There is no way to write anything entertaining about the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh.
It’s in the heart of the city, Number 22 of a total of 34 Khmer Rouge torture centres, and by no means the largest — just about the size of a small city block.
These 3-story concrete buildings were once a school. Now they’re largely empty, with neatly kept grounds, but the barbed wire that prevented prisoners from jumping to their death still screens the walkways on the upper floors.
In spite of the name, people weren’t brought here specifically to be killed, but to be tortured.
Some were actually party members themselves; the majority were “enemies of the state” (intellectuals, dissenters, anyone who wore eyeglasses, and anyone with educational qualifications…a broad category which even included our guide’s father, a blacksmith). Plus their families and children.
They were kept here, tortured, and promised leniency if they confessed — preferably implicating others. Once they did, they and their entire families were shuttled on nightly buses to the infamous “killing fields” where the actual executions took place.
Today, there’s less to see than you might expect: blurry and faded photographs of the dead, iron cots, a few rusty implements of torture, and bad paintings illustrating how they were used.
But much of the story is still left to your imagination, although there are explanatory placards here and there. There are also small, puzzling plaques: a red circle with a red diagonal slash. But their message isn’t “no smoking” or “no dogs allowed”…instead, there’s a cartoon of a grinning face inside the red circle.
No laughing? Can it possibly mean “no laughing”?
When I ask, the guide hesitates. He’s a courteous man. Some people, he explains, some local people, often the young ones, don’t know what to expect when they came to the Genocide Museum.
I don’t believe him. There can’t be a Cambodian of any age who doesn’t understand what this place means. So I think he’s being diplomatic; it’s far more likely that the signs are intended for foreign visitors, the young and the ignorant, who have come here with no idea of what they’re going to see. But he is too polite to say so.
We know the world is full of tourists who are there, wherever ‘there’ is, because someone put it on the itinerary. Oblivious and disrespectful, they gaze uncomprehending at what’s in front of them, if they bother to look at all. Mostly they blunder along, texting in cathedrals, snapping masterpieces on their phones, and giggling in graveyards. We wonder why they travel…and we wish they wouldn’t.
But dear God, have we really come to this? “No laughing” signs at the Genocide Museum?