Ari's Planet

Trees bloom in the orchard, they bear fruit in the warm sun, people touch the trees, gathering their harvest...

An innocent tree stretches out its limbs, protects what it was made to kill, broken children. Bones have fallen, the earth they broke together is cratered, the most bombed places, the bloodiest. The tree's purple flowers reach out, the innocent. The bones of the dead must be open, air must move through the places of their eyes, wind for their souls to enter and move. Is the wind the sound of the sea pressed against an ear? I do not know on what to focus, the eyes have no light, they are dark caves, even the marrow is gone, there is no one to ask. We focus on the wounds--the gash, the hole, the shattering, the cratered earth. Here visit young women, their radiant skin, eyes more splendid than diamonds. Life spills from them in silence, their souls cleave to them, they look in the broken mirror, the bones of young women, their mothers. The sea is far away, here there are dry waves, white caps, the smell of skulls.

Again, I walk through a lane of signs, reminders. White flowers fall at my feet, withered and brown, spent. The air is thickest here, it will not release, it holds tight, encouraged by a high sun. The light and the flowers are sweet and pleasant. I am blinded. The white-washed platform, the raised burial, withered bloodied bones in their unrest. I am blind, like you, or do you see? The child as fruit lobbed, the bayonet, the bullet, in our image. From the lane in which I enter I wander, oblivious.

Toul Sleng, place of poison, hill of guilt

The "lane" is where the last 14 victims left at Toul Sleng prison, also known as S-21, and found when it was liberated, were buried. The S-21 prison was once a school. When I was in school sometimes it felt like prison. This was an idle thought. Here, what was once a thing of upbringing became a place of devastation. The flower of Cambodia and the innocent, simply people, were brought here to confess, to know torture, to live only to die. The structure of S-21 is a typical school, except for modifications. A central courtyard is surrounded by three large long buildings each 3-stories tall. A small building is in the center and serves as a kind of administration building for the museum. I wander along the first building.

"When it was a school no one died, when it was a prison no one learned" -- graffiti on wall

Inside each room is a metal framed cot. On each cot is an empty ammunition box, leg irons, a metal rod to hold the leg irons. The floor is tiled with discolored yellow and white tiles, the walls are painted yellow, the windows in the front and back are barred, the rear windows look out on banana trees. On the wall is a picture of a victim, severely beaten, rotting flesh. A skull is bashed, the body is wracked in wounds, the skin is dark. Fluids spread out from the body. This must be a picture of the last victim found in the room. I imagine an electrical whip attached to the electrical outlet. I stop imagining. Outside, a sign in Khmer, French, and English lists the rules for prisoners. A guide comes by with a group. A tourist refers to the rules "just like Guantanamo". I catch some of the tour, she says the can was used for prisoners to shit, the empty oil jug for their urine. They were beaten if they did not defecate or urinate when permitted. At the end of the burial area is a kind of gallows. Once it was used by students for exercise. At S-21 prisoners were hung by their arms. When they passed out, their heads were dipped in jugs of feotid water or excrement to revive them. The jugs stand there, one is broken.

I walk to another building. The first floor has a display of photographs of prisoners. They were seated against a positioner and their pictures taken. Prisoners taken from the same place on the same day have the same number. Another section is filled with small cells. Barbed wire runs along the outside. Each cell was just 4 tiles wide and about 12 tiles long. The cell walls were made with crude brick. The prisoners were kept shackled. Some cells have a plate for food, an ammunition box, a plastic oil jug. A few rags remain here and there. Holes were broken in the walls to create a crude corridor. In each room there are numbers for each cell on one wall, probably to track prisoners. Wandering the building, sometimes I come across what look like blood stains. At the end of the first floor, under the steps, is a wall of tourist grafitti: never let this happen again, remember ... list of countries where bad things happen ..., etc. Another floor has cells made from wood, same size. Some rooms were open cells, in which prisoners were kept lying down with their legs shackled together in irons. They were not allowed to move or speak. The stupidity, the ugliness of this, could people think of nothing else? To build these things.

An exhibit in one of the buildings shows drawings by survivor Vann Nath. A web page with many of his pictures has been posted by a tourist. It is hard for me to look at some of the pictures. In one, three women are fallen on the ground while men stand over them beating them with iron staffs. It is the way they wrest their babies away from them, I imagine their broken backs, the screams. I stop imagining. I come to another room. The torture room. A man is having his nails pulled while being whipped with an electric whip; his tormentors seem bored, perhaps after torturing so many it was routine to them.

Adjacent to the miserable man is a painting which churns my anger. I become livid. I am so angry. I shout to people walking by "they do this in America!". It is a drawing of waterboarding. A man is strapped to an inclined table, his feet in irons. One man is pouring water from a can onto his face. This is very similar to a demonstration I saw on TV of waterboarding in the US. The actual table sits right there in the room. I am so mad, I have been trying to get War Criminal George Bush impeached but our pathetic excuse for a legislative body won't budge. That the USA, in the 21st century, is standing side by side with the Khmer Rouge, it makes me so mad. Another tourist, with a north-American accent, says he didn't know the US was waterboarding. I manage to calm down a bit. A large tub, used for full immersion, and a smaller can in which a victims head was submerged, are also in the room along with depictions by Vann Nath. Along one wall is a picture of a tree, perhaps in the killing fields; a baby is being dashed against it, another baby is being thrown in the air to land on a soldier's bayonet or shot in midair. There is no imagining.

Interview with US Congressman Ted Poe (R - TX) Glenn Beck program, DECEMBER 12, 2007:
Q: "Do you believe it's [waterboarding] torture?"
A: "I don't believe it's torture at all, I certainly don't."

A room contains pictures of a few of the perpetrators of the Pol Pot regime. Their pictures have been scrawled over in Khmer. Short biographies of a few of the people who worked with the regime say they had no choice or they would have been killed. Some say they joined since being a soldier was a better life. The museum talks about child soldiers being the cruelest, the least respectful to authority. A photographer has sought out past members of the regime. He takes pictures of them showing them in their current lives, their happy families. On my ride from Phnom Penh to Kampot in the south of Cambodia I sit next to an 18 year old boy keen on practicing his English. He tells me he remembers the end of the fighting about 15 years ago. He says Kampot was a last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge until the army finally routed them. As we near Kampot he points out some hills and says that's where they still live.

Cheung Ek, site of the Killing Fields outside Phnom Penh, was once an orchard

In another section there is an exhibit of stories of some of the victims. For one of them, it says the Khmer Rouge extracted 700 pages of confessions during the victim's imprisonement. Such is the success of torture. After being starved, beaten, tortured, prisoners were sent to the killing fields to die. They would arrive in trucks, blindfolded, then either beaten, hacked, or shot to death, possibly after further torture. When too many prisoners arrived in one day they were kept in dark cells until they could be murdered. At the killing field memorial the sun is sweet and hot, its light falls on the remnants of the orchard, bones and rags remind. A child comes to the edge of the site, he wants money, he shadows me, "money book school, money book school, ...", finally he says "water", I hand him my water bottle.

The brochure for the S-21 museum says that they badly need funds for renovation. The buildings are old and suffering water damage. I think it is important that this structure be preserved. It is important not just so that we learn about the attrocities of the Khmer Rouge, but also because things similar to what happened still occur. This was brought home to me especially by the depiction of waterboarding. It can happen anywhere, at any time. Wendell Phillips said "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty". This museum helps to maintain that vigilance.

Documentation Center of Cambodia
Tuol Sleng Museum