One of the Khmer Rouge regime’s main execution grounds on the outskirts of Phnom Penh dispatched an estimated 20,000 human beings between 1976 and 1979. The vast majority killed here at Choeung Ek (‘The Killing Fields’), were brought from S-21 (Tuol Sleng) after being interrogated/tortured. Following the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in January 1979, more than 80 mass graves in the vicinity have been excavated, of a suspected 130. 8,985 sets of remains have been exhumed.
Carry abroad the urgent need, the scene,
to photograph and to extend the voice,
to speak this meaning.
Muriel Rukeyser, ‘The Book of the Dead’.
An orchard and a Chinese graveyard
The graves are smashed, foundations scarred, too
much effort for total erasure. The fecund orchard
neglected, just old stock dry and tied in knots.
No hope of a lemon let alone a rambutan. The trees
are wizened witnesses, they alone possess logic
in this parched field, something to lean against.
Usually, you turn the ground to plant seed, ideally
after rain. In wet weather, bones and clothing
resurrect, no need to dig. Surfaces surprise.
As children they played with no expectations, but
as relentless cadres they were intent on erasing memories
torching libraries, beheading Buddhas.
The Pits
I am surrounded by excavations with formal properties, neatly
rectangular, backed up level until dug up again.
Were they deep enough to muzzle the voices? And the name?
The earth looks pre-history, raw ferrous earth, black and white,
becoming an emptiness where words have to be carefully
chosen in case they explode (or more likely evaporate).
Wyn buys lotus flowers in memory of her sister
who died two weeks ago, in her eighties. Sleep
or death, relief again. What is it like to be dead?
The Drudgery of death
Someone has seen a tooth. We scrutinise the earth,
amateur archaeologists. I find slivers of bone, nothing
like what’s left on my plate after a chicken dinner.
A sign reads ‘Do Not Step on Human Remains’.
Someone should leave the path, collect them, hand them
to their relatives? But who are the survivors?
I need help. I need to smell the catastrophe. I have smelt rotting animals, but ask Google to describe the odour of a decomposing corpse? ‘The smell of a decomposing corpse is a distinct, intense, and often, sickly-sweet aroma, frequently described as a mixture of rotting meat, rancid, cheesy, or pungent fishy odours, combined with sulfur-like, faecal, or sewage notes. It is often described as a heavy, metallic (iron/blood) stench that lingers and can be overwhelming, sometimes compared to spoiled, fermented fruit or over-ripe melon.’
Care
A cleaner delicately strokes the ossified vivariums with a feather duster.
The standard anatomical count for bones in the human body is 206.
The standard anatomical count for teeth in a human mouth is 32.
Who decided we need clothes in such a hot climate?
The Cherry Tree
A speaker hung from a branch played loud music
to puncture the screams. I would give each
a microphone, a wretched cacophony of thousands
Folk, revolutionary songs? They didn’t like music,
especially Western influenced pop. They could have used
‘war metal’ or ‘brutal death metal’, two metal genres,
if the revolution was more up to date. Sieng Vanthy
was one of the few famous musicians to survive.
She told the cadres she sold bananas.
Sinn Sisamouth, the ‘Elvis of Cambodia’, was executed, his master-tapes and records destroyed. He blended traditional Khmer music with rock and roll. Reports say he pleaded to sing one last song before he was shot. He is still considered to be the greatest Cambodian singer of all time.
With footage of Phneom Penh in the sixties when it was called ‘The Pearl of the Orient’.
An estimated 90 percent of classical dancers were lost. Traditional instruments were destroyed, (a tradition the Taliban continue).
Signs ask for quiet.
I can’t recall any birdsong as consolation
but then I wasn’t listening.
The Chankiri tree’ (Rain Tree or Monkeypod tree)
The ribbons and offering hide the trunk,
and blood if any forensic evidence remains.
I’m not sure I can bring myself to believe.
‘There are historical accounts and eyewitness testimony that infants were executed by being struck against a tree . . . I was unable to analyse any infants at Choeung Ek—I am not sure if their remains were exhumed, or whether they survived interment since infants are not present in the stupa as far as I was able to ascertain.’ Julie Michele Fleischman [i]
Who were the eyewitnesses, where are they?
Is the sky still blue, the shirt still sticking
to my back? The humidity is overpowering.
What to offer this tree – money? Poems?
A sacrificial chicken? I can’t even pray anymore
but reign in a desire to photograph everything
Ways of leaving
Of more than 100 original Khmer Rouge execution lists from S-21 (Tuol Sleng), 97 definitive lists were evaluated documenting the murders of 6,285 individuals. The majority (82%) were male, the youngest was 11, the oldest 77, and the average age was 29.
