A Keeper of Memories

Something that continues to shock me as I get to know more about Asia, is how little I know about Asia, how ill informed I’ve been and how minute or, at times, non-existent my knowledge is of these countries’ history.

It pains me how little regard we have for our fellow humans stories’ when a supposed “border” separates us.

International news rarely makes the headlines unless it involves “one of our own” and our history lessons carefully omit any part of world history that either doesn’t involve us or where we didn’t play a role that we’re proud of.

I can’t count the number of times during my schooling that I studied Henry XIII and his 6 wives or the battle of 1066 or WW2, this is important and yes we should learn and we must remember this, but there have been more wars that tore apart families and massacred the innocent within the last century. Only 40 years ago there was another war which was detrimental to humankind, and it would be a lie to say that our country played no part in it.

In the early 1970s Cambodia was in turmoil, suffering from the amount of bombs that the Americans dropped (more than they dropped in WWII) in what they appropriately termed “the secret war”. This incited a popularity growth for the communist rebels known as the Khmer Rouge. The country now faced civil war.

17th April 1975 the Khmer Rouge invaded the capital Phnom Penh and seized power. What followed was years of horrific and dehumanising conditions, imprisonment and massacre of the Cambodian people. 3 million lives were lost.

I visited the S21 prison and Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, places where anyone that didn’t “obey” the Khmer Rouge or didn’t fit in with their regime, including any people with jobs such as doctors or lawyers or academics, were taken to be cruelly tortured and murdered. It was a harrowing place, left in the conditions that it was found in, with blood stains and chains on the floor.

In 1979, with the help of the Vietnamese the Khmer Rouge were overpowered and its leaders including Pal Pot were driven out… Except they weren’t. For nearly 20 years they were still regarded as the official leaders of Cambodia, the United Nations gave them a seat in the General Assembly and they had the support of many countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

I really hope that our leaders from that time go to S21 prison and the Killing fields in Phnom Penh. I challenge them to stand in the chambers surrounded by the instruments of torture used by those they supported, to stand on the ground where you can still see bone fragments and torn clothing now risen to the surface from the mass graves beneath, where men, women and children were brutally murdered. To Stand facing the tree, now known as the killing tree, where infants were torn from their mothers arms and smashed against it before being thrown into the pit. The people that did this, the people who’s motto’s included “it’s better to kill and innocent by mistake than to spare an enemy by mistake” were people our countries supported.

So I have to ask, why didn’t we learn about this.

Is it because we are so ignorant and arrogant to believe that we should only teach our kids the history that took place on our home soil or are we ashamed of the part we played and we don’t want to admit how terrible was our mistake.

It was overwhelming and painful to see what humanity can do to one another. As I wondered through those places listening to the stories and facts on the audiobook it was hard to fight back tears. I felt the sadness, I felt the anger but I also felt the passion and determination to ensure that this was remembered and never repeated.

I’m writing this partly to fill in some of the gaps in our historical knowledge. But I also to pass on the message, that there is something to learn from this, it’s a warning, after all, this is why we study history, this is why places like the S21 prison and the Killing fields and others like Auschwitz-Birkenau have been turned into museums so we can be a keeper of the memories and never let these horrendous genocides happen again.

I also wanted to stress the importance of not ignoring our mistakes out of shame but admitting them so we and others can learn from them and be alert to what is happening not only inside our borders. I wonder if 40, 50, 100 years from now, will our current situations will be conveniently omitted from the history books?