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[2584] Better commercialization than communism

Cambodia has a dark modern history and I always knew that. That knowledge did not bother me much previously because I did not really relate to it. Cambodia despite being so close to Malaysia appeared farther away from me than, for example, the United States where I spent my undergraduate years.

Cambodia was some land far away from my consciousness. Farish Noor once lamented that Malaysians knew more of New York, London and Paris than Jakarta, Bangkok and Manila. I am guilty of that.

My travels to Cambodia, specifically to its capital Phnom Penh, were my effort to turn his statement untrue. I started out in Siem Reap up north trying to relearn my Southeast Asian history. It was an adventure, going through and climbing all of the famous Angkor temples and more, and then getting lost in the obscure ones, which were no less impressive than Angkor Wat or Bayon. Only the fear of landmines prevented us from being too adventurous, on top of constraints involving time and money.

Warnings of landmines are a stark reminder of Cambodia’s dark past. Too many landmines were planted across the country by participants of the Cambodian civil war. While the war has long ended, efforts at clearing up the mines are still under way and there are new landmine victims every day. The past will not just go away quietly.

Even in the capital Phnom Penh, time passed slowly. I felt as if I was still living in colonial times during my stay there. French influences are remarkably strong still. There are many French tourists and expatriates even. It was as if they refused to leave in the first place.

That is understandable. The capital, located at the meeting of Tonle Sap and the fabled Mekong rivers, is beautiful. Rows of old buildings stand along the banks, providing a lively waterfront. If it wasn’t for the devastating civil war, Phnom Penh would have been one of the great cities of Southeast Asia.

The city was emptied during the communist Khmer Rouge regime. It is hard to imagine the beautiful Phnom Penh devoid of life but it was a ghost town in the 1970s, as were other towns in Cambodia in the same period.

The communist Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975. They had a terrible idea of equality and wanted to create a classless society. But more than that, they did it in a hurry. Their solution was to turn everybody into a peasant overnight.

To do so, they forcefully relocated urbanites to the countryside. There were no doctors, engineers and other professionals under the Khmer Rouge. All were peasants. Peasantry, in reality, was a euphemism for forced labor. Many realized that. Those who questioned the Khmer Rouge were tortured and killed. The intelligentsia were murdered to protect the communist revolution, before Pol Pot turned on the Khmer Rouge itself in the name of power and ideological purity later in the late 1970s.

The failure of China’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, which aimed at creating a communist society quickly, was unheeded. The Khmer Rouge thought they were a better implementer of communism than their Chinese counterparts.

Well, judging by the result, maybe they were. According to the World Bank, there were more than seven million individuals in Cambodia then. By the end of the Khmer Rouge regime, between two million and three million were dead according to the United Nations. That was a significant proportion of total Cambodian population.

Yet, statistics are just cold numbers. It is always hard to humanize numbers that run to the millions. Being in Cambodia gave me the chance to understand exactly those numbers.

I visited the Tuol Sleng museum while I was in Phnom Penh. The museum was formerly a school, which the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison and a torture house. The turning of a school into a prison more than symbolized what the Khmer Rouge and, really, what communism in practice is all about.

Despite the purpose of the museum to remind us all of the past, entering that museum felt like an act of trivializing history. It cost two US dollars to enter the museum. There was something sacred about the museum that I could not explain. Yet, here, like many places in Cambodia, history had been commercialized. Past pain has been repackaged as a product of tourism. It was about making money. It felt wrong.

As I was about to condemn the commercialization as a scam, what I saw inside prevented me from protesting after all.

The first building was where the last tortured prisoners were placed in, and died. There was an empty rusty metal bed frame in each cell, with photographs of the last victims hung on the wall by the curators. The photographs were not pretty. The photographs were shot by the invading Vietnamese army as the Khmer Rouge regime fell. The Vietnamese came too late to save anybody. They found only rotting bodies bound to metal beds in the torture house.

The next two buildings had even punishingly smaller cells. It was much smaller than my bed at home. Judging by the condition of the cells, one could imagine the impossibility of life during the time of the Khmer Rouge. It was a kind of environment that if I were put inside, I would die almost immediately out of sheer despair. Out of the thousands who passed through the gates of Tuol Sleng, only a few survived it. Most were destined for the infamous Killing Field located a number of miles outside of the city, if they were not killed here.

What made the visit to the museum unbearable for me were pictures of hundreds or thousands of victims pasted on countless boards. Many prisoners were clearly scared of things that were to come. One particular face was on the verge of crying. That particular image haunted me throughout the day.

I decided I could not stand it anymore after seeing all of the photographs. I could not explore the rest of the museum to make good of the two dollars. It was then that I made an emotional connection to Cambodia.

As I sat on a bench outside in the open space, disturbed at the capability of the Khmer Rouge to do what they did, I became angry. Just before I exited the building, I spotted some writing on the wall. A visitor had penned that no God would have let this happened. I understood that person.

