Scribbles

Aside from the intense fun I enjoyed during my vacation in Thailand and the Kingdom of Cambodia before arriving in Singapore, two particular places I visited brought me to a sobering mood. The reason I’m writing about them, is because they brought to my present a startling reminder of some of humanity’s most grisly crimes, atrocities that still go on today in different parts of the world, unattended to by the world community.

In Thailand, I went to Kanchanaburi, site of the famous Bridge over the River Kwai. On the first day, my tour group brought my reluctant self to visit the Thailand-Burma Railway Museum and its adjacent WWII memorial cemetery. The museum told the story (much like the movie) of prisoners of war from various nations who were forced to work on the railway by Japanese soldiers under the most inhumane conditions that led to massive deaths.

Next on to Cambodia, after taking the 6 hour boat ride from Siem Reap to Phnon Penh, we visited the Tuol Sleng Museum. A former school converted into a torture camp, the museum exhibited details of torture and mass genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge regime – gruesome, sobering pictures and stories of unforgivable wrong doings wrought upon human beings.

At each instance, I felt a hollowed pit of sickness in my stomach. I questioned why I was there, while on vacation, when I should theoretically be enjoying myself. But then I realized how badly I needed the reminder of the things of the past. As people, it is so easy to learn about the immoral deeds of our past, to condemn it in the classroom, and then conveniently displace the unpleasantness into the back of our minds, most of the time forgotten. Having these museums bring the ugliness right in your face imprints into the mind those brutal undeniable truths. Don’t shield yourself or your children from these memorials and museums. Learn from them, refresh your memories. With it, we can look back into history and easily identify all the repulsive parallels in the happenings of the world today. And if enough of us would be organized enough to find a common voice to speak out against these senseless repeats of the past, we can make a difference. The systematic and organized trampling on human lives has been going on from the dawn of mankind. When you see it today, don’t look the other way. Recognize it, stand up against it.