The Faces of Cambodia: Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Three years, eight months, and twenty days. That’s all it took for the Cambodian Genocide to kill nearly two million, or a quarter, of Cambodia’s entire population at the time under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and its paranoid dictator, Pol Pot, from April 17, 1975 to January 7, 1979.

Since entering Cambodia, we had heard bits and pieces about this grim time in the country’s history, and we learned more each day as we were reading Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father, a personal memoir about a survivor of the regime. The arc of our specific journey in country was interesting in that we went from experiencing the height of Khmer culture in Siem Reap at Angkor Wat, to then seeing the painful aftermath of the genocide reflected in the art in Battambang, but we were not directly confronted by the ruthlessness of the Khmer Rouge until the end of our time there, when it stared us in the face as we entered Phnom Penh. What we learned and saw were disturbing and upsetting.

Before the Fall—Molyvann’s Phnom Penh

A bustling capital city of just over two million people today, Phnom Penh was once one of the loveliest gems in French Indochina. For astute observers, it offers plenty of clues into its past, echoes of both its once glorious days and once tortured streets reverberating through the colonial archways and modernist stilts, down cracked streets in need of paving and across the shiny riverfront esplanade. Walking around the city, we caught wind of the promise of Cambodia in the short period post-independence from France and pre-civil war, from 1953 to 1967; it came through like a light extinguished just before it was about to shine brightest. Learning about this brief moment of prosperity in the city made the downfall of Phnom Penh in 1975—when Khmer Rouge insurgents, newly victorious in the eight-year civil war between them and the U.S.-backed Khmer Republic, captured the city and forced all inhabitants out—all the harder to endure.

Unexpectedly, we learned most about this mini golden era of Phnom Penh when we accidentally joined the wrong tour. “So, are you a big Molyvann fan?” asked a British expat to Karen as we sat down on the back of a small tour bus. “Who?!” Karen responded, more snappy and ignorant than intended. We had never heard of Molyvann. The woman smiled politely and turned away.

As it turns out, Van Molyvann was the subject of this very tour—the renowned Cambodian architect whom everyone was there to learn about (and whose name is included in the sub-title of the tour). We thought we were signing up to tour colonial architecture in central Phnom Penh from aboard a cyclo (a Cambodian rickshaw), but instead, we ended up on a bus crisscrossing town to visit prime examples of “New Khmer Architecture,” a style that combines traditional Cambodian-Angkorian designs with modernist Brutalist characteristics—and founded by none other than Molyvann himself. Personally, we are not usually huge fans of Brutalism, the unmistakable blocky concrete style that gained popularity worldwide in the 1950s (though Michael likes it more than Karen). But ultimately, we’re very glad we went on this tour, because it turns out that Molyvann was an important player in the development of post-independence Cambodia. During this time, the kingdom launched expansive initiatives to construct new towns, infrastructure, and public buildings, and as the State Architect, Molyvann spearheaded much of it, building nearly 100 major structures in fifteen years. His bold, geometrical aesthetic reflects the confidence and progressive zeitgeist of the times, when Cambodia was forward-looking and acted as an exemplar for others in the region.

We visited the Royal University of Phnom Penh, which features many buildings designed by him, including the now-famous, funky but lovable Institute of Foreign Languages building and its beautiful circular library. Of great interest to us was also the 100 Houses Project, an affordable housing experiment from 1965-1967 that constructed modern versions of rural Cambodian homes in the city center, similarly built up on stilts for the annual floods, and adjusted for urban space. Today, many of these original affordable houses have since been expanded and renovated with fancy additions and finishes, making them expensive property. Finally, perhaps Molyvann’s greatest work (certainly his most illustrious) is the National Sports Complex, or “Olympic Stadium” (so called not because it hosted the Olympics, but because its pool was built to Olympic standards). The symmetrical arena, a beautiful block of cement, is somehow simultaneously imposing and light, authoritative and cheerful, and is infused with natural light and air. The adjacent stadium is still the largest venue in Cambodia and was once the most esteemed one in all of Southeast Asia. We enjoyed the complex not only for its architectural audacity, but for the fact that it is now open to the public every day, much like a community center. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people gather there at sunset (including us on both of our nights in Phnom Penh)—running the track, sprinting up and down the stairs in Rocky fashion, and attending one of the many old-lady aerobics classes that surround its perimeter (including Karen). It’s almost akin to us being able to go in and out of Madison Square Garden to use its facilities whenever we wanted, every single day. It was uplifting to see public space so well-utilized and appreciated, and offered a helpful window into modern local life.

