Genocide Op-ed
Project Reflection
In this project, we had to each create a
political cartoon helping to explain an idea from the genocide being researched.
I chose to research the Cambodian genocide, and based on the research I did,
came up with the thesis; to survive means to cover your emotions with an empty
mask, even the targets can be forced to leave their humanity behind. For the
other part of this project, we each wrote an Op-ed, a short piece of writing
like you might see in a newspaper or magazine, using our thesis as the main
idea. These two pieces can be directly related by the thesis, or may even be
focusing on two completely different topics of the genocide we
researched.
From writing this Op-ed piece, I have learned to condense my writing
drastically. In most pieces I have written in the past for a project, they have
been 10 to 20 pages long. This piece (because it needs to fit on a page in a
newspaper) had to be cut a lot shorter so there wasn’t as much room left for
descriptive writing which is my strength. I had to learn to use descriptive
writing the right amount, not too heavy so my Op-ed was too long, but not too
light on descriptive language so the piece is left boring and only factual.
Balancing these two things out was a challenge for me, but through this project
I have again grown in my writing skills, and learned yet another way to write,
to add to the skills I already have, and make my writing the best it can
be.
In this project, we had to each create a
political cartoon helping to explain an idea from the genocide being researched.
I chose to research the Cambodian genocide, and based on the research I did,
came up with the thesis; to survive means to cover your emotions with an empty
mask, even the targets can be forced to leave their humanity behind. For the
other part of this project, we each wrote an Op-ed, a short piece of writing
like you might see in a newspaper or magazine, using our thesis as the main
idea. These two pieces can be directly related by the thesis, or may even be
focusing on two completely different topics of the genocide we
researched.
From writing this Op-ed piece, I have learned to condense my writing
drastically. In most pieces I have written in the past for a project, they have
been 10 to 20 pages long. This piece (because it needs to fit on a page in a
newspaper) had to be cut a lot shorter so there wasn’t as much room left for
descriptive writing which is my strength. I had to learn to use descriptive
writing the right amount, not too heavy so my Op-ed was too long, but not too
light on descriptive language so the piece is left boring and only factual.
Balancing these two things out was a challenge for me, but through this project
I have again grown in my writing skills, and learned yet another way to write,
to add to the skills I already have, and make my writing the best it can
be.
Masked Emotion
Arn Chorn-pond was 13 years old when the Khmer Rouge came, killed his
family, and sent him to work in a prison camp where he was forced to destroy the
world that he once knew. Arn was one of many people who did not see the
significance of the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge; he was one of many whose
suffering may not have happened if they would have realized what was coming.
“Sometimes we heard the words Khmer Rouge, but it didn’t mean anything to us.”
(From Genocide to Cultural Renewal in Cambodia). At
first, nothing seemed to be going
wrong.
The Khmer Rouge soldiers
moved into Cambodia soon after in 1975 and began forcing people from their homes
and into the country with the promise of return in a few days time. However,
after close to a week, prison camps were opened and systematic killings
began. (Return to The Killing fields). It
soon became clear; no one was going home, nothing would ever be the same. They
soon learned that to survive means to cover your emotions with an empty mask,
even the targets can be forced to leave their humanity behind.
The Khmer Rouge was a rebel group led by Pol Pot; these men were
responsible for the deaths of close to 1.7 million Cambodian people in just
three years, eight months, and 20 days, from 1975 to 1978. (Zoltan Istvan). The
leader of the regime, Pol Pot, decided to take over Cambodia and reconstruct the
country, to take it back to year zero and turn it into a communist utopia. (The
Cambodian Killing Fields). To do this, he eliminated everyone living with an
education as they were assumed to be in opposition of the Khmer Rouge.
(GENOCIDE-CAMBODIA). They were killed or sent to prison camps to live out what
was left of their lives.
The Cambodian Genocide forced the victims and killers alike to put up a
front. If you showed emotion, or anything besides the will to obey and work
hard, you were killed. When Arn was 13 years old, he was moved to a prison camp.
