Politics
July 26th, 2010
By Bob Rogers
After 35 years, the first Khmer Rouge mass murderer has been convicted in Cambodia. We’ve all heard of the killing fields of Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge murdered between one and two million other Cambodians. It was one of the worst periods of mass murder in history. It was the Chinese Cultural Revolution gone crazy. The Khmer Rouge, in attempting to bring about an agrarian utopian society, sought out and murdered anyone with an education, and anyone associated with them.
I remember following news reports of the carnage in this far away land, and wondering how such a thing could happen in a society. After Claire and I bicycled the length of Cambodia near the end of our In Search of Shangri-la tour, I am even more puzzled, and not a little disconcerted.
While the Cambodians are not as laid back as Lao, or as industrious as Vietnamese, they were friendly. Though not as outwardly happy as the irrepressible Lao, they were reasonably outgoing. And yet, some of the older Cambodians we saw must surely have been murderers. The Khmer Rouge were peasants, and we traveled through the rural countryside at twelve miles per hour, bought food from them at markets and street restaurants, slept in their guest houses. We smiled and received smiles in return. And yet, there was a pall of uncertainty for me, as I watched a landscape roll past, a rice small field that just might have been a killing field.
The Image most people have of the killing fields and mass graves, are of one central location near the Capitol, Phnom Penh. But, the killings took place in villages across Cambodia and the mounded mass graves still stand above the rice paddies, sometimes marked by simple concrete altars festooned with flowers and incense. Someone remembers and makes offerings to the gods, offerings of remembrance, and perhaps a hope that such a thing never happen again. It is an eerie sight to see the rice people working their fields so close to the bones of those killed there.
The reason Cambodia has been so slow to begin the process of justice escapes me, but I am not Asian. I didn’t grow up working dawn to dusk fighting the vagaries of nature, just to have a bowl of rice. From what we saw in Laos and Vietnam, Southeast Asians tend toward forgiveness. They hold no grudges against the former enemies in what they call the American War. Perhaps the Cambodians have passed on opportunities for justice all these years because they are either forgiving, or they are guilty. Now a generation is coming of age with no memory of those times. Perhaps the justice beginning now will educate them.
If such a gentle people were capable of those atrocities, what society is not? If Cambodians could become so divided that they began murdering other Cambodians, could we? How far must civil discourse erode before “the other” is so reprehensible to deserve killing?
For more on Cambodia go to New Bohemians, In Search of Shangri-la
January 19th, 2010
I received saw the message below on a Facebook friend’s page, and it made me think about how TV influences how we feel and express emotions. The pain Americans are seeing on their TV screens of the Haitian disaster is such a small part of the pain worldwide every day, and yet it takes a disaster and a TV crew for us to see it, and yet not really see.
From C.
“I can’t watch the news after last night’s reporting on a five year old girl who was going to either have her leg amputated or die from the infection and the mother said, right there in front her daughter, to let her die. The girl cried out and extended her hand to her mother – the doctor had to tell the mother to take her daughter’s hand. I can’t stop crying after seeing that.”
My reply:
C, I’m not directing this at you, but your heartfelt pain made me think:
The mother was making a decision for her other children. In the third world, they live close to the edge every day, a child that cannot work the fields, or the streets, a child that must be cared for, could take the whole family down. It appears cruel to us, but we are not faced with that mother’s decision. I suspect the reason the mother would not take the child’s hand is self-preservation, her own sanity.
The thousands of mothers are making these same kinds of decisions daily around the world, not just Haiti, not just today. We were recently in Laos, where the anti-personnel “bombies” America dropped during the “American War” are still maiming and killing, 40 years later; such heart wrenching decisions are still being made by mothers.
Part of the pain you feel is from being so far away and seeing it through the flickering eye of a TV screen. If you could be there to hold that child’s hand while she died, it would probably be less painful for you, you would be doing something, involved, not just watching.
We were able to save a drunk who crashed his motorcycle in Vietnam recently. He was going to drown in his own puke, or burned from the gasoline his cigarette would have ignited. All it took was a willingness to do something. We were lucky to be there (that means actually traveling to such places) and be able to do what comes naturally. But, that man, his family, and bystanders will never feel the same way about Americans.
Americans travel so little, and when they do, they wrap themselves in the cocoon of cruise ship or tour bus, and are denied the opportunity to actually touch and be touched by the people. I’m not saying everyone should travel by bicycle as we do, but a few simple choices in travel planning can make the difference between seeing a country through a filter of luxury, or making direct contact.
