Beneath the Butterflies

The aborted trip to Thailand turned into a mostly-delightful, last-minute trip to Cambodia, a pearl with its own stunning beaches, amazing history (Angkor Wat), and stupas everywhere.

Among the stupas visited was this one in Chheoung Ek, maybe ten miles south of Phnom Penh.

It was striking with garudas garnering the corners of the roof and dragon-like nagas below them. On the pathways all around this stupa, dogs and chickens joined visitors from all over the world, and butterflies hovered thickly over some of the low-lying depressions. Bird-call dominated the otherwise very still soundscape.

Beneath the butterflies was this.

Look again. Bones. Beneath the butterflies were bones, lots. Human bones. Chheoung Ek is the Auchwitz of Pol Pot’s regime, the most well known of Cambodia's 300 some “killing fields" where collectively 3 million people were brutally murdered, more than a quarter of the population.

The beautiful sugar palm leaf is connected to the tree trunk with a thick curved stem with razor sharp edges, stems that were used at Chheuong Ek to slit throats so  screams couldn’t be heard. Bullets were expensive, so innocent Cambodians were instead bludgeoned to death with bamboo sticks and the heads of hoes and then toppled into one of the many mass graves. The less fortunate were raped first and subjected to watching their babies being swung by their ankles until their little heads were smashed against the "killing tree." Only then were the mothers bludgeoned to death.

Electricity was run to the place, however, so the Khymer officials would have light by which to see their records: Before being murdered each victim signed his own death warrant; each name was matched with one of those on the trucks that ferried innocent Cambodians from the too-crowded TS-21. No escapee would go unaccounted for.

Were Pol Pot and his hit man "Duch" paranoid schizophrenics? How crazy did they have to be to think a quarter of the population were traitors out to undermine their Khymer regime? How did they persuade members of the Khymer Rogue to commit such brutal acts against their Cambodian brothers and sisters? And how crazy did the US government have to be to recognize Pol Pot and his Khymer government at all? How crazy is it that Pol Pot lived to the ripe age of 82, with his government taking a seat at the UN?

Tapes were available in different languages to hear stories by and about some of the survivors of Pol Pot’s regime. While listening to gut-wrenching personal testimonies, visitors could hear  plaintive cries from today's children on the other side of the chicken wire fence, children crying out “Som mah-nee---som mah-nee—som mah-nee.”

Inside the memorial stupa are hundreds upon hundreds of skulls, stacked high.

 Outside bicycle taxis and tuk-tuks waited for somber tourists to climb in for the long and bumpy way back to Phnom Penh. 

Jim Curley photos