offensives against the government forces and in the first 8 months of 1990 another 2000 Cambodians lost their lives. Well, it’s all as clear as mud to me too but you get the idea. (The expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and events through the mid 70’s are documented by William Shawcross in “Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon & the Destruction of Cambodia.”)

The UN
Then a plan was devised whereby the UN was to supervise the administration of the country and ensure fair elections in 1993, which it did, before it packed up and went home leaving behind a mess because so many of the powers involved in brokering the deal had their own agendas. It was a travesty that the Khmer Rouge was allowed to play a part in the process and must have seemed like a cruel joke to the Cambodians who had lost family members under its rule. To make it worse, when the UN left it took weapons away from rural militias who provided the backbone of the government defence force against the Khmer Rouge.

According to analysts, by 1994, when it was finally outlawed by the government, the Khmer Rouge was probably a greater threat to the stability of Cambodia than at any time since 1979. But in 1994 the Khmer Rouge resorted to a new tactic of targeting tourists; three people were taken from a taxi on the road to Sihanoukvile and shot and a few months later another three foreign backpackers were taken from a train bound for Sihanoukville and executed. This is the road that Bob is going to take back across the Thai border when we leave Cambodia so he could have a tooth extracted in Bangkok!

Then the government, in a bid to end the war, offered amnesty to Khmer Rouge units who were willing to come over to the government side. But the break-through came in August 1996 when Ieng Sary, Brother No. 3 in the Rouge hierarchy, was denouncd by Pol Pot for corruption. Sary then led a mass defection of fighters that severed the Rouge from the source of it’s resources…the Pailin area rich in gems and timber. Then the paranoid Pol Pot ordered the execution of Son Sen, former defence minister of the regime and many of his family members. This provoked a putsch within the Khmer Rouge leadership to put the responsibility of the mass murders on one person as the hardline general Ta Mok seized control of the movement and put Pol Pot on ‘trial’.

Entering Cambodia

Posted on by Laughingnomad

October 13-25 2002
iSV8qo31XRdKYtyKFQL5FM-2006170170638181.gif

At the Phnom Penh airport your passport is passed along from one to another of 13 uniformed and polished immigration officials sitting all in a row before it is finally stamped. I think to myself that this may be an omen of things to come but our interaction with the country’s bureaucracy turned out to be minimal.

I’m exhausted from trying to sort out all my conflicted feelings about Vietnam and don’t feel like doing much which is ok anyway because Bob turned up with a gastro-intestinal condition the day after we arrive that takes about three days to work itself out so to speak.

Walking around the town center reminds me of what I think of as the wild west in the states..dirt roads full of potholes and detritus…4-wheel drives and motorcycles and bicycles throwing hot dust in your face as they go by. Later on we discovered that the main roads in the nicer parts of town were paved.

The Communist Party

Posted on by Laughingnomad

People everywhere in Viet Nam confided in me, as a foreigner who would not know who to tell anyway, that they hated the corrupt officials in the Communist Party that are entangled in a growing web of organised crime. They hate the police. The Party has a smug stranglehold on the poorest of the people, especially the Catholics in South Vietnam who find it almost impossible to find a job even if they can scrape up the money to “buy” it as do most people. (This is why you see so many jobless men sleeping during the day in their cyclos or on their moto taxis.)

Those in the Party get the best jobs…those who work for the government get 10 times the salary of ordinary Vietnamese. Doi Moi, which translates as ‘renovation’ similar to the Soviet ‘glastnost’ or openness, does not reach the lives of these people. But as Templer puts it at the very end of his book “The Communist Party has been coerced to relax economic restrictions but it has not liked some of the results. Unable to regain the control or respect it once commanded, its response has been to clench and release its grip on the economy and society in an increasingly desperate manner as its power slips slowly away.”

I told Mr. Binh in Lang Co that this could not last forever as more and more of Vietnam’s youth, like Mr. Binh’s son, become educated and empowered to act. Ten years…he said as he put his finger to his lips. When I left him as I got on the bus, promising to write to him from America, he said “ten years, our secret, ten years.” I made the tears stay inside my eyes until I could find my way inside the bus.

