This is a serious entry; two
days ago I met a man whose life story I cannot stop thinking about.
On the 26th, after a nice Christmas break. We
flew from Hoi An to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Our flight from Ho Chi Minh City was
delayed and then canceled because of a mechanical problem, so instead of
arriving at 1:00pm as planned, we arrived five hours late. Because we didn’t
arrive on time, our tour for that day, which was to focus on the sad history of
the Khmer Rouge, had to be cancelled. But, during the hour or so drive
from the airport to our hotel, our driver, who lived through the worst of the
atrocities, had time to tell us all about his life and experiences in Cambodia
during the time of the Khmer Rouge.
Our driver was about three years old in 1975
when the Khmer Rouge came and took over the capital. Everyone was driven out of
their houses, and forced to move to farms in the country side. The capital,
Phnom Penh, had around three-million people living in it before the Khmer Rouge
drove them out, and after just several days, there were only about 75 people
left in the city. The Khmer Rouge wanted everyone who was educated, and who
could thereby think for themselves, dead. Anyone who was educated, like
doctors, teachers, government workers, lawyers, and even people who lived in
big houses were killed. In some places in Cambodia it was so bad that even
people who wore glasses were killed because it was thought that only educated
people had glasses.
All families were separated into different groups
because the Khmer Rouge wanted to teach the kids that they didn’t have any specific
parents, but they were a family as a whole. They did this so the kid soldiers
would not feel anything – even if they were told to kill their own parents,
which happened. The children were split up into groups, ages 0-5 were put into
children shelters where they would be taught that they didn’t have any parents
or family. They were brainwashed from an early age so that they would obey. Children
ages 6-10 were sent out to the rice patties to work, and children ages 11-16
were made to be soldiers. If any of the parents of the children tried to
contact them, they would be killed.
Our driver was put into a children’s home for the
first couple of years. He was separated from the rest of his family. When he
was 5 he was put out on the fields to work. He had to work 10 hours a day
harvesting rice. He was not allowed to go inside, and the only shelter he was
given was a tree, where he had to sleep with the rest of the children and older
people who worked the fields. He had to live out there for almost two whole
years, and he told me that he was barely given enough to eat, and that many
people died of starvation.
When the Khmer Rouge was finally defeated by
Vietnamese soldiers over three years later, in 1979, our driver's mother had
seen him working in the fields over the years and recognized his face, and so
she was able to find him. He didn’t know she was his mother because he was
taught that he didn’t have any parents, so the only way he knew it was her was
because she had a picture of their family. And, because of that picture, they
were eventually able to locate three of his four siblings. However, to this day
he has not been able to find his father and brother. He searched for them for
many, many years, and told me that still now, thirty years later he still looks
sometimes. But he has not found them.
I’m not sure whether or
not I would have been able to survive such harsh conditions at such a young
age. My family has videos of when I was 6 and 7 and I can’t imagine myself
working in the fields for ten hours a day when I was that young. I can’t even
imagine what it must have been like waking up every day at 4am to go work on
the fields. It’s amazing to think that this didn’t happen that long ago either.
It was only roughly 30 years ago, when my parents were my age. It is amazing, humbling
to see how much the people have changed, and I am not sure if I could have
bound back like they have. One question I can’t get out of my head though is:
why. Why would anyone want to do that to other people?
I don’t understand.
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