Dark Tourism: Why I Didn’t Go to the Killing Fields
It’s not that I don’t have any interest in the darker or more hard-hitting truths of the countries I visit. I believe it’s essential to preserve the memory of the atrocities we find throughout History as reminders not to ever repeat them, and to honour all of those who perished or acted bravely in the face of devastating realities.
My issue is with people, namely tourists. More specifically the ones being spewed out of big buses in a conveyor belt manner, who need a guide with a freaking loudspeaker to learn anything about a place — the obnoxious, selfie-stick wielding, stop-the-traffic-to-take-that-picture kind.
It might sound like an overblown stereotype, but I’ve been to enough tourist hotspots to know it to be true.
It’s not all horrendous though, and in certain places, it’s hilariously part of the experience. I find it mildly amusing when I see people taking selfies with every other painting in the Louvre or those pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We all have our motivations for travelling and get joy out of different things, even if it’s just about taking the same picture as millions of others. I relate to the feeling of wanting to be seen when I finally travel to a famous landmark or a place I’ve read about in books or seen in movies countless times — it’s rewarding to be able to look back and say “Hey, I was there!”
However, when it comes to places of historical, religious or cultural significance — such as museums and memorials linked to chapters in history that involve oppression, genocide and mass tragedy, which nowadays fit the category of dark tourism — there is a level of respectful conduct which is not always present on visitors’ minds.
You’ve heard about it. People climbing and jumping around the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. Selfies at Auschwitz. Photoshoots at Chernobyl. Also, in my recent experience, posing for pictures in front of hundreds of human skulls or prison cells where people were tortured and killed, dry blood stains on the walls included.
Such behaviours fuelled me to write this piece, not as an endless rant but rather an attempt at making constructive points.
However, if you decide not to read any further, here’s the main takeaway: these places don’t exist to add a bit of shock factor to your holiday or to be a backdrop for selfies. They hold cultural and historical weight and can be crucial to deepen our understanding of a country or period in time, plus have the potential to generate positive economic and social contributes to local communities. So if you decide to visit one, inform yourself beforehand and behave respectfully.
What is Dark Tourism?
I remember it as a part of a module I took in university while studying Tourism Management, but back then, I saw it only as a niche topic. It’s grown to become an ever more prevalent subject today that deserves to have more academic grounding and research.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it might stir up associations with drug-infused debauchery and red-light districts but in actuality, it’s best defined as “the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites”, or plainly places that have a historical association with tragedy and death doubling as tourist destinations. There are several terms such as thanatourism, battlefield tourism or disaster tourism to differentiate some specifics.
Dark tourism is not exactly a new phenomenon.
Humans have long had a fascination with death and the macabre. Just think about the visitors flocking to Pompeii or WWII concentration camps; even public executions back in the day could fit this category. It’s also easy to forget that the most visited attraction in Rome today was once a scene of bloody fights, torture and murder.
The term has permeated mainstream media more recently via a Netflix series called ‘Dark Tourist’ launched last year, and in the well-covered rise of visitor numbers to Chernobyl after the success of the HBO series of the same name.
It is also my somewhat cynical opinion that the rise of dark tourism has a co-relation with the viral nature of the internet and doing things for social media attention. When lovely sunsets on the beach no longer cut it, some people feel the need to add more sensationalism to the perfect shot, like staging it in a place where a lot of people died.
Maybe a big part of us have always had this tendency of voyeurism into death, and we only came to terms with the fact recently via the massification of smartphone usage that inadvertently holds a mirror to our collective behaviours. Perhaps what makes it so repulsive to me lately is not said tendency but the commodification and accessibility to it, and the motives that lead people to visit these locations.
We are often able to disassociate ourselves from tragic events because of geographical (too far), sociological (too different) or generational distance (too long ago). It requires more from us to grasp something that isn’t directly related or a threat to us (e.g. if your country has never suffered under an authoritarian political regime or been terrorised by organised crime), and when the lived experiences of our elders no longer serve as a testament to it.
But have we been completely desensitised to the point where we have lost the capacity to understand human suffering unless it happens to us? And is dark tourism exploiting this, or is it contrariwise providing a way for visitors to learn cultural sensitivity?
My Experience in Cambodia
Before travelling to Cambodia, I read a few things and watched a couple of movies to understand the recent and grave history of the Khmer Rouge regime.
There is probably not a single person in the country who has not been affected by this in some way. It’s so recent that the majority of the population (over 65%) are under the age of thirty and still recovering and rebuilding their society after the genocide that wiped out about ¼ of the population over 40 years ago.
Communities in rural areas are still hugely affected by landmines and other unexploded devices left behind by the Khmer Rouge, with an estimated 4–6 million of them scattered around the country. No one knows exactly where these are buried, so people are often scared to work their land for agriculture, afraid to die or lose limbs, which consequently stifles development and leaves many people locked in a cycle of poverty.