Catholics In Vietnam

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Catholics have never had an easy time of it in Vietnam beginning with the Confucian elite who opposed the intrusions of missionaries among whom was Alexandre de Rhodes who devised the system of romanisation of the Vietnamese language. Catholics refused to join in or pay for important village festivals; instead they often set up their own villages-a process that heightened disputes over land and water. The religion, seen by a majority of Vietnamese as an uncivilised intoxicant that sucked people in and broke their familial and social ties, often cut off converts from their families. It must have seemed as alien and dangerous as some of the stranger cults do today. The role of Catholics, many of whom acted as spies and guides for French expeditionary forces whom they believed would protect them from the anti-Catholic pogroms, rankles with some Vietnamese even today.

As defeat of the French became inevitable, thousands fled to the south. They knew a powerful and atheist Vietnamese state would not be friendly to Catholicism. To make matter worse South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem gave the refugees special attention and often let them settle on some of the most fertile land, a source of resentment among the majority of the population. Diem came from a deeply Catholic family; one of his brothers was Archbishop of Hue and a nephew would become Bishop of Nha Trang. His brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrations by Buddhist monks, some of whom burnt themselves alive in protest against Diem’s policies, and his corruption gave the Communists fuel for their fire and were among the factors that led to his overthrow and assassination, with US complicity, in 1963. In 1975 the seminaries in the South were emptied and many of the men were sent to re-education camps. The Church still arouses an intense suspicion in the Communist Party and the Vatican and Vietnam are something of a match for each other diplomatically, according to Templer.

‘Peaceful Evolution’

Posted on by Laughingnomad

In Viet Nam, the enemies of the Communist Party, in the absence of conflict, has become the democracy and human rights promoted by the forces of ‘peaceful evolution.’ Enemy jets unload tourist dollars and foreign investment rather than bombs. Robert Templer, in Shadows and Wind explains: “Local news publications have become a master at inventing new enemies to excite its military readership. In 1996 it located a hidden menace ‘sleeping under trees around Hoan Kiem Lake’ in Hanoi. This undercover force spoke the language and ate Vietnamese food. They were up to no good riding around in cyclos, dressed in shorts and T shirts. Vietnam could no longer ignore the threat they posed. It was ‘too easy in this age of information flow to mistake enemies for friends’, the newspaper told its readers. The country, the army daily warned, was under siege from young foreign backpackers! Doubtless the Vietnamese breathed a little easier knowing who was the enemy in their midst. But the Lonely Planet Legions were not the only security threat. Executives from overseas, the newspapers said accusingly, were attending business seminars because of their interest in information that helps them work out their investments, calculate prices and put pressure on their Vietnamese partners.” Indeed, a BP Oil executive from the UK that I met in a restaurant in Hanoi said that the BP holdings in Vietnam were larger than Vietnam’s national budget.

The Myth of “Nam”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

7VJvlOW1A5Ali2rnovusuM-2006216180228245.gif

The male fantasy of Saigon that was nurtured in Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American” written in the 1950’s is recreated superficially in bars in Saigon with names like Apocalypse Now and B4 75 where, to the pulse of 1960’s music like The Doors, Vietnamese women again run their hands over the backs of young and adventurous American males with a trust fund…love-you-long-time-you-be-my-big-honey…the twenty-something young guy at the next internet terminal says to his friend behind him…only god saved my life last night! “Nam,” says Lonely Planet guidebook, is a myth bound up with sex, drugs and a rock and roll soundtrack…with images of war, of the smell of napalm in the morning and hookers at night.

First of all, Vietnam is nothing like the mythical “Nam” that is portrayed in most of the post Vietnam literature and film which is that if Americans are caricatures of heavy handed bellicosity, then Vietnamese must be contemplative and peace loving. The jungle was no easier a habitat than it was for the Americans. Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier who wrote “The Sorrow of War” (that every young boy in every city tries to sell you) described the forests of central Vietnam through which the many branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail was carved, as alien: “Here when it is dark, trees and plants moan in awful harmony. When the ghostly music begins it unhinges the soul and the entire wood looks the same no matter where you are standing….living here one could go mad or be frightened to death.”

