RUDE AWAKENING
YATRA - MY JOURNEY
Pacific Ridge Cambodia Trip Travel Blog
The Cambodia group spent the day at the Khmer Rouge museum and the killing fields, learning about this country’s heartbreaking history of genocide. Here is a moving reflection from Namu on May 30, 2016:
​
Today we drove to S-21, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. We were told to look at the museum in three ways: through the lenses of mirror, microscope, and binoculars. Compared to my life back home, life during the Khmer Rouge rule was torturous, filled with hatred, anger, and violence. Coming in to see the museum, I knew that today would be filled with sadness; however, I didn’t realize how much the aspect of the torture of prisoners and forced marriages would affect me. Growing up with a traditional Indian background in the US, I was sure that I knew how arranged marriages in general worked. However, during the Khmer Rouge rule, marriage was a form of torture. Women were left in very vulnerable positions and couldn’t escape. The stories that the interviewed women told were stories that cannot be pitied, rather empathized with. Women were forced to marry random men and they feared what their husbands would do to them. One quote that really stuck with me was “being forced to marry someone you don’t love is like swallowing a bitter fruit, only to have it get stuck in your throat. I went through with marriage and I swallowed gravel and rocks for ten years.” What I am shocked about is the fact that whether or not women wanted to go along with what was going on, they did it anyway just to stay alive. The common theme I saw was that women were encouraging our generation to fall in love before marriage because then no marriage would be left in hate. Doesn't love always prevail?
I didn’t think there was still going to be a stench when we went to visit the Killing Fields. After all, it has been 40 years! I thought that by learning about genocide in school I was ready to see real evidence of human execution, but I was wrong. Today, the Killing Fields were harder to see than S-21 because of the scattered graves, skulls, other bones, and the clothing of small children. The story about how babies were murdered really caught my attention and broke my heart because I was so naive about how brutal the killings were.
​
To prevent events like Khmer Rouge, our world needs to first accept everyone as human.The thing that strikes me most is that we haven’t really learned anything from history. Today in the Middle East, ISIS performs mass murders and tortures women. In Africa, men like Joseph Kony and the group Boko Haram have kidnapped and sexually assaulted thousands of women. The biggest question I have is why. Why is it necessary for so many people to get murdered for absolutely no reason? Why does no one actually try to stand up and do something about it? Why don't people fight back? I am shocked that a small percentage of people can turn on their country and create so much destruction. I am shocked that this has happened in more places than one, for example Germany and Italy. I am shocked that it is still happening in the world today. In a world where there are one million people trying to do the right thing, there are also ten people doing the wrong thing. In a world of war and hatred, my hope is there is always room for a new beginning. I still feel so naive for not knowing why we never learn from history, but I do know I’d really like to get more involved.
​