“Horrific”

Cambodia
Through Harold’s Lens:
1975-79

WARNING! GRAPHIC CONTENT!

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Pol Pot Regime
Khmer Rouge
Terror
Killing fields
3,000,000 people slaughtered!

Society
Confiscated: private property
Burned: homes to the ground
Banned: family relationships
Separated: children from parents
Relocated: different parts of Cambodia
Relocated: collective farms, forced labor
Banned: personal utensils
Eliminated: privacy, sexual relations
Death: family members communicating
Banned: religion, Buddhist temples destroyed
Murdered: 60,000 monks
Abolished: freedom to travel
Abolished: postal service, telephone service
Closed: hospitals, factories
Closed: schools, books burned
Closed: banks, money burned
Destroyed: bank records, claims to funds
Isolated: Cambodia from foreign countries.

Family
Grandmother, Grandfather
Mother, Father
Daughter, Son
Infant.

Long marches: days through countryside
Died: children, elderly, sick
Work: 12 hours non-stop, no rest, no food,
no medicine, no medical services
Death: disease, illness
Death: exhaustion, overwork
Death: starvation
Murdered: offenders
Murdered: intellectuals, city-dwellers
Murdered: teachers, minorities
Murdered: merchants, suspected traitors
Murdered: practicing religion
Raped: females
Torture: children taught methods with animals
Torture: children carried out torture, executions.

Torture
Mass graves: 20,000, 1,386,734 victims
Torture centre: 16,000 sent to death
Secret prison: S-21.14,000 prisoners, 12 survived
Small cells: shackled to walls & concrete floor
Large cells: collectively shackled to long iron bars
Food: human feces
Water: human urine
Torture: sliced with knives
Torture: electric shocks, searing hot metal
Torture: suffocation in plastic bags
Torture: fingernails pulled out, alcohol poured on wounds
Torture: alive, bled to death
Torture: alive, sliced open, organs removed, no anesthetic
Torture: alive, skinned
Torture: heads held under water
Execution: pickaxes, spades, sharpened bamboo sticks, machetes
Execution: heads of children, infants bashed against trees.

30 years later
Widows: tens of thousands
Orphans: tens of thousands
Living: severe traumatization

Pol Pot Regime
Khmer Rouge
Terror
Killing fields
3,000,000 people slaughtered!

May our world never forget this horrific event.

Documentation Center of Cambodia

“My Life In A Hole”

Cambodia
Through Harold’s Lens:

Mom buried me alive!

“In 1976 I was 5”, Savon said.
“Daddy dead”
“Brother dead”
“Mommy horrified”
“Me terrified”.

Khmer Rouge
Killing fields
3,000,000 slaughtered!

Protection from murder.

4:30am.
Home
Small village
Open field.

Dark deep hole.

Dirt hole
Five feet deep
Three feet square.

Roof
Thatched bamboo
Grass cover
Heavy.

My dark hole
Every morning.

Mom left me
Alone
In a hole
12 hours
Pure fright
Pure terror.

Mom in rice field
Picking.
Not fresh green stems
Not prime first cut.

One kernel
One kernel
One kernel.

One white kernel
One white kernel in the dirt.

Rats snapping
Cobras slithering
Mom’s tiny toes
Under water.

One meal that day
One meal day after day
After day
After day.

Mom buried me alive!

Khmer Rouge
Killing fields
3,000,000 slaughtered!

 

“Village Life”

Cambodia
Through Harold’s Lens:

The first world
Does not pass by.

Her special world
Remote village
Outside
Siem Reap.

Vista
Dusty
Dirt road

Naked children
Kicking
Old ball.

Bent women
Carrying
Buckets
Heavy water.

Hunched men
Carrying
Pounds
Cut bamboo.

Simple
Easy going life.

She watches me.
She smiles at me.
She stares at my camera.
She looks at her photograph.

She laughs.
She is happy.

My favorite kind of world!