Writings on Vietnam, according to Robert Templer in his “Shadows and Wind” published in 1998 in the UK, doesn’t take into account the diverse mix of religious and political beliefs that are evolving and changing. Vietnamese fighters were not all heroic martyrs as the propaganda in the museums of Hanoi would have you believe; many did not understand why they were fighting. But the creation of “Nam” and the concept of “Indochine,” French colonial nastalgia, was not possible without complicity on the part of powerful Vietnamese officials, according to Templer; creating a playground of colonial and war memories was a way for the government to mend broken ties and sell the country to tourists. It also had the side effect of isolating foreigners and distracting them from the widening ideological, economic and social issues that afflicted the country. Guilt and sadness that inflected the writing of American reporters who produced books on their returns to Vietnam in the 1990’s tended to offer only the most gentle criticisms of the government. As Templer puts it, “the government ensured that journalists and writers spent more time examining a past over which the government could exercise some control rather than a present that is slipping away from them.”

Tourism Vietnamese Style

Posted on by Laughingnomad

7VJvlOW1A5Ali2rnovusuM-2006216180228245.gif

From the 200 kilometers of the Cu Chi tunnels, six layers deep just outside Saigon, the Viet Cong (South Vietnamese communist fighters) planned their campaigns on the South Vietnamese and American bases that ringed the city. The area became one of the most heavily bombed, gassed and defoliated sites as US forces attempted to clear the tunnels. Now, controlled by the sports and recreation department of the army, it serves to summarise the war for tourists. Part of the forest has been turned into a complete wartime environment.

The propaganda is that it was simple ingenuity that defeated the powerful Americans: the guerrillas left shavings from American bars of soap around the entrances to tunnels to disguise their scent from the sniffer dogs and smoke from cooking fires was dispersed through numerous chambers so that spotter planes could not locate it. At the end of the tour visitors are served a VC meal of stringy manioc dipped in crushed peanuts and tea brewed from forest leaves. As visitors leave they can shoot off a few rounds from an AK-47 at a firing range or shop for trinkets made from the brass shells of rifle bullits or model jet fighters crafted from Coke cans. VC uniforms of black pyjamas and checked scarves are offered to those who wish to dress up for the occasion.

Ironies
The North Vietnamese, especialy, are very proud that they won what they call the war against American aggression. This propaganda of heroic resistance is presented in all the museums in North and South Vietnam as the single, unifying theme of Vietnamese history. Well aren’t we proud of our War of Independence …George Washington is our kindly Uncle Ho Chi Minh! What was George Washington REALLY like? I have to admit that with the friendly tour guides-oh so happy to see the Americans react to all this-I bought a Viet Cong hat in Quang Tri only to give it away two days later to an old lady in Lang Co after I had a chance to think about it.

I took a tour of the Reunification Palace where the North Vietnamese crashed the gates of the South Vietnamese government building on that April morning in 1975 that sealed the fall of Saigon. (There is a tunnel system that runs the entire five kilometers to the airport from the Palace.) Some of the pictures on the walls shows the South Vietnamese government officials sitting waiting for the North Vietnamese; other pictures show their arrest.

In my tour group was a young enthusiastic German who was here for two months with his wife while adopting a “prostitute baby.” (Abortion is not much of an option here both because of lack of information and money.) As we moved about the Palace we exchanged remarks…we made a big mistake intervening in Vietnam I said…all countries seem to make big mistakes he said…the Soviet Union in Afghanistan…and both your country and mine lost a war…but now my country just wants peace, he continued, and started singing the music from the 1960’s musical “Hair” which he says is very popular in Europe right now. And we don’t want Mr. Bush to go to war in Iraq…if you go to war with Iraq you cannot win!

Saigon

Posted on by Laughingnomad

7VJvlOW1A5Ali2rnovusuM-2006216180228245.gif

I wrote this in the Cambodian Foreign Correspondent’s Club. Most countries have them…It’s a good place to get away from the moto taxis, the cyclos and beggars, the heat and to read a current newspaper. Cambodia has the Bangkok Post and the International Herald Tribune. Nobody here in this country that lost tens of thousands in the 70’s and 80’s seem to think the bombing in Bali is a big deal…I don’t even mention 9/11 to anyone.

