Road to Cambodia
- Part 1 -

R.K. Shivachandra *

The Bangkok based Asian Air Flight we were supposed to board had been cancelled twice this time. This flight operates thrice in a week from Yangon to Bangkok. The torrential rain that had lasted for a week or so now has inundated some areas in Yangon.

A special announcement made by the Meteorology Department informed that torrential rains would continue for 72 hours. It added there would be widespread rain elsewhere and heavy downpour in some areas. Strong winds along the Myanmar coast with wind speeds of 40 to 50 mph have been forecast. The people were curious to know more about the weather announcement and panicky hung heavy across the city after Cyclone Nargis that killed over 130,000 people recently.

After we had participated the Lai Haraoba ceremony in Mandalay in June 2008, we rushed to Yangon to catch our flight but we were compelled to stay back in Yangon for some more days in the heavy rainstorm.

After two consecutive flight cancellations finally we have boarded our flight. I love travelling. However I never intend to fly the turbulent weather. I thought the flight from Yangon to Bangkok will be another rough fly with a lot of announcements instructing us to fasten seat belts.

Reluctantly I shrank in the spongy seat in submission to experience the take-off and landing process. But to our surprise except for the first layer the sky was so clear and the airplane landed Bangkok without even a slight tweak. Thank goes to the unknown captain.

We are eleven including five members from Nagaland. Our itinerary was to proceed to Cambodia from Bangkok by land route crossing the border.

Cambodia otherwise Kampuchea has many things to attract us. We may begin with the Khmer Rouge that was responsible for killing more than two million people in short stint of their regime from 1975 to 1979. Also Pol Pot, the defacto leader of the Khmer Rouge.

During his time in power Pol Pot imposed a version of agrarian whereby city dwellers were relocated to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects with the goal of restarting civilization that termed as "Year Zero". The combined effect of slave labour, malnutrition, poor medical care and executions had an estimated death toll of 750,000 to 2 million (approximately 28% of the population at that time).

In 1979, he fled into the jungles of southwest Cambodia after an invasion by neighboring Vietnam, which led to the collapse of the Khmer Rouge government. In 1997, Pol Pot was overthrown and imprisoned by other Khmer Rouge leaders. He died while under house arrest by Khmer Rouge and it has been claimed that he was poisoned.

There is also S-21 the concentration camp of Khmer Rouge. Hundreds thousands of people slowly interrogated mostly elite sections in this camp. S-21 as codenamed by the Khmers, was located in the abandoned suburban Phnom Penh High School of Tuol Sleng ("hill of the poison tree"). S-21 was known simply as konlaenh choul min dael chenh - "the place where people go in but never come out."

Over 17,000 prisoners were interrogated, tortured, and executed there - only a handful survived. Two survivors and a dozen former Khmer Rouge fighters - prison guards, interrogators, a doctor and a photographer - return to the site, which now houses a genocide museum, to excavate the past.

Choeung Ek popularly known as "Killing Field" is another site that tells the story of thousands of people who were mostly buried alive or in their sub-consciousness state due to the impact on the head of victims.

The executed were buried in this mass grave. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using hammers, axe handles, spades or sharpened bamboo sticks. Some victims were required to dig their own graves; their weakness often meant that they were unable to dig very deep. The soldiers who carried out the executions were mostly young men or women from peasant families belonged to the age group between 14to 15.

The Khmer Rouge regime arrested and eventually executed almost everyone suspected of connections with the former government or with foreign governments, as well as professionals and intellectuals.

The 1984 motion picture "Killing Fields" which depicts the real life story of Dith Pran and his journey to escape the death camps never was a fiction this we came to realized later when we have visited these sites.

Driven by this curiosity we have reached the Arnya Pratheth a border enter-exit point between Thailand and Cambodia. This is hardly four hours drive from Bangkok.

To be continued....