Don’t take a predetermined tour. The tour leaders are sure you don’t want to meet the real people, but a sanitized version of folk presentations. Travel independently, and don’t always stay in the travel destinations, the tourist towns; stay in smaller towns or villages, spread your money around. Look that street vendor in the eye while you negotiate some mystery meat on a stick. Return her smile. Not only will you have more fun, more memories, but that street vendor will remember that some Americans actually cared enough to want to see her village, and how she lives. Small things make a difference.
 Market Vendor in Cambodia TV is unfortunately a one-way street. We can see. We can hurt, but we can’t give our selves (two words purposely) to that little girl, or the crashed drunk or… because we aren’t there.
We owe the World more than feeling its pain through our high-def screens. We need to be there as they live their day-to-day lives, so they know we care enough to come see them. Donations of supplies are necessary in time of crisis, but a better thing is to go to places like Haiti between disasters, spend a little money, shake a hand, laugh together, eat together, breathe their bad air, drink their boiled water, sleep on a board, defecate in an outhouse as they do.
Then come back and give some money to a micro credit organization that will help them help themselves, or maybe work to see that our government does not drop more anti-personnel weapons on innocent rice farmers. It all makes a difference. Watching and empathizing with a flat screen TV doesn’t change anything.
August 28th, 2009
One of the problems with being widely traveled, is that you fall in love with so many places, and people who live there. Last year it was an earthquake in China and the Russian invasion of The Republic of Georgia, that had us hurting. Now the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) tells us that one of the most beautiful, most remote coasts in the world, is under threat from a drilling rig oil spill.
Claire and Zippy on Cable Beach, Broome, Kimberly, Western Australia
We rode our tandem a few thousand kilometers across and through the middle of Australia, through the Kimberly, in the far northwest. The Kimberly region is the size of California with 41,000 residents. Think of that. We rode for two to three days without seeing human habitation. There are bulbous baobab trees and bush fires on the land, crocks and huge snakes in the billabongs and camels stomping around the tent in the night. Lovely.
We arrived in Broome probably the most remote town in the English speaking world, just in time for our anniversary, so it holds a special place in our hearts. The coast there is like all the coasts in Australia, spectacular. But the Kimberly coast is special for it’s remoteness and the austere red rock beauty and beautiful, but often violent weather.
We can only hope the spill in contained before it ruins one of Earth’s special places.
For more on the Kimberly and our 20,000 kilometer ride around Australia, see the link Around Australia by Tandem on the Home page, or click here
August 19th, 2009
 The High Road to Shangri-la We leave September 1 for Chengdu, Sichuan, China to begin a tandem bicycle tour of SW China and SE Asia. We begin in Chengdu, Sichuan, where the earthquakes killed thousands last year. We will visit some pandas and probably visit our first important Buddha statue before heading into high country where the Himalayas transition from the Tibetan plateau, giving birth to all the great rivers of SE Asia. After a long crossing into Yunnan, we will drop into the sub tropics of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and end probably in Bangkok, one of our favorite cities.
We are feverishly making preparations: Zippy, our 38,000 mile Cannondale mountain tandem. He’s our precocious teenager. Though still strong, he always requires a complete rebuild from the frame up, because the places he takes us are hundreds or thousands of miles from a modern bike shop. We like him to start out without the creaks and grinding noises he will acquire after rain and grit take their inevitable toll. Claire sewed patches on holes and weak spots of our 38,000 mile Cannondale panniers (no they are not sponsoring us). We are far to sentimental to buy a new bicycle or panniers; we’ve come a long way together. I’ve been gathering all the tools necessary to fix almost anything that might go wrong in a few thousand miles, though as I learned on our Silk Road Crossing, I can’t carry replacement parts for every eventuality.
Claire is working on her Chinese, and I will, as usual, smile and use various vigorous hand signals attempt communication. The airlines are making it more and more difficult to travel with bicycles, let alone a tandem, so after painstakingly rebuilding him, I have taken him apart, down to the smallest package possible, and it still exceeds the maximum size, but is underweight. We are hoping for compassion from the agents.
There will be more preparation pictures, and another message from Lucky the rescued Panda who is going back to China with us.
There will be many more posts along the way than there were for the Silk Road Crossing; we’re taking a netbook so you can travel with us. Be sure and bookmark this site and check it often. We appreciate your good wishes.
|