Anyway I have come here to the “FCC” to write this report on my computer while listening to dirty blues music. You may never know how good this feels to me right at this moment…though you may have had same-same moments. And I’ve got to get the rest of Vietnam out of my head before I can even begin to absorb Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” and the War Museum.

Saigon has been renamed Ho Chi Minh City but no one calls it that. By the mid 1990’s Saigon already had the fastest-growing economy of any major city in Asia…and the web of problems that come with it. My first night in the city I ate from the sidewalk food stall down the street from the hotel because I didn’t have nerves steeled enough to walk slowly and deliberately at intervals into the street and then stand still while looking sideways in both directions to allow what seemed like a sea of motorcycles, cyclos and cars to weave their way around me..trying not to give the finger to the young guys that invariable love to shoot straight for you and then turn their sexy Dream Hondas at the last possible moment…which is the only way you get across a street in Asia.

Making Friends in Lang Co

Posted on by Laughingnomad

KtJTxGv4eiozwJxI0Lb6qM-2006216170118412.gif

Spent the night in a cheap backpacker hotel before boarding an air conditioned tour bus the next morning for Danang. On the way to Danang though, we pass through Lang Co, a small town stretched out along a pretty island-like palm-shaded beach on one side of the road and a quiet bay filled with hundreds of fishing boats on the other. So I got off the bus when it stopped for a break and stayed for two nights…making friends with Mr. Nguyen Thoi Binh, (Binh must be a common name) a dear dear man who took me home to his wife and family and made me promise to write to him from America.

Nguyen speaks English and French fluently. He reads a lot, when he can afford to buy a book, and wanted to know what I thought about a hundred different things…the Kennedys…what life is really like in America where his sister lives in Louisiana with her husband who was a Colonel in the South Vietnamese army. He talked about how Vietnamese men give their salaries to their wives (as in Burma) and then ask for a little money when they need it…helps keep them faithful to their wives so they don’t spend money on women, he says.

Nguyen talks honestly about the Viet Kiew but his experience was quite different than Mr. Binh’s…when she visited him last year, his sister slept in his home, he said proudly. She sends money regularly to pay for his children’s schooling. But he has 8 brothers and sisters so he explains that she cannot send money to him all the time. As we motorcycled along the highway, Nguyen pointed out several nice houses…that one is family money from Colorado…this one is from New York…and that one is a Minnesota house. The brand new shiny hotel I stayed in for $8 a night was paid for by family in Florida. They are probably paying off a loan for the money, I told him, as not very many people could come up with $20,000 cash (not including the cost of the lot) to pay for a new hotel in Vietnam…and the look he gave me was one of incredulity.

After spending a day sitting by the ocean listening to the surf in Nga Trang, I took another night train for Saigon where I am hibernating for two days with my computer…

To Hue On A Sack Of Rice

Posted on by Laughingnomad

KtJTxGv4eiozwJxI0Lb6qM-2006216170118412.gif

My motorcycle taxi driver, Mr. Binh, takes me to a small cafe by the side of the road leading out of Quang Tri where we wait to wave down a local kamazake minibus that will careen along a bad stretch of Highway 1 to Hue. The bus is crammed full of people one on top of the other, of course, so I sit on the top of some rice sacks until someone gets off and I am graciously allowed to have the emptied seat. A couple of giggling girls behind me give me a small sweet tangerine to eat. I, the foreigner, am the center of attention for awhile.

At first I thought the driver was a woman but when he got out to gas up the bus I saw that he was a long haired bad-ass looking guy in his 30�s or 40�s with a very pocked and scarred face. This guy especially loved to put the pedal to the medal…this guy especially loved his brakes…this guy loved to jerk the steering wheel back and forth narrowly missing the oncoming trucks…he is having a great time and I am breathless waiting for my life to end. Suddenly he throws a dirty towel to someone in the back of the bus. It lands in my face. He looks back with a grin to see if I am alright. I return his thumbs up with a big laugh.

Across from me sits two pretty girls, about 12 years old, dressed identically with black pants and white shirts-must be a school uniform-looking absolutely bored as only adolescent girls everywhere can look.