There are many mass grave sites and memorials around the country, many of which have skulls and bones of those murdered on display. The first time I came across one of them was at a monastery which had been a site of mass killings in Siem Reap.
You probably won’t find Wat Thmei listed as a highlight in guidebooks, after all, it’s difficult to compete with that old stunner, Angkor Wat. Yet, sure enough, even on a gloomy and rainy day, I got to witness the absurdity of a lady in the unofficial uniform of “I’m here to take pics for the ‘gram” twirling and smiling for photos in front of the glass monument filled with bones.
Then there was the S-21 Prison or Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. It was one of the most sombre experiences I have ever had on my travels. Unspeakable atrocities have happened in the literal walls of those buildings.
Nonetheless, what better place to take a big smiling group photo with real enthusiasm, as if it’s your first time visiting Disneyland, than a prison cell block where hundreds of innocent people spent their last hours before being tortured and killed?
Well, at least the guy from the group who asked me to move out of the way did it semi-politely, while I mumbled about how their behaviour was inappropriate — so inappropriate that there are signs asking people not to take pictures. I would typically call myself a tolerant person, but this last episode made my blood boil.
In the end, I chose not to go to the Killing Fields, the biggest mass grave site in Cambodia.
By then, I had learnt my share of the country’s tragic recent history, and it made me sick to my stomach. Visiting the Fields wouldn’t add anything constructive to my opinion of this terrible injustice and of humans’ capability for cruelty, but I must also admit that a big part of this decision had to do with the fact that I would inevitably encounter more of the kind of tourists that made me upset earlier.
Is There a Point to This?
Some will say, perhaps in a cynical way: what do the dead care about our behaviour or perceptions?
It’s a fallacious argument. You honour the dead by respecting the living. I’d say it’s more about our moral values and the fact that the events of the past have noticeable effects in the present.
The danger of perpetuating or overlooking this kind of response is real. Bad behaviours that go on for long enough without anyone challenging them ultimately become the norm and contribute to more pain.
Of course, I’m going on a tangent, and I can’t judge people solely by their silly actions on a dark tourism site, but believe me when I say there’s enough material to write a big fat book if I start pulling out all of the much grimier examples from history to back my original claim.
Besides that, consider for a moment places more recently associated with murder and crime, such as Snowtown in Australia or Pablo Escobar’s hometown of Medellin, Colombia. These are instances where locals are relatively helpless when it comes to the reputation of their town. If it weren’t for the curious tourists, would anyone be fuelling the industry where you can purchase a tour package to walk in the footsteps of criminals?
It’s vital to make a distinction between individuals and businesses exploiting dark events solely for profit (see Hurricane Katrina bus tours in New Orleans where NONE of the proceeds go to rebuilding or supporting the community) and dark tourism sites where the objectives are instead to educate, reflect and show respect.
In any of these cases, when visiting, we should bear in mind the feelings of the families of victims who deserve to move on. For those living in the shadow of a tragedy, even mentions of it can trigger severe psychological trauma.
When it comes to Cambodia, I believe everyone should go to at least one of the historical places such as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh and Killing Fields in Choeung Ek. Same goes for some of the most well-known and most visited dark tourism sites in the world such as the 9/11 memorial in New York, or the much less known ones like the KGB prison in Riga, Latvia (my hometown). They’re all equally important if you want to understand the bigger picture of the country you’re visiting.
As far as bad behaviours go, the most obvious solution is to introduce ethical practices and above all, enforce them strictly. If it comes to that, have a person at every doorway reminding people that you can’t act like a place of genocide is a photo opportunity. I have also come across calls for banning cameras at certain sites, but it’s understandable why doing so would scare the entities in charge, as visitor revenue is a big part of funding and they wouldn’t want to miss out on paying tour groups whose photos provide free PR.
On a different note, today’s call-out culture can play a useful role in some cases.
An excellent example of that is the Yolocaust project that paired selfies and inappropriate or plain dumb photos taken at Holocaust memorials with actual images from concentration camps. The pictures have since been removed, but you can still read the reactions and responses on the website (even from the people whose photos originated the idea) and see the project’s intent was understood and revered, successfully generating a thoughtful debate and change of perception on social media.
The Importance of Dark Tourism to Local Communities
In many instances, sites that mark tragic occurrences have a significance that goes way beyond our attitudes as travellers, our understanding of local history or how we harness it in our collective memory. The research into the field of dark tourism mainly focuses on the motivations of the visitors and often omits the benefits to the local community, if any.
This takes me back to Cambodia, which I’ll refer to again as a case study.
