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Published: March 10th 2010
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We arrived in Phnom Phen a few days ago and me Russ and Wies got a shared room for a few dollars each, now we're away from the border it's getting down to just two different currencys instead of three, sooo confusing. It's called Tat guest house and it has a lovely covered rooftop hangout where we can get cheap beer and food anytime, and a great breeze to relieve us of the never ending sweating.
On our second day we did our own things. Russ and Wies mainly just chilled out and relaxed and I went on a walk around seeing some temples and bridges and palaces, general tourist stuff ( but only the free things of course). It gets pretty tiring walking in the heat and someone passes you literally every minute and says "tuktuk madam"or "you wan moto miss" yes, yes, yes I do want one but I can't afford one, grr! So after trapsing around for a few hours and drinking about 5 litres of water I also gave up and reired to our lovely breezy haven, to play cards, drink and smoke the night away.
Before I talk about our third day I'll put a bit
about it for those who don't know about the Khmer rouge.
This is all from memory so I'm sorry if some details are a little vague, this is also transleted from the lady who owns the guest house also in broken English so I'm also muddeled by the details but here goes!
In 1975 a party led by a man called Pol Pot came to Phnom Phen. He tricked the soldiers and men into giving up thier arms as they believed they no longer had to fight, they believed he was saving them from danger and the whole city was celebrating and happy and soon began evacuating to the surrounding countryside out of the city to their village homes, only 3 hours later the killings began. The pol pot regime was based on a communist idea that there would be no rich, no poor, but the darker side meant no Teachers, educated people, soldiers, lawyers, medicinally trained, ect. They wanted to take the country back to being seperate from super powers like USA and China and wanted the country to make money purely from working the land, mainly rice fields, being self sufficiant.
Pretty much anyone regardless of who they
were, would be taken either straight to the killing fields or if they believed they might be CIA or had imformation or might fight back went to the prison to be tortured and starved. They either gave imformation, weather true or not to stop the torture but got killed either way. The Khmer rouge also killed every single family member how ever distant, to stop the risk of revange later in life.The murders commited were beyond grousome and evil. Adults were tortured with electricity, beatings and all sorts of drowning techniques and were killed by being clubbed to death with farming tools, sticks and only finally put to rest by slitting thier throats or be-heading them, some were buried alive after passing out. Babys and children were swung against trees held by the ankles until dead and small babies were thown into the air and shot to peices.
These killing fields were all over Cambodia, according to this lady there was over a hundred. The thing that shocked us was that we knