GETTING IT WRONG - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 76

At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the surviving victims have had a major role in
designing the displays, said Michael J. Abramowitz, director of the Committee on Consci-
ence at the museum.
“Holocaust institutions do everything they can to avoid even the slightest appearance
that they are exploiting the history of the Holocaust to raise funds or in any way profit from
the murder and suffering of millions,” said Abramowitz.
Cambodia opted for profits along with memorialization for its genocide tourism. After
repairing and restoring Tuol Sleng the government encouraged tour buses to drop off for-
eign tourists. The price of admission is $2, with an additional cost of $3 for a guide.
Inside, the museum breaks the cardinal rule of respect for the victims. Haunting photo-
graphs are hung throughout Tuol Sleng, but most of the victims are left anonymous—no
names and no stories about their lives and deaths even though the information has been
available for decades. Instead, the accent is on the barbarity of the Khmer Rouge and how
they tortured these people. Most visitors leave the museum stunned.
Nearby is Choeung Ek, the killing field south of Phnom Penh where the Khmer Rouge
clubbed countless Cambodians to death and buried them in mass graves. It is the second
site on the proposed genocide trail. The government erected a memorial using 8,985
skulls collected from the grounds. These skeletons were never given the religious rites and
cremation required by the Buddhist faith; instead, they are on permanent display, some
organized by age and gender but, again, without names. This does not feel like a sacred
space but one of utter desecration.
In 2005 the government turned Choeung Ek into an official commercial enterprise by
signing a thirty-year contract with a Japanese company to enhance its tourism possibilities.
The Japanese added amenities and built a visitor's center, raising the price of admission
from 50 cents to $2. Youk Chhang, the executive director of the Documentation Center of
Cambodia that documents the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, tried to prevent that Japanese
contract. He said that “the Japanese have commercialized the soul of the Khmer Rouge
survivors and provided a superficial education to the foreign tourists.
“How can we learn from history so that it cannot be repeated if we continue to fail to
understand that the memory of those who have died cannot be commercialized?” he said.
The government was surprised by Youk Chhang's anger and asked him for advice on
the proper preservation of the genocide sites and training of tour guides. Chhang told me
he agreed to work on the master plan to insure the sites were educational.
The third site is Anlong Veng in western Cambodia, the last holdout of Pol Pot, far from
Phnom Penh. In 2001 the government issued a circular ordering the preservation of An-
long Veng for “historical tourism.”
At the same time as it was promoting genocide tourism, the Hun Sen government was
blocking an international trial of the former Khmer Rouge leaders who were living quietly
in Cambodia and had never been arrested. After a decade of negotiations, an agreement