The Killing Fields

---

After the wonders of Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, we headed South to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital.

In 1975, under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Ultra Communist Khymer Rouge Party assumed power in Cambodia. Four years later they were overthrown by invading Vietnamese forces. In that time, it is estimated that between 0.85 and 3 million deaths (depending on which report you read) were caused by the social engineering carried out under the Khymer Rouge regime.

Before immersing ourselves too deeply in the country's tragic history, we decided to do a little research by heading to a shooting range to try out some firemarms for ourselves. The noise of one rifle is deafening, fighting a war must be unimaginable.

From the shooting range, we visited the Killing Fields - a site just outside the city where over 9,000 Cambodians were executed and buried in mass graves. Sometimes for the simple crime of wearing glasses. Walking through the fields, you can see large depressions where bodies have been exhumed. Clothing protrudes through the earth to serve as a grim remider of what is beneath your feet. At the edge of the field stands a shrine to those who lost their lives, filled with the skulls of Khymer Rouge victims.

Our final stop was the S-21 prison in Tuol Sleng. Tuol Sleng is a fitting name for the prison as it literally means 'poisonous hill'. Originally a school, it was converted to a prison by the Khymer Rouge in 1976. Now a museum, it has been left to show the conditions in which prisoners were kept before being tortured and executed.

Documents found at the prison indicate that upwards of 10,500 Cambodians and a small number of foreign nationals passed through the prison. This figure does not include the number of children killed at S-21, which has been estimated at 2,000.

The numbers are difficult to comprehend but wandering through the prison, the absolute horror of the atrocities commited by the KR is inescapable. Walking past row after row of prisoner mugshots (many of them children) is a truly moving experience. It is a sad fact that similar atrocities are being commited across the world today.

---

Photos

The Killing Fields
A shrine to the victims of the Khymer Rouge

The Killing Fields
Site of a mass grave

Genocide Museum
Prison cell at the S-21 Prison, Tuol Sleng

Genocide Museum
Mugshots of those executed at the prison

Prison cells
Each prisoner was shackled inside a tiny cell

Comments

[Daddy Dixon]

sobering
Sobering stuff