Genocide Tourism in Cambodia is Voyeuristic and Macabre
By Roadjunky, Posted May 20, 2009
 It's their history, not ours |
Since when did dead people become a tourist attraction?
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What happened in Cambodia in the 1970’s is almost beyond comprehension. Perhaps topping the list of 20th century mass murderers for psychopathic flair alone, Pol Pot reduced his country to ruins and wiped out around a quarter of the entire Cambodian population.
The genocide in Cambodia) was an example of what happens when ideology gets into the hands of a fanatic who has the power to make his fantasies come true. With the idea that the bourgeoisie had to be eliminated in order for a new society to be born, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge set about their task with a terrifying zeal. You had glasses? Dead. You could read? Dead. You’d been abroad? Dead.
People were taken out to the fields and the test for survival was whether you could climb a palm tree or not – if you couldn’t you were obviously an enemy of the honest, rural people. Dead.
We could go on.
What no one foresaw, however, was that 30 years on these scenes of inhuman cruelty, torture and mass murder would become tourist attractions for voyeuristic backpackers with cameras. Queuing up to enter the likes of the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, tourists assumed an awed expression and sombrely photograph the piles of skulls, the torture equipment and the confessions and photographs of the victims before they were killed.
And it’s total shit.
It’s a good thing that the genocide in Colombia has been documented and told to the world. It’s a good thing that Cambodian school children are taken on trips to witness their immediate history with their own eyes. And it’s nauseating that it should become a tourist attraction for those with a death fetish.
If you care about genocide and believe something should be done about it, there are any number of places in the world that could do with your attention right now. The Congo, Burma, the Ivory Coast, Palestine, Sudan and Georgia to name a few.
If you care about human suffering you could turn your attention to the issues of modern human slavery with trafficking in people, women forced into prostitution, child soldiers and the numerous, brutal dictatorships in the world who run torture programs of their own.
But come back from holiday with a digital camera full of skulls from a genocide in a culture you don’t understand, whose language you don’t speak, whose people you probably didn’t interact with beyond ‘put more marijuana on the happy pizza, please’, and really, all you’ve accomplished is to titillate your own sense of horror.
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yes man, i fully agree! i have not been to cambodia, but experienced the same thing at the genocide museum in kigali, rwanda. while it’s good to keep memory of the recent history so that the new generations can learn from recent experiences it is extremely sad to turn this into a tourist attraction to satisfy the voyeuristic needs of foreign tourists.
When i went to the “Killing Fields,” I saw something hilarious. A couple of young japanese tourists making funny poses in front of a stack of thousands of skulls piled into a glass tower. Surreal, to say the least. Well, hey, if the Khmers can make some money off of it, let them. Maybe it will wake some people up to realities.
Places like this need no camera to leave an everlasting image in the mind forever. You visit, you respect, you learn and you are horrified. That is the process.
I felt that since I was doing volunteer work in Cambodia at the time, I had to see the Tuol Sleng Genocidal Museum and Genocidal Centre (aka Killing Fields), not to tick it off on a list of things to do, but because it forms a part of respect. Leave the camera at home and take this as an educational experience not to be shared over dinner or drinks.
genocide in palestine!!!!
i wonder if you understand the use of the word??
well Ipretty much agree. I saw something similar to what James said about the Jap tourists in Berlin at the Holocaust museum stupid American tourist kids posing and making funny faces for pictures on the Memorial.But Palestine, man?? I think the word genocide is being used a teensy bit too loosely here…. Sudan and the Congo sure,but there is a bit of a difference between a war (georgia and Palestine) and the systematic wiping out of a whole people…
i fully agree with the article, but as someone who spent 2 months in Cambodia earlier this year i felt it was important to really understand the terrible things that happend to this beautiful country. Also talking to many of my Khemer friends both in and out of PP they see people visiting the sites respectfully in a positive manor as although rarley spoken of they want the world to know what happend.
I really have to disagree with your article. While I agree that it is not meant for tourists to take funny photos or speak loudly or be obnoxious during their visit, I do feel it is important to visit. I did debate with myself about taking photos in these places. Ultimately, I feel you are bearing witness to past horrors. By taking photos you can share your experience with people who may not be educated or have the ability to pay their respects in person. Then they can bear witness as well. I was a young child during the Khmer Rouge and learned nothing about it in school nor at home as I was most likely protected from the news by my parents. My visit was educational and sobering. To see in person what horrors can be brought on by someone to their own people. I am not Khmer, but I am human and can be horrified by what happened. The Cambodian people put these place up so everyone could understand what has happened to their country and their people. You are assuming a thought process of a group of people. You have every right to your opinion and to be disgusted by what you saw at these places, but you don’t know what actions those people have taken in their personal lives. Please don’t assume that everyone that visits these places didn’t interact with the Cambodian people. I was able to ask questions of someone who experienced and lived through the Khmer Rouge and could bear personal witness to visitors who want to learn and make an effort.
You are so full of yourself. By your tone I can tell that you think you’re better than most other people. You are wrong.
I am going to Cambodia in a few days and I am definitely going to go to the Genocide Museum. Not to be a tourist but to pay my respects and to learn from the past.
Yes there are stupid people and insensitive people who go to these things. I remember, while I was at Auschwitz, there were people taking touristy type of pictures. But most people do not. Most people learn from these type of memorials. And by the way, all of the pictures I take are respectful and will not contain other human beings.
And by the way, if you are an American then it is our history as well as Cambodians. It is because of us that the Khmer Rouge came into power in the first place. Obviously you learned nothing.