| :: Hope
is the Province of the Unborn ::
Politically,
Cambodia is a wasteland that survives
years of rampant lawlessness, war and
genocide. Over the past sixty years
alone, Cambodia has gone from being
(1) a French colony, to (2) a puppet
French monarchy, to (3) a Japanese colony,
to (4) a French colony again, to (5)
a monarchy, to (6) a parliamentary democracy,
to (7) an autocratic dictatorship, to
(8) revolutionary and tyrannical communist
state, to (9) Vietnamese suzerainty,
to (10) organization under UN Transitional
Authority, to (11) democratic republic.
Only in 1993 did Cambodia became a participatory
democracy for the first time (at least
nominally) when sham UN-monitored elections
produced – get this – a
king and three prime ministers! Throw
in 3 coup d’etats during the last
30 years, a long standing absentee monarch,
constant civil war, 490,000 metric tons
of American aerial bombing, six official
name changes for the country since French
independence, unbridled corruption,
and one of the worst cases of genocide
the world has ever known and you begin
to get a sense for the political turmoil
that has ravished this country in recent
history.
But
Cambodia is not just an underdeveloped,
misruled country like so many others.
It is afflicted with the catastrophic
cumulative effects of the destruction
of its society in the four years of
Khmer Rouge tyranny. In 1975, after
five years of bloody civil war, the
Khmer Rouge (native communist guerrilla
movement) captured Phnom Penh, the capital
of Cambodia, gained control of the government,
and forced the whole population to evacuate
the city on foot. Those who refused
were shot, as were hospital patients
who were unable to walk. The roads out
of the city were clogged with bewildered
people, clutching a few belongings.
Children were separated from their parents;
the old and infirm who could not keep
up were left to die at the roadside.
The
same thing happened in all the cities
and towns, and the whole country was
effectively turned into a vast forced
labor camp. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer
Rouge, was achieving his dream of Year
Zero, the return of Cambodia to
a peasant economy in which there would
be no class divisions, no money, no
books, no schools, no hospitals. In
January 1976, the Khmer Rouge officially
banned money, land ownership, private
property and literally all
institutions, including stores, banks,
hospitals, schools, religion, and even
the family. Everyone was forced to work
12 - 14 hours a day, every day. Children
were separated from their parents to
work in mobile groups or as soldiers.
Those who had had any connection with
previous regimes were eliminated. People
who were deemed to have been the lazy
elite – in other words the educated
and the skilled – were also disposed
of. Every vestige of the former “corrupt”
way of life had to be destroyed. Many
people tried to conceal their identity
or former occupation, but were eventually
found out or betrayed. Whole families
would be executed. To save bullets,
babies in these families were typically
killed by dashing their skulls against
trees.
Pol
Pot summed up the policies of the Khmer
Rouge in 1978:
| |
"We
are building socialism without a
model. We do not wish to copy anyone;
we shall use the experience gained
in the course of the liberation
struggle. There are no schools,
faculties or universities in the
traditional sense, although they
did exist in our country prior to
liberation, because we wish to do
away with all vestiges of the past.
There is no money, no commerce,
as the state takes care of provisioning
all its citizens. The cities have
been resettled as this is the way
things had to be. Some three million
town dwellers and peasants were
trying to find refuge in the cities
from the depredations of war. We
evacuated the cities; we resettled
the inhabitants in the rural areas
where the living conditions could
be provided for this segment of
the population of new Cambodia.
The countryside should be the focus
of attention of our revolution,
and the people will decide the fate
of the cities." [Grant Evans
and Kelvin Rowley, Red Brotherhood
at War, 1984] |
|
All
told, two million Cambodians died –
were executed – under the tyrannical
Pol Pot regime – fully 1/3 of
the population. As a percentage of the
population, not just the raw number
alone, this figure is as staggering
as statistics get. One-third of the
population killed in four years is a
rate of extinction that matches the
Bubonic Plague of the Middle Ages.
But
these events and figures only begin
to tell the story, the nightmare that
Cambodians are still trying to wake
up from. Take any tragedy, any evil
that debases the modern world –
prostitution, drug addiction, gun crimes,
genocide, AIDS, illiteracy, poverty,
famine – and Cambodia has it in
spades. Worldwide, it is near the top
of the list in all societal problems
and epidemics: Half the population is
under 18. Over 10% of all Cambodian
children die before reaching their first
birthdays. About 50% of all children
under five are either stunted in growth
or severely underweight. Life expectancy
today is little more than fifty years.
Cambodia has one of the highest incidents
of tuberculosis, respiratory infections,
diarrhea, and malaria in the world.
4% of the adult population is HIV-positive.
Nearly 4% of the adult male population
(between 20-49) has a land mine injury.
69% percent of Cambodians over 15 are
illiterate.
More
on education: The United Nations
expects that of 1,000 Cambodians born
today, 290 will never go to school,
390 will repeat the first grade, and
500 will not complete the primary education
they began. Only 27 out of 1,000 who
entered primary school will graduate
from high school – or two percent
of all children who survive birth. Part
of the problem with education is that
the teachers themselves are not educated
– less than one percent of all
teachers in Cambodia finished the eleventh
grade. But perhaps the most shocking
statistic to me is that after the Pol
Pot years, in which schools were abolished
and educated people executed, only three
hundred Cambodians with a higher education
were left in the country – only
300 people in all of Cambodia had ever
even been to college! Imagine rebuilding
a country with only 300 college-educated
people.
But
these are just statistics. They don’t
tell a personal account of human tragedy.
In the numbers, you won’t find
the harrowing stories of the survivors,
nor will see the grief and anxiety that
hangs over the skittish faces of today’s
Cambodian people. I have heard too many
stories of corruption and torture, of
prostitution and banditry, of death
and maiming to relay them all here,
but one story really horrified me: I
was told by a guide at Angkor not to
give any money to a young girl outside
one of the temples whose face was severely
scared and disfigured because her parents
who paraded her there for tourists were
suspected of having burned her face
with acid to better evoke sympathy (and
dollars) from tourists.
Cambodia
may be one of the saddest places I’ve
ever been to. It is a land of children
and prostitution, illiteracy and disease,
lawlessness and corruption. This is
a place that views basic civility as
a luxury. As a society, it may be as
close to William Golding’s Lord
of the Flies as a nation can get.
As
Henry Kamm writes in his book, Cambodia:
Report from a Stricken Land, “There
is no hope for this generation.”
Hope is the province of the unborn.
|