I came to think of the two-dollar entry cost. During the communist rule, this would have been illegal. Commerce in general would have been illegal. There was only one profession in the name of equality. The peasantry produced for the benefit of the communist state. That policy of unreasonable equality produced famine and exacerbated the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.

Only now are Cambodians coming out of the shadow. They are eager to do commerce and improve their lot, something that was not possible under the communist Khmer Rouge.

The two-dollar entry cost is only part of the effort to come out of the hole that communism created. If the commercialization of the dark past brings about a brighter future for Cambodians, then let it be. Nobody, foreigners the very least, has the right to condemn the commercialization.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in The Malaysian Insider on August 20 2012.

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Economics History & heritage Photography Society Travels

[2576] Life and commerce in Siem Reap, Cambodia

I have always known about the atrocity of the Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia but before I traveled to Cambodia, that knowledge was superficial. I only began to learn more about the conflict when I found myself in Cambodia for two weeks recently. Being there almost made the knowledge into an emotional experience for me.

To fully understand the history, I think one has to read up Cambodian history since its late French colonial days. That is so because each event led to another and finally in 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to power. It was a reaction to yet another reaction but that fact does not justify what the Khmer Rouge did.

Apart from its political desire that also contributed to the massacre of the Cambodian people and those in the Khmer Rouge themselves later, its communist, understanding, forcefully changed the economy and the demography of Cambodia for the worse. It was disastrous, as it was disastrous with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

The regime was not ashamed to centrally planned the economy, forcing all to work in the countryside as slaves and victims of communism. Without exaggeration in the case of Cambodia, communism kills. The cities were deserted so that the communists could realize a stupid ideal of “peasant economy”. Doctors, engineers and professionals were all forced to till the land in the countryside. The cities were left to those in power, and those whom were being tortured to satisfy the paranoia of the Khmer Rouge and ultimately, the circle of Pol Pot. The cities became ghost towns.

The Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979. By that time I visited the country in 2012, what was a rich country has only begun to make its way in this world again.

Cambodia was a rich country. Its temple ruins are evident enough. Phnom Penh the capital has traces of its pre-Khmer Rouge glory.

Some of the Cambodians I talked to rued how Cambodia was richer than Vietnam before the Khmer Rouge period. Now, Vietman is ahead in so many ways. My traveling partner whom has been in Vietnam several times for an extended period, confirmed this. There are more buildings and vehicles in Vietnam than there are in Cambodia.

While that is so, traces of communism are being overwhelmed by its better nemesis.

In Siem Reap up north where most the temples of Angkor are, commerce, the voluntary exchange of goods and services by individuals, is everywhere.

Some rights reserved. Creative Commons 3.0. By Attribution. By Hafiz Noor Shams

Under communism of the Khmer Rouge, that was illegal. Under communism, there was no life.

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Conflict & disaster Liberty

[2378] To impress, support tyranny

It is quite understandable why Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak wants to impress King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is an important country to Malaysia. It is the largest oil exporter in the world. It is the leader of the Muslim world by default, for better or for worse.

But when the Prime Minister decided to offer military assistance to Bahrain and back the roles Saudi Arabia had played over the course of the Arab Spring,[1] that was just a little bit too much.

The government of Bahrain has suppressed unarmed protesters with brutality. Saudi Arabia aided Bahrain in suppressing demand for democratic change, fearing the democratic change that began in Tunisia and Egpyt would spread at the expense of autocratic rulers. Najib said those efforts by Saudi Arabia were noble.

Shame.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — KUALA LUMPUR: Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak says the country is willing to send peacekeepers to help “de-escalate tension” in Bahrain while backing Saudi Arabia’s role in resolving regional unrest.

Bahraini authorities in the kingdom ruled by a Sunni dynasty have attempted to curb violent protests in recent months inspired by uprisings that toppled Egypt’s and Tunisia’s presidents.

“Malaysia stands ready to contribute peacekeepers to the Kingdom of Bahrain, if invited to do so by the Bahraini leadership,” Najib said in a statement on Friday following a meeting with Saudi Arabian monarch King Abdullah in Riyadh.

 

 

 

“Malaysia will consider it a great honour to offer assistance in this noble effort.” [AFP. Malaysia pledges to help Bahrain. New Straits Times. May 15 2011]

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History & heritage

[1133] Of heroes of Ides of March

More than 2000 years ago on this day, Ides of March, Brutus along with several Roman senators stabbed Julius Caesar to death, in hope to prevent Rome, a republic, from falling into authoritarianism. The irony is, of course, the act, which was done to preserve democracy, only accelerated Rome’s journey to dictatorship.

So, who is the hero here?

It would depend on how one look at the event.

Intention-wise, Brutus and the senators would be the heroes. Action-wise, there would be no heroes. Morally, a great dilemma; kill and preserve democracy, let live and kill democracy.

It is a tragedy, no more, no less, even if it is a false dilemma.