Tuol Sleng Prison # S-21, Pnomh Penh, Cambodia (1975-1979)

A former school converted into a prison by the Kymer Rouge. It was used as an interrogation center for the purpose of eliciting false confessions from all that did not agree with ‘Revolutionary Policy’. The majority were Cambodians from all walks of life but also included citizens from all over the world who just happened to be in Cambodia at the time. Up to one million people died in and around Pnomh Penh during the purge.


Prison Rules as hand-written on a board in a hallway:

(1) You must answer accordingly to my questions. Do not turn them away.

(2) Do not try to hide the facts by making pretexts of this or that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.

(3) Do not be a fool for you are a chap who dares to thwart the revolution.

(4) You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

(5) Do not tell me either about your immoralities or the revolution.

(6) While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

(7) Do nothing. Sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something. You must do it right away without protesting.

(8) Do not make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.

(9) If you do not follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.

(10) If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.


Children ten to fifteen years old were kept separate. They were then chosen to become prison guards and conditioned to perform unspeakable acts of cruelty.


Desolation
Tuol Sleng has since been converted into a museum but truly it looks as if it was abandoned only yesterday. It was a raw experience to walk through the cells and rooms and feel the experience of those who died there. All prisoners were photographed and life size copies of these hung on the walls. I found myself holding back tears as I looked into the many faces young and old, male and female. One picture of a young man grabbed my particular attention as he seemed to look directly into my very soul and say ‘Do not forget me?’ I immediately found myself engaging his experience and felt his dilemma during his torture. I experienced the absolute desolation of his pain and felt myself saying ‘Dear God, if you will only remove me from this hell I promise to die to every moment of my life from now on rather than have it chosen for me.’ I looked into the young man’s eyes and I promised him that I will not forget, I will choose to die. We must all choose to die.



The Pain I Am

I am the Jew that lived the slaughter
With a view so true , I am so real
My past was slaughtered in the pain
The view I feel is yours to see.

I am the man who felt the futility
Watching innocence die in pain
The master race was theirs to have
The price to pay was innocence betrayed.

I am assaulted by the thought
That I am saved to tell the tale
A pain so cruel it has no peer
To this or any other day.

The Huns came and slaughtered all
The Kings of England slaughtered more
The Eastern Nomad took his toll
The wars of Asia bested all.

But none can best the beast being born
Of modern hearts still in shame
We blame Hitler
But Hitler was just one of us.

How dare we believe that we’re free
To cast the blame in Hitler’s way
He was a man as you and I
He was the invention of our thoughts.

We are a world in God’s disgrace
We choose our leaders
To serve the thinking we formulate
We move away when they disgrace.

What has changed? Nothing, I say
The book has passed to save the day
The evil will is only saved
By giving blame to local demand.

Evil lives through how we think
Validation seeds the genocidal womb
The surface bubble a Fascist hell
Baby Adolph to make us well.




Water to Boil

The world is as water being heated. Each and every life force is as integral to each and all as water is to water. When water comes to boil it will release. There is no choice other than to become violent in this effort because it is being pressured by forces beyond its control. The ongoing release is a sacrifice that helps maintain the stability of the remaining water.
As we continue reducing to boil, the scream for primal unity or purity reasserts to cull all in its wake without mercy. The releasing water or steam becomes the cheated despots in their futile attempts to return to the water by eliminating all they deem impure. This activity will continue in the world and there will be more and more festering boils until finally we are reduced to a level of humility whereby the truth will become obvious without further pain.
The genocidal attempt to force purity is a tragic and necessary response that comes from the very heart of the Oneness we all share. It manifests as a response to the communal failure of the world to rationalize itself in terms of the truth that frees. The blame for genocide is found all over the world where people clump to protect within zones of validation. The festering boil is never the cause and the blame is found spread thin for none to see unless an understanding of the connectivity of all things is understood as a principle of common responsibility.
The cause for genocide is always to be found under the protection of a world in a righteous boil and the release however violent works as a balancing opposite that will help to keep water in the pot. Without water in the pot we will lose all possibility for self-realization on this platform that we call the world.
There are no time and space differentials in terms of personal responsibility and each attitude everywhere goes into the common pot. We create our Hitler’s, our Mao Zedong's, our Pol Pot’s and our Stalin’s. We are all in this together and there is no one to blame except the aggregate negative complement of individual thought processes.


Complexity is inversely proportional to knowing; genocidal regimes invariably seek to return to the purity of simple living by the eradication of intellectualism and ego.



Genocide

World of pain! World of sorrow!
Their terror enjoyed by evil’s spawn
Give a thought to what occurred
and cry the cry of killer pain.

They became a vent to ease the load
A way for God to take the reins
A means to change the worldly view
That might is right and God is dead.

It is a repeating theme
A primordial scream
A whore to a virgin true
A twisted point of view.

They were the best of cultured man
They earned their advantages by honest means
The wasteful saw the view
That Jews’ were trying to steal their homes.

They became a race with ego-pride
They were the best at ordering time
They made a pact with Satan’s friend
And gave their souls to fear and pride.

Satan came from a meter grave
He is a meter in his frame
He is a demon in man’s place
His name was Hitler, our disgrace.

He took the fear and made a deal
Said that they were men of destiny
A force to purge the world of greed
An Aryan cleanse all bright and pure.

He mixed a brew of terror and fear
Fed them ‘till their fire was fueled
Unleashed on all he deemed untrue
Cutting, cutting to be brand new.

Evil has its power by fear
But good is all alone
Seduced by fear they bellied bare
Few were left where hero’s dare.

Demons’ raged through dying screams
Their wanton slaughter became a drug
The more the blood, the more the thirst
They feasted fear, gave the devil his due.

The victims were taken to their graves
To shallow pit’s with lime to waste
To oven’s fit for fiery hell
To chamber’s gassed with chlorine’s ghost.

They were denied their right to live
And they were the lucky ones’
Others suffered the pain of experimentation
Guinea pig’s to serve the Reich.

Human life a thing to waste
Experiments to build the master race
Humanity in its worst disgrace
A horror so profound!

The mass of evil has the power
To fortify the smallest sin
To give it force beyond its life
To subjugate the Intellectual mind.

Beware your thoughts of being secure
They will plant you in Satan’s grave
Feed you with your worldly wiles
Lock you in to make you fierce.

Will turn you loose when the Master comes
To find the view that wrong is right
Will fight to serve the Master’s whim
Truth is dead! God is dead!

All thinking is movement of evil
Thoughtful, sly and in control
Beware this beast of your disgrace
Lest your Hitler find your face.



To choose to die or to have it chosen - that is the question!

Middle class values are a major contributor to the unified force of ignorance. Ignorance has no class.

Genocide: a tragic and saving disgrace.

Comment:
In an appreciation written for Heidegger's 80th birthday, Hannah Arendt (who was once romantically involved with the philosopher), suggests that an "inclination toward the tyrannical could be demonstrated theoretically in many of the great thinkers," and that "if this inclination is not demonstrable in what they did," it's because so few of them left the rarefied world of pure thought for the real world.