Submitted by Erica Watson on the 2018 winter session program in Vietnam and Cambodia sponsored by the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics…
During our time in Phenom Penh, Cambodia, we visited the jail S21 which was one of many jails used by the Khmer Rouge during their regime. We learned about the Cambodian genocide which was led by the Khmer Rouge when they took control of the government in 1975. They attempted to turn the country into a communist utopia, but they actually just killed millions of Cambodians after forcing them into labor camps where they were starved and abused. The Khmer Rouge targeted people such as doctors, teachers, educated people and anyone who was perceived as a threat to their ruling. About 2 million Cambodians died during the four year reign of the Khmer Rouge. Finally in 1979, they were removed from power when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and quickly destroyed most of the Khmer Rouge’s army.
It was humbling to see the same jail where so many Cambodians had suffered. The jail complex consisted of cement buildings with multiple rooms, each with just a single bed. As I walked around and looked at all the pictures of the prisoners, I tried to empathize with the horrible situations they had experienced. In that moment, I felt extremely thankful to have grown up in a free country. What surprised me most about this genocide is the fact that it lasted for so long without anyone really knowing. It took four years for a country to finally realize what was going on in Cambodia and to take action against it. Not only was it kept so secretive at the time, but I still don’t think many people know about this genocide today. In school, we grew up mainly learning about the holocaust. There may have been some mention of the Cambodian genocide, but not enough for me to recall prior to my prison visit. This may be due to the fact that millions more people died in the holocaust than in the Cambodian genocide. But, what makes the Cambodian genocide significant is the fact that since it is such a small country, this epidemic wiped out a large portion of their population. I saw the impact it made on the people as I noticed very few elderly people since most of them had been affected by the genocide. The population mostly consists of young people so they are still struggling to recover. After my visit to the jail and learning more about the genocide, I have gained a much stronger appreciation for the Cambodian people and the hardships they encountered.