One night, soldiers came for him and trucked him and many other teenage boys to
one of the many areas where Cambodians were buried in mass graves, known as the
‘killing fields.’ The soldiers lined the boys along a narrow ditch, but left Arn
to watch. Then, one by one, an axe was embedded into each boys head, and they
slumped into the ditch. Arn was forced to bury each of them, whether they were
dead or alive.
If Arn had showed any emotion or refused to do what the soldiers told him
he would have been killed. He learned early on to wear a theoretical mask, to
have no depth or feeling. Everyone learned this, they had to be brutal to
survive, they had to be like the soldiers and prison guards. Their lives were
forced from them, their souls buried deep inside them. If Arn had showed emotion
or refused to bury the young men that night, he would have been killed, and
someone else would have taken Arn’s place. Cambodians had to leave behind their
past life and all emotion at the door of the camp, it meant survival.
Arn Chorn-Pond says, ”You just have to continue to be vicious and make
yourself numb to all of this; you have to be a killer.” This is what everyone
lived by while in the prison camps. Arn and many others were forced into doing
atrocious things during the genocide, including becoming a child soldier and
killing friends and family. The only way Arn got through and survived to see the
end of the war was by showing no emotion, by “becoming numb” to everything
around him, everything that he did. (From Genocide to Cultural Renewal in
Cambodia). He had to let go of his humanity.
It wasn’t just the soldiers and members of the Khmer Rouge who did
terrible things without feeling, it was the targets of this genocide, the
Cambodians, they were forced into it, they became blunt like the soldiers. “Then
the soldier looked at me deep in the eyes, I made my face blank, you show you
care, you die.” (From Genocide to Cultural Renewal in Cambodia). Arn forced a
mask of emptiness onto himself, he, the target, left behind everything he knew
to survive.
"That's why Cambodians will tell you that their genocide is worse than
any other genocide in mankind, because they did it to themselves." (Jarrett
Murphy). This genocide was not just one group killing another, or an army
killing a specific race, it was neighbor killing neighbor, friend killing
friend, and they didn’t have any control over it. (Jarrett Murphy). All they
could do was cover their faces, wipe away emotion, and hope that their fate
would be less tortured than those around them. Cambodians in the genocide were
forced to kill anyone and everyone the Khmer Rouge told them to, if they
resisted, they were killed.
In a sense, the targets were the ones ‘doing the dirty work’ for the
soldiers. “Van Nath described how male prisoners were whipped raw by the
soldiers, their fingernails were yanked out, they were hogtied to wooden bars.
Prison guards mutilated women's genitals, ripped off their nipples with pliers.
And worst of all, babies were ripped from their mothers' arms and slaughtered.”
(Christiane Amanpour, 1). Cambodians were forced to do all of this and more for
the soldiers; they became soldiers with their only hope being survival.
The Cambodian people became killing machines; killers of themselves. They
waved off all morals of their past life, and gave up their humanity for
survival. The victim became the killer in this genocide, leaving the country of
Cambodia in ruins, all trust torn away, they killed each other to survive,
nothing can ever be the same.
Bibliography:
·
"Holocaust MemorialDay Trust." Cambodian Genocide. N.p., n.d.
Web. 31 Jan. 2013.
·
"GENOCIDE - CAMBODIA." GENOCIDE - CAMBODIA. N.p., n.d. Web. 31
Jan. 2013.
·
"Khmer Rouge Genocide: Return to The Killing Fields 2/3."
YouTube. YouTube, 26 Sept. 2011. Web. 28 Jan.
2013.
·
"Cambodia  ." Introduction. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Jan.
2013.
·
"Survivor Recalls Horrors of Cambodia Genocide." CNN. N.p., 07
Apr. 2008. Web. 27 Jan. 2013.
·
"CFC Keynote - Arn Chorn-Pond and Patricia McCormick - From
Genocide to Cultural Renewal in Cambodia." YouTube. YouTube, 07 Nov. 2012. Web.
27 Jan. 2013
·
"Remembering the Killing Fields." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 11
Feb. 2009. Web. 27 Jan. 2013
·
"Genocide - The Killing Fields Museum - Learn from Cambodia." The
Killing Fields Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Jan.
2013.
·
CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 24 Jan.
2013.
·
"Killing Fields" Lure Tourists in Cambodia." National Geographic.
National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 23 Jan.
2013.