Witnessing the normalcy and vibrancy of life today at Olympic Stadium and throughout Phnom Penh—in emerging trendy cat cafes and Khmer fusion restaurants, in teenagers’ rollerblade races along the riverfront where the Mekong meets the Tonlé Sap, and in expat-filled rooftop bars overlooking the pretty lights of the river skyline—it’s hard to believe that a genocide took place here not that long ago, completely emptying these city streets, purging the country of education, arts, and intellectuals, and disengaging the country from the rest of the world, halting its economy and development for decades to come.

The Prison

The original gates on the east side of Tuol Sleng have long been shuttered, when the former school ceased to be a nurturing haven on April 17, 1975. Under the guise of impending U.S. bombs that were about to drop on the city, Khmer Rouge soldiers compelled the entire population of Phnom Penh to abandon their homes and walk—for many days—to labor camps and farms in the countryside, taking only what they could carry. They promised residents that they would be able to return in three days, “after the bombs stop and it is safe again.”

While many in the opposition knew better, there was some reason to believe this lie—the United States had engaged in a large bombing campaign across Cambodia for many years as part of both the Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War, in attempts to impede the Khmer Rouge takeover, and ravaging the countryside and killing tens of thousands of civilians in the meantime (some estimates even put it at hundreds of thousands). Though the actual number of deaths caused by the U.S. remains unknown—and is too hard to disentangle from those caused by the actual civil war itself—some believe that the U.S. bombardments may have fueled, rather than stifled, the fire of the Khmer Rouge socialist rebels, helping them steadily gain recruits among poor laborers in rural areas who began to despise the West and those who lived in the cities.

Driven by a perverse ideology, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (which means “Red Khmer”) exploited this rising nationalism to further their vision of a completely self-sufficient, extreme agrarian socialist society, where everyone would work together on farms to serve the collective, surviving off their own food, fed only by the pure hands and sweat of Khmer blood rather than corrupted by the material wealth, academic theories, religious beliefs, and individualism of outside influences. Money became worthless as it was abolished from the system (that the US Dollar is widely used as currency in Cambodia today is a legacy from this event); colorful clothes were forced to be burned as everyone wore the same black pajama-like clothing. Their new Cambodia, renamed Democratic Kampuchea, was to become a model egalitarian, communist utopia.

Of course, as with all “pure societies,” it didn’t end up that way.

Citizens were forced to toil all day in the scorching sun, on little to no food, living in squalor and forced to scavenge for insects as supplementary nutrition. Any dissenters were taken away from the villages, never to be seen again. This wasn’t racial genocide, though those who didn’t look or sound Khmer were killed (including many Chinese-Cambodians, Vietnamese-Cambodians, and Cham Muslims); this was ideological genocide, Khmer vs Khmer. Those who had been teachers, doctors, academics, or city-dwellers; those who spoke foreign languages; even those who simply wore glasses, who were then considered “intellectuals”—all became targets of the Khmer Rouge (to this day, many Khmer refuse to wear glasses even if they have poor eyesight). Of the two million who died during the genocide, about 60% were directly executed, while the remaining perished from starvation/malnutrition, disease, or pure exhaustion from forced labor.

Tuol Sleng, renamed Security Prison 21 or “S-21,” became one of the torture centers where these folks were taken, the most infamous one of approximately 200 secret prisons that were scattered across the country. It is believed that 12,000-20,000 people were imprisoned here, chained to classrooms converted into prison cells and torture chambers, interrogated and forced to admit to crimes that they did not commit, just so the regime would have “reason” to execute them. When the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge in 1979, they uncovered S-21 and found recently-slaughtered prisoners, destroyed documents, and broken torture devices—signs of desperate last-minute attempts by Khmer Rouge soldiers trying to hide their actions and eliminate witnesses when they knew their own doom was imminent.

Today, Tuol Sleng is a Genocide Museum, a memorial, and a research center. As visitors, we walked the long narrow halls despondently, quietly absorbing the depths of information and narratives shared over the thorough and honest audio tour, trying to replace the stinging images of atrocity with the calming memories of children who used to fill the same corridors, not understanding how this could have all taken place in such modern times before the eyes of the world. We stood in each of the rooms where they found the dead prisoners, next to metal bed frames or shackles that have been left in place, staring at photos of the mutilated bodies that were taken right in that spot. Needless to say, seeing these was heart-wrenching and difficult, but they were largely faceless (or their faces were blocked out in the photos). What was unexpectedly harder was staring into the eyes of the thousands of men, women, and children who were imprisoned here.

