First Week: Reflection on the Cambodian Genocide

Hello all:

I apologize for beginning this blogging experience with such intensity, but I sincerely believe that the tragic/depressing cannot be overlooked in this journey, which has proven to be extremely valuable and powerful thus far.

As many of you may know from 1975 until 1979, there was a genocide within the country, where over two million Cambodians were killed by the Khmer Rouge army, led by Pol Pot. Thousands of families were separated from one another: those who did not starve to death in work camps were shot to death or brutally tortured. The Cambodian Genocide has come to be recognized as one of the worst incidents of human rights violations the world has ever seen.

Currently interns in our program have been boarding at the facilities of Bridges Across Borders, an amazing non-profit organization working in Southeast Asia. Very near the Bridges Across Borders office, is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, previously a high school until the years of genocide, when the Khmer Rouge converted the space into a prison. Nearly 17,000 Cambodians were said to have been tortured and imprisoned here, many of the bodies buried near the site. During our training with the One World Foundation this past week, both the American and Cambodian participants of the program came together to visit the site.

The following poem/rap is a reflection of my experience at the museum and the conversations I had with people during the visit.

I'll try not to fail you this time around

Just give me multiple choice and
a daily double round.

They say everyone's a rapper
and every rapper's cynical
I'll try to break this cancer down
and prevent the cyclical
nature of the beast, where
it's signing its lease
in the land of a thousand landmines;
where only the shame and
guilt of mind remain.

10,000 crisp golden portraits,
weathered by a concoction
of time, death, and pain,
stare back at me, relentless, all the same.

Failed attempts to avert my gaze
only leave a sickening knot
in the depths of my stomach.
Tattered, dry-blooded cells,
rusted beds of torture
that no junk yard would accept-
except may hell's.

"Lest we never forget"
that no one wants to remember.
Push the tribunals back at least
until September.

To avoid interfering with impunity's
wedding party or the
bat mitzvah of injustice.

Ask Bansky if he'll paint a mural to give us solace;
or find Chris Pape in a tunnel.
But I fear that even his skilled hands
would be unable to reach every
crevice of death,
every tile that once cooled lifeless flesh.

Or even worse, I fear that in 29 more years,
the red drips of his cans
will be indistinguishable from the bloodstains.

Thank you very much for reading this, I appreciate all your support and kindness during this summer experience.