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As we were running short on time, we flew directly from Saigon to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Siem Reap is the town near Angkor where we were going to spend our last week in Indochina.

Angkor, Cambodia

Odv
2006-04-15 18:32:02

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escape any visitor's attention. The number of amputees begging on the street is just astounding. A result of the extensive use of mines by the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese army during the war.

The small Siem Reap Mine Museum, was created by a man called Aki Ra, who himself has laid mines when he was a child soldier for the Khmer Rouge. Nowadays he spends his time clearing mines. His story is quite shocking, here follows a short account of some of the things we learnt at the museum.

After the Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of the communist dictator Pol Pot, took power in 1975, a 4 year period of terror ensued which left an estimated 3 million people dead!

Anybody with an education was deemed to be the enemy and was killed, everybody else had to live on the land as farmers in total equality. People were not only killed for being educated but also for committing minor offenses, such as taking a banana from a tree. The Khmer Rouge would force the perpetrator's family to cheer and clap as they disemboweled him.

Aki Ra's family did not escape this fate. When his father became ill the Khmer rouge accused him of lying about it and killed him. His mother was killed for warning an old man who was about to trip and spill his food! At the age of 10, after having murdered both his parents the Khmer Rouge forced him to "enroll" and fight for them.

A few years later, still being a child, he was captured by the invading Vietnamese troops and made to fight for them against the Khmer Rouge. When the United Nations came to Cambodia, he worked for them, clearing mines instead. He collected some of the mines and other war relics that he found and used them to open his museum. According to his estimate it may take another 50 to 100 years to clear Cambodia of mines and unexploded bombs.

Sadly most Cambodians have horrible experiences in their past. While visiting the museum our tuk-tuk driver became so emotional that he could not formulate proper sentences in English anymore.

Pol Pot never faced justice for his crimes, dying peacefully of natural causes as an old man in 1998.

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