In an almost obsessive attempt to chronicle their “progress,” the Khmer Rouge officers who ran S-21 kept detailed records of each prisoner who came through, including black and white photographs taken on the day each arrived, and pages and pages of exhaustive notes on their interrogations and “confessions.” Mirroring the headshots of Jews who were killed in labor camps under Nazi Germany—indeed, the Khmer Rouge actually used the same tools as the Nazis to force prisoners’ heads up and backs straight in the uncomfortable chair—these photos are now displayed on large boards throughout the old school’s buildings. The boards are filled on both sides—rows and rows of faces of those who were tortured and killed at the prison. There is also a second set of photos, of young children wearing the recognizable tattered black garb. These were Pol Pot’s comrades—boys and girls who were recruited and brainwashed at such a young age that they didn’t know any better. One astonishing fact is that these faces often ended up on the other prisoner board, as many were accused of treason and themselves tortured by the very same people who were their comrades a day earlier. As the political and social experiment began to crumble, high-ranking Khmer Rouge officers became more and more paranoid, distrustful of anyone and everyone, drawing more inward into the pit of their own indoctrination that allowed them to senselessly murder in the name of purpose and perseverance. Getting rid of anyone who presented the slightest challenge was, in their mind, their only way to survive. By the end, there were barely any left standing.

Only twelve prisoners out of the thousands held at S-21 were known to survive, mostly because they had skills that the facility needed, such as knowledge to repair machines and artistic talent to create propaganda materials. Some of them have shared and published their stories, and two of them were actually at the museum on the day we visited, sitting in the shade of large trees, answering visitors’ questions and selling their books. Their families told us that they come almost every day. While it is extraordinary that they survived and have healed enough to be able to speak openly about their experiences, it was admittedly also a bit uncomfortable to see them there. What could we say to these men who had seen and suffered so much? Do we thank them for sharing? Apologize for the torment they endured while the world watched? How would that make up for the fact that one of their wives was murdered right there in that location? It was almost as if we don’t deserve their forgiveness, and to see them come back again and again to this site of untold agony felt unnecessarily painful.

At the same time, there are those who come to Tuol Sleng to heal. Because many of the detailed prisoner records did survive the late attempt to destroy them, they have now been archived and made available for research. Families of those who vanished have been able to come look through the files to see if their loved ones passed through here, sometimes finding closure, which, even if painful, may finally pave the way for healing.

In this way, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum provides transparency and answers in a way that Phnom Penh’s other major relic of the Khmer Rouge does not.

The Killing Fields

Commonly known as the “Killing Fields,” the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center offers few satisfying answers in its coldblooded history, its grassy mounds still covered with shards of human bone and scraps of ragged clothing. During the genocide, killing fields were sites to which “enemies” and prisoners of the Khmer Rouge were transported (from places like S-21) to be systematically executed. Modern-day analysis of recovered bodies and skulls in these fields show that everyday rudimentary tools, such as hammers and pickaxes, were used for many of the executions in order to save bullets, which the Khmer Rouge could not afford. Because of this, some victims may not have even been completely dead by the time they were thrown into the mass graves in these fields, buried with their compatriots.

Today, we know that Choeung Ek was part of nearly 24,000 similar mass graves across Cambodia, revealing about 1.3 million victims of execution during this time. The old shacks where tools and chemicals were stored are no longer here, but much else remains untouched at this living outdoor memorial. Another thoughtfully produced audio tour leads visitors down a path that overlooks the killing fields and around a small pond, over the shallow pits where bodies were tossed. To date, only some of the mass graves have been excavated, including a specific one for women and children and another for former Khmer Rouge soldiers, simple thatched roofs built over them for mild protection. The wind and rain still unearth pieces of bone or clothes across the fields today, especially during Cambodia’s intense flooding season each year; we ourselves spotted quite a few pieces of brittle bone littered in the dirt below our feet, initially thinking they were small pieces of driftwood, but then realizing they were definitely human remains after we saw some other bones in a display case. Of course, the memorial staff ask that visitors not touch any of these, as they comb the site every few weeks to collect any newly uncovered artifacts and add it to the archives.

Three difficult images from Choeung Ek stay with us, seared into our consciousness. The first two are likely the same two that most profoundly touch other visitors as well, for they are emotionally and physically overwhelming. A large tree stands imposingly near the center of the fields, next to a mass gravesite. Known as the Killing Tree, it was here where babies of “guilty” victims were killed, their bodies and heads flung against the tree. Historians have found blood stains dried on the trunk decades later. It is believed that the Khmer Rouge did this so that these children could never avenge their parents’ deaths. Draped across the tree trunk and on the bamboo fence posts of the mass grave are thousands of colorful ribbons and bracelets—the kind that kids make for their friends or that one might buy at a trinket market to remind them of a special place—left behind from visitors offering whatever they had on them as commemorative mementos. Some are threadbare and faded, maybe from a decade ago, while others are fresh with elastic, perhaps left behind that morning. They layer on top of each other, these acts of solidarity and prayer, as a way for the world to try to honor and protect these children; or perhaps they are just a way for visitors to remind themselves that they were there and to never forget, because we know the children can no longer be protected. The juxtaposition of this colorful scene—almost a living work of art—against the dark knowledge of what took place there was disheartening, to say the least.