It came to me as a shock that in Cambodian schools, the history of Khmer Rouge was not taught up until a little over ten years ago, while the crimes and human rights violations of the regime have been internationally known and condemned for decades. Most people are too young to remember what happened and those who have lived through that time rarely want to talk about it, which in turn has made a lot of Cambodians question if any atrocities of such scale happened at all.
Evidence points to the government and the leading party that is keen to bury the facts under the shroud of propaganda and politicise history in order to use the past to push its agenda and maintain power. Instead of focusing on remembrance, acknowledgement and collective reconciliation, people in power try to implement fear tactics which in turn make the regime’s history a politically sensitive subject and halt the advancement of education, exposé of facts and war crimes trials.
Tourism can facilitate much positive change if done right. Organisations such as the Documentation Centre of Cambodia offer tours for locals, students and travellers and even employ former Khmer Rouge soldiers to foster the understanding of those troubled times and promote reconciliation.
The truth is that history is complex. Those who acted as killers throughout the regime often did so because of ignorance or for fear of repercussions if they refused to follow orders.
An excellent example of this is the story of Aki Ra, a former child soldier for the Khmer Rouge who became an expert on planting landmines. After deserting, his past and training equipped him with knowledge that he later turned around, having now spent decades clearing thousands of the mines still scattered around the countryside. He also founded the very informative Landmine Museum, a must-visit if you’re travelling to Siem Reap.
Speaking of other countries with a recent dark past, Rwanda has been experiencing a steady growth in tourism which contributes in no small part to their economy. Although the financial impact of dark tourism is hard to measure, since it’s a relatively new phenomenon when it comes to academic research and data gathering, places such as Murambi Genocide Memorial are of great importance.
This site of the 1994 massacre against Tutsi minority group and other remnants of the country’s violent past play a critical role not just in showing travellers the atrocities of the past but more directly in educating Rwandans. About 30% of the population of Rwanda is illiterate, and 25 years on, the narrative of genocide denial, although officially a crime, does exist.
In scenarios like this, the acknowledgement of what happened and addressing this legacy is as important as ever. When the remnants of the tragedy are put on display in such a stark way as done in Murambi, there’s no room for denial.
When done right, dark tourism sites not only offer insight into tragic events — making sure they are documented within a broader historical context — but also provide opportunities of reconciliation and healing for those affected, while at the same time put the spotlight on governments to promote a well-rounded historical perspective.
The latter notion comes with dark tourism’s potential to boost the economy of the affected countries while inviting public scrutiny, which makes it more challenging to manipulate facts into biased, one-sided narratives and government propaganda.
And even if the event is of natural causes, dark tourism can still bring a valuable contribution.
Travellers choosing to visit Nepalese villages such as Langtang and the medieval city of Bhaktapur — which are amongst the locations hit the hardest by the recent earthquake of 2015 that killed nearly 9000 people — play a significant part in the rebuilding efforts.
After the earthquake, Nepal’s visitor numbers dwindled to less than half and many businesses and families involved in the tourism sector suffered the devastating consequences of being deprived of their primary source of income.
The tourism industry has been bouncing back gradually thanks to the incredible resilience of Nepalese people but it would still, now more than ever and especially in parts that were severely hit, benefit from an influx of visitors, even if said visitors are there to take pictures of piles of rubble and abandoned helicopters.
The more we travel, the more we make an effort to pay a visit to gut-wrenching places during our escapist holiday, the more we gain the opportunity to learn, give a fair due and support the locals by critically analysing the past, which in turn enriches our understanding of history and the way we can filter through today’s propaganda.
Governments trying to erase the past or promote nationalistic narratives that thrive on the fear of the unknown will not succeed if we have a collective social memory and physical reminders such as memorials, paired with contact with the reality of those affected.
How to be a Respectful Dark Tourist?
Here are a few basic notions:
· Think about why you want to visit a particular tourist site. Is it out of curiosity, to learn and understand something about the history of that specific place and events, or is it to gawk at something morbid? Do you seek experiences purely for entertainment and escapism or do you travel to grow and expand your horizons?
· Do some research beforehand and think about how to behave when you’re there, including in some cases the appropriate attire. If you’re opting for a tour, try to pick a trustworthy company that has the best interests of local communities in mind or wears their ethics on their sleeve.
· Be mindful and try to gather information about the way the site is set up. Does it provide a fair portrayal of whatever events took place and the people who were involved or lost their lives? Does it encourage visitors to behave respectfully?
· Lastly, we can’t prevent the repetition of historical wrongs if we are not aware of our collective history. Revisiting the past should arm you with the capacity of kindness and understanding of the present, and develop your empathy for others, even when you disagree with them on particular subjects or you don’t identify with their culture.
This article was first published in The Juice Fanzine #07, which is still available to purchase in print and pdf versions.
You can read more thought-provoking travel-related articles and guides on Ladies Who Trip website.