‘The 508 crania at Choeung Ek were assessed for demographic characteristics and traumatic injuries . . . Perimortem trauma was present on 311 crania (61%), with 179 (58%) having discernible impact locations. Blunt force injuries (87%) were the most common mechanism of trauma and the basicranium (53%) was the most frequently impacted region.’ Julie Michele Fleischman [ii]
One of the perpetrators Him Huy said that his superiors, Comrade Duch (Kaing Guek Eav commandant of S-21) and Comrade Hor (Kim Vat, Duch’s deputy), taught them how to kill: make the prisoners ‘kneel, then strike at the base of the neck, then cut the throat. Him Huy directed Tay Teng who stated: ‘First, [the prisoners] sat about one meter from the edge of the pit. They had two or three sit beside one another and they used a water pipe to strike the base of their necks. When the prisoners fell over, they removed the handcuffs, then they used the knives to finish killing them.’[iii]
Yet archaeologist Voeun Vuthy’s research, has shown that crania bear 1,686 marks that were caused by bullets, and almost 1,000 marks from being pierced with bayonets weapons, despite the main story being that agricultural implements were used.[iv] I find the events lack definition
Kneeling or sitting, each pair of ears straining, alert for the crack, crunch, shot – when mind curls up into black. Imagination stutters then fails. I haven’t knelt for fifty years since the last time I went to mass. Did they slit throats, unfold the sinews of the neck? We need to know – and we need to let the dead go peacefully, but there are very few confessions.
Death never dances. Early examples of Dance of Death artworks come from religious contexts such as church walls to remind people about the inevitability of death. Hans Holbein’s The Dance of Death are tiny woodblocks showing death’s creative ways of ending people from Pope to ploughman. The knight tries to fight back, the count and monk both try to run, the noblewoman walks to her end to the beat of death banging his drum.
Bones lodge beneath the waterlilies, beneath the Milky Way.
Death has been sucked back into the earth, fields
bloom across the country, but mine and ordinance
removals will continue far into the future.
The Stupa
The Buddhist stupa offers transparency revealing
a few of the 5,000 human skulls, many broken.
Each was irreplaceable when working – we all know that.
‘Although the spirit no longer lives in the bones, people feel the bones should not be sealed so the spirit can access them. Ideally, families should cremate the remains of the dead and store the ashes in a stupa to liberate the victims’ souls for reincarnation.’ Youk Chhang[v]
Wynne Cougill writes, ‘Many Cambodians believe that cremation and other rituals for the dead help ease the deceased’s transition to rebirth. In the case of especially inauspicious deaths, such as by violence or accident, it is widely believed that the dead person’s spirit or ghost remains in the place where he or she died.’ She quotes a researcher who said ‘to have uncremated remains on display is considered by some to be a great offence, and tantamount to a second violence being done to the victims.’[vi]
On the way back
On the way back to the city the countryside is familiar countryside with fields and shacks, men dozing in hammocks and motorbikes like flies. Trees shiver white flowers protecting ripening mangos. The Kymer Rouge dreamt of a flat, landscape wet with rice paddies.
A billboard visualises a happy and prosperous future. When and where did a sensation of joy first reappear?
I am transported with love though heavy traffic.
Everyone returns my smile.
I am not seeing the intergenerational trauma.
The city is an engine now fired back to life,
but inequality is severe.
One factor that bolstered the Khmer Rouge.
We need to see clearly what is happening.
[i] Julie Michele Fleischman, ‘Remains of Khmer Rouge Violence: the Materiality of Bones as Scientific Evidence and Affective Agents of Memory’, Thesis, Michigan State Uni https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/6679?_ p206-7.
[ii] Julie Michele Fleischman, ‘Remains of Khmer Rouge Violence.
[iii] Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia 2016i. Quoted by Julie Michele Fleischman, ‘Remains of Khmer Rouge Violence’.
[iv] Voeun Vuthym, ‘Report on the Preservation of Human Remains at the Choeung Ek Genocidal’, Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. 2016. Quoted by Julie Michele Fleischman, ‘Remains of Khmer Rouge Violence’. Quoted by Julie Michele Fleischman, ‘Remains of Khmer Rouge Violence’.
[v] Youk Chhang, executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.
[vi] Wynne Cougill, ‘Buddhist Cremation Traditions for the Dead and the Need to Preserve Forensic Evidence in Cambodia’, Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia. http://d.dccam.org/Projects/Maps/Buddhist_Cremation_Traditions.htm. Wynne Cougill began working as a volunteer editor and writer for the Documentation Center of Cambodia in early 2000.
