I have recently returnedfrom the horrendous Killing Fields, and the S-21 Detention Centre of the Khmer Rouge Regime of Pol Pot of Cambodia. I chose to go there, like most, with a mixed sense of fascination and reverence for modern history, however revolting it has been at times; like going to Auschwitz, which I did not, although I was so near it when in Poland, years ago. I was also touched, however, by the reconciliatory gesture of the present Cambodian government in erecting and preserving these memorials, as a pointer to the blackest period ofthe countrys recenthistory. I have seen the same in Germany, vis--vis the Holocaust. I salute them, for it is not easy for a people to erect memorials to the dirty linen of their forebears, in their own front yard. And, I hope they achieve their end in sobering not only their own future generations, but of the world from the crippling mindlessness of wars and dictators.
The Cambodian charnel house is erected in the shape of a glass tower with thousands of skulls on tiered shelves; the tower stands in the middle of undulated grounds where pits were dug by the prisoners for their own bodies; and, blindfolded and kneeling, their skulls were smashed with a cart axel, by perpetrators, no less frightened of the same fate, should they disobey. Have we not heard this before? The Cambodians, too, like the Chinese and Russians of the impracticable, misplaced, Communist ideology, or the German delusion of supremacy, mindlessly liquidated their bourgeoisies and have paid the price of wiping out millions -- suddenly having no middle class or aristocracy to speak of, or entrepreneurship of any merit. No businessmen or bankers, no teachers, no scientists, no doctors, no musicians or poets always the imagined enemies of peasant revolutions, or the calls of demented dictators in world history. Killing them, or having them flee the country, has always left the emergent regimes with prevalent poverty of mind and spirit, as in Cambodia, which not any of the stupendous temples of Angkor Wat, but only time can remove. However, if the Taj Mahal can be a lifetimes compulsion to visit India, then Angkor Wat is the call of Cambodia, worth answering.
- Ronnie Patel
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