[ Warning to the reader: This is
not entirely my usual sweetly reasonable writing style, as it touches
on the Cambodia Genocide of Pol Pot and on the issue of sex
trafficking. The material is a bit hard to deal with and at this
time, it should be regarded as a rough draft.]
(Edward and Eunice Ordman, of Memphis,
TN, joined a Jewish delegation visiting Southeast Asia in February
2005. This is one of a series of reports.)
Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was somehow never
on the list of places I had planned to visit. But my wife
suggested that a we join a group of travelers to Southeast Asia
organized by American Jewish World Service, a humanitarian group
headquartered in New York, and there we were, in mid-February 2005.
The purpose of the
trip was to visit a variety of local charities receiving grants from
AJWS, and that is how we spent most of our time. But one side
trip in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, seemed unavoidable.
Our group visited the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide.
In 1975, a group of the communist
Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, took over Phnom Penh and governed Cambodia
for four years. During this time they systematically murdered and
starved a large percentage of the people of Cambodia, with a special
effort to kill off anyone educated. By most estimates, over one million
people died, out of a Cambodian population estimated at seven million
at the time. Approximately another million left the country. The
result has been traumatic for Cambodia: even today, less than
half the population is literate.
The Museum is located in a
former school that was converted into a prison and execution ground
during the Pol Pot period. Of some 14,200 people known to have
been imprisoned here, only seven are known to have survived. Visiting
the original prison, and seeing the remarkable and systematic records
kept by the Khmer Rouge, including photos of the dead and written
confessions extracted before the executions, was a deeply moving
experience.
(There is a lot about this on the web. A small dose may be found at
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Visual___Artistic_Resources/Cambodian_Genocide/cambodian_genocide.html
)
While the killings in Cambodia
were self-inflicted, committed by one group of Cambodians upon another,
it is hardly surprising that the Cambodians look to the European
Holocaust when trying to understand this national tragedy. While we
were in Phnom Penh, the Museum had an exhibit of paintings and drawings
made by children of the Terezienstadt concentration camp, and was
showing a Czech television production, “Brundibar”, based on a
children’s opera produced by Jewish children at the camp.
“Brundibar” was receiving more than
usual press coverage in Cambodia for an unusual reason: the present
King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihamoni (a son of former King Norodom
Sihanouk) acted in the television production. This happened when
he was a student in Prague, in 1967. While I’ve met people
who have an interest in Jewish history in some unexpected places, this
is one of the most unusual connections I have encountered!
Following the visit to
the museum, the group went on to visit some organizations which
American Jewish World Service works with in Phnom Penh.
COSECAM (the Coalition to Address Sexual Exploitation of
Children in Cambodia) is an organization of Cambodian nongovernmental
groups which work to prevent exploitation of children, provide
protection and rehabilitation to victims of child abuse, and advocate
for legal and judicial reform. This is a difficult task in a
country which is only beginning to develop a responsible police and
judicial system. The widespread illiteracy and lack of trust in
government, developed over some decades, also make the task
difficult.
One event illustrating the problem
in Cambodia was playing out exactly while our group was there, with
some emotional consequences for us. The local culture tended to
abuse of women and children, and to rape and prostitution, even before
Westerners arrived on the scene; the arrival of Westerners made it an
even bigger business. The frequency of sale of children and young
women for sex is made more common by the dreadful state of the
Cambodian economy. In many areas of Southeast Asia, the local culture
is unsympathetic to victims: we heard reports of a women who was raped,
whose husband then divorced her and threw her out of the house. Women
who have been victimized often feel that returning to their home or
home community is not an
option.
A few weeks before our arrival,
police raided a large hotel operated as a brothel. Many women
were removed and taken to a shelter. Some days later, they were
back in the brothel. Workmen across from the shelter, according to a
local newspaper, reported that a group of men had raided the
shelter, broken down the gate, and taken away the women. At least one
of the cars those men drove, according to the newspaper report, had
police license plates.
A government investigation, completed
while our group was in Phnom Penh, said it found no evidence that men
had raided the shelter. The government report said the women had
broken out of the shelter on their own, and returned to the brothel
voluntarily. The government report denied that some of the women
were as young as 12; it said they were all of legal age, but
deliberately tried to appear as young as possible.
Our group was
addressed by (name omitted pending confirmation), working for a local
United Nations agency office. He said, that if we hadn’t heard
similar dreadful stories from other countries in the area, it was for a
simple reason: in the other countries, the attempted rescue from the
brothel would never have happened. The operation seemed a
failure, he said - but the remarkable news was that the initial effort
was made. You can’t succeed if you don’t try; elements of the
Cambodian government were trying, and deserved credit. With
repeated efforts, other government offices would come on board, and
progress would be made.
One of the local groups
represented in COSECAM arranged for the AJWS group to meet with some
women who had been sold, as children. These women had typically
been illiterate, and assumed like others in their situation that they
would be condemned and rejected because of what had happened to
them. Given their poor backgrounds, it seemed a long way from
where they were to a hopeful future: the first stage might be a very
simple sewing job, which in a government garment factory might at first
earn them as little as 50 cents a day - scarcely enough for
food.
One area in which AJWS has had
considerable success, not just in Cambodia, is in assisting local
groups to work together. AJWS feels that it should not be coming in and
saying “here is how to solve the problem”. By finding local
people with good ideas, and allowing them to meet and compare
suggestions (sometimes on a regional, national, or even international
level), good ideas may arise and be accepted that would not have
occurred to a western “expert” unfamiliar with local conditions.
The next day we
met with Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development, an
organization working largely with the urban poor, and our group was
able to visit both its offices and its project sites in poor
neighborhoods in and near Phnom Penh. This group offers sewing
courses that allow graduates to engage in skilled sewing, at
considerably higher pay than they would get in the government-run
garment factories. It teaches literacy courses and also teaches the
skills needed for computer data entry jobs, which are (for Cambodia)
relatively highly paid. The courses also cover such concepts as
community volunteerism, health, civic education, human rights,
environmental awareness, family planning, saving schemes, and other
self-help skills.
The problems of Cambodia are
especially difficult. AJWS feels that the Jewish mission of
“tikkun olam”, repairing the world, applies wherever in the world there
is extreme need. This trip was, in part, a way of showing the
travel group a sampler of some of those needs. It also provided a
way for AJWS to show its overseas partners what some Jews in America,
who care about the quality of the lives of those in need, are actually
like.
After some very full and emotional
days in Phnom Penh, our group moved on to northern Thailand. That
report will
follow.
Edward Ordman
Return to Asia trip page
e-mail author
(edward@ordman.net)]
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