Trees have always fascinated me. I think in my previous life, I must have been a tree, for my favourite colours are green (first) and brown (second). I also love what a tree stands for – continuing aspirations and ambitions yet with roots firmly planted in the ground. In particular, I love old trees, especially banyan trees which have withstand centuries and with so much history behind them.
Old trees took on a different meaning for me yesterday though when I visited the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, or what is more commonly known as the Killing Fields. The very peaceful nature of the place (despite the throngs of tourists) belies a place filled with so much dread and evil just about more than 30 years ago. Out in the fields, there are two trees which I will remember for a long long time.
The first is the most captivating one in the fields for there are many colourful bracelets adorning it. It has a sinister name though – 'The Killing Tree’. It was so named because it was where the Khmer soldiers-executioners grabbed babies and children by their legs and smash their skulls against, before throwing their bodies into the mass grave next to it. The colourful bracelets were a way to remember the many young and innocent lives robbed.
The second tree has a huge canopy and looks very very reassuring especially during a very hot day. It is called ‘The Magic Tree’. It was where a loudspeaker was hung during the genocide, from which loud revoluntionary songs played out each night to mask the screams of masses of people brought in on trucks from the Tuol Sleng High School where they were tortured, to be killed and buried in mass graves at the Killing Fields. For the Khmer Rouge soldiers, perhaps the 'magic' existed in that not many discovered the atrocities committed until after the Khmer Rouge regime ended a few years later. People just assumed there were rounds and rounds of communist meetings in the place each night.
Trees will never be the same again.
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