Haunting memories linger in Cambodia

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is a former high school that was used as a prison by the Khmer Rouge regime. Then the Khmer Rouge communist regime took over. From 1975 to 1979, this institute of higher learning was turned into a torture chamber, Security Prison 21. An estimated 20,000 people were beaten, maimed, tortured and killed in the converted Phnom Penh high school. Some of them were soldiers for the opposition. Others were simply intellectuals, academics, doctors, teachers, monks and students. Now the buildings form a memorial site called Tuol Sleng, which translates to “Strychnine Hill.” These are some of the people who died there. Their faces haunt me. On the right you can see photos of the prisoners as they looked when they arrived at S-21. The corresponding photo on the left side is how they looked before they perished. Many of the classrooms still have blood-stained tiles underneath rusty beds and shackles. The building facade is shrouded in barbed netting. The desperate prisoners who tried to commit suicide off the buildings were instead wounded by razor-laced wire. When the guards ran out of burial space near the school, the prisoners were taken outside of town to Choeung Ek extermination center, a place better known as the Killing Fields. Already-weak inmates were beaten with iron bars, axes and bamboo sticks until they were tossed into mass graves. Then chemicals were poured over the bodies to kill those who were buried alive. I have a difficult time coming up with any words to talk about this. It's why I still haven't written about my experiences visiting the genocide memorials in Rwanda. It's such a deep dark confusing pit of emotion, I don't even know where to begin. It's heinous, yes. Confronting such evil makes me doubt my belief that people are inherently good. It forces me to question God. It makes me want to cry out in horror. But it goes beyond that too. As I travel, I realize how much of the existence I enjoy is pure luck. It is only by chance that I came into this world in a humid Georgia hospital instead of a humid Cambodian town. It is only a fluke that I have an easy life, one I never had to fight for. It's a sheer accident that I didn't witness the slaughter of my family in 1994 Rwanda. Instead I was getting shoes dyed to match my prom dress. It could have been me. It could have been you. It could have been all of us. Sometimes the horrible incidents that we see on the news feel so far away. But it only takes one chilling walk through a sorrow-soaked hallway to remind you of how close it could really be. Written by Maggie Downs: Special to The Desert Sun, May 15, 2011