FRIDAY P.M., JULY 2The sick feeling deep in the pit of my stomach began to subside as we left the killing fields, the stupa and the museum. Our guide, Chum Mey, now almost eighty years old, is one of only seven S21 prison survivors. He spoke hauntingly, emphasizing through animated gestures the harrowing experience almost forty years earlier. “So many stories to tell.” He had lost his wife and child in those “times of Pol Pot and year zero.” His hope now was for justice, one that would be wrought by a hybrid court composed of UN and Cambodian officials. And if not by them, then by the resolution of the Buddhist belief in reincarnation.
What remains with me are those piercing eyes, Chum's and hundreds more staring out from the prison wall photographs of victims taken before they met their death, by axe, gun or battering stick.
by Bert Pitzel
3 comments:
Wow, I do wish I was with you now that I read this. So much of our culture has given us a 'western' perspective on these events, and getting the first hand account would be enlightening.
Hélène Tremblay-Boyko
With ou in spirit.
This very disturbing, isn't it? And the reason why he survived was because he was a good sketcher and was able to make good sketches of Pol Pot...he owes is life to vanity!!!
Make me fear also of dogma and easy solutions...
Gen
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