The second powerful image is the new Buddhist stupa built at the entrance of the fields, which acts as a memorial monument. Gleaming in white and with unique Khmer designs in its top, it is different from many other stupas because it does not have the typical wide base (which often represents the earth). It is also filled with human skulls. Glass siding on the exterior walls reveal a tower filled with five thousand skulls that were exhumed right there at Choeung Ek. Visitors are able to enter the narrow hallway around the tower, which put us face to face with the skulls, stacked on top of each other from where our bare feet stood on the stupa ground, up to about four stories high. Each one has been studied by researchers and they are now sorted by age—one glass case for victims under 20 years old, another for those in their forties, and so on; small stickers of different colors label them by the method of execution, some very obvious as there is a hole in the skull itself.

Finally, the third image seems small and unimportant, but it stuck with us—a loudspeaker. The loudspeaker is tied high up in a tree and was used to blare nationalist music over the screams of the victims as they were being murdered. Historians believe this was done to hide the cries from the surrounding farms and keep the location of the killing field a secret, while also making it easier for the perpetrators to carry out the horrible act without empathy or remorse. The victims could not even be heard in their last dying moments.

Walking through these fields, one feels (and looks) a little zombie-like. Visitors walk past each other slowly, silently, without smiling and with headphones on, listening to their own part of the audio guide, perhaps digesting the unspeakable facts of the executions or opting to listen to one of several individual survival stories. Eyes, if not on the brink of tears, often appeared vacant, a defense mechanism to wrestle with the emotions stirred. Some take a seat underneath the leafy trees to rest for awhile, lost in their own thoughts. At one point, on a gazebo at the edge of the pond, we lifted our heads for a moment, took off our headphones, and peered out over the fields: the sluggish plod of the people walking around looked like the awakened spirits of the victims, wandering around their graves and searching for something. Perhaps for answers, which they will not find.

River Lights

One of the hardest parts of learning more about the Khmer Rouge regime is seeing the words “never forget” written time and again on so much of the literature and memorials honoring the victims today—on statues and monuments, in visitor comment books, even on the audio guides. The truth is, we said “never forget” after the Armenian Genocide (WWI); after the Holocaust (WWII); and many others. The Cambodian Genocide did not take place in a disconnected, barbarian world where we didn’t know any better. It happened in the late 1970s. History keeps repeating itself; it is clearly not good enough just to never forget.

Despite this seemingly depressing end to our time in Cambodia, we actually left with some hope. While some of the country is still struggling with the emotional and psychological damage of the Khmer Rouge regime, many—especially young folks who did not live through it (including those we met working at our hostels)—also want to move on, to reinvent their country’s image. As we saw in our two weeks across the country, the people are as creative and entrepreneurial as they are friendly and optimistic.

On our last night in Phnom Penh, after an emotionally heavy two days of visiting memorials and learning history, we visited Wat Phnom, a glowing Buddhist temple located on a high hill in the middle of the city set among beautiful lush grounds. From there, we saw the city light up and felt the air cool as the sun set.

As it got darker, we almost expected more streetlights and building lights to come on, as they would have in many other large cosmopolitan capital cities, but it didn’t quite get there. We could mostly see where we were going as we walked through the streets, finding our way to the riverside, but there were dark patches through construction zones and rubble that we had to step carefully through.

We then met up with two Americans, some friends of friends who lived in Phnom Penh at the time (also chased home by COVID-19 since then). Isabella and Louis were there, respectively, to work on a Fulbright research project to study the unique papermaking processes used in ancient Buddhist texts, and to launch a business that aims to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from refrigerants in air conditioners and fridges. Fascinated, we discussed these and general life in Cambodia with our new friends over drinks at a riverside rooftop bar followed by Cambodian BBQ dinner, with meats grilled right at our table.

For some reason, these niche topics made us happy and reminded us of Molyvann—not in function, but in the confluence of lessons from the past and boldness toward the future. The dim lights along the Phnom Penh riverside will soon shine brighter.

Karen & Michael

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, February 15-16, 2020