Cambodia           

Updated December 2009— Perhaps because of its tragic history, Cambodia has attracted international attention in the last decade.  In 2009, the victims of the 1975 genocide finally got their prayers answered. In July 2007, Comrade Duch, the former head of Tuol Sleng prison, was charged with crimes against humanity by the genocide tribunal. At the end of 2009, three more former Khmer Rouge leaders were charged with genocide. Though trial likely won’t start till 2011, it is a sign of hope for the families and victims.

October 2004— Cambodia was my first awakening trip. At 22, the Khmer Rouge era from 1975 to 1979 seemed like ages ago. But to be confronted with the aftermath of it puts things in perspective. Admittedly, I knew very little of the Khmer Rouge and its genoiede back then.  It was difficult to comprehend the mass murder of close to 2 million people, many from exhaustion or starvation, while others were tortured and executed. Landmines remaining from 3 decades of war still continue to claim new victims thirty years after the end of the Pol Pot Era. Our tour guide had told us how his family was tortured and his flee to Vietnam when he was just a young boy. He said it with such composure as if it was still the norm.

The short seven days I was there, I couldn’t hold my tears. It was hard not to choke up from the sight of men crippled by landmines, and of young barefoot children begging for money. I still clearly remember the desperation and despair in the eyes of a one-armed man holding his young child outside the glittering Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. I felt even more helpless after handing him a 5-dollar note. At a busy market, a young women was beast feeding her infant while she hunkered down eating food scraps from the street. Across the road in a sea of rubbish, a boy aged 7 or so, wearing nothing but a dirty torn shorts was rummaging for anything useful or edible. I was confronted with similar sights throughout my trip, from the steps leading to Angkor Wat, to the historically tragic S-21 prison where thousands were tortured and killed.

Outside the jewellery store where a tour group was bargaining over precious stones, I stayed outside and played with the group of kids. As one of them handed me a dusty red stone, telling me it was an elephant, one of the men from the tour group said to me, “Don’t touch that. You don’t know what disease they carry.” I was angry and saddened after hearing such a comment. I start to wonder why they were here. Was it just to purchase these rubies as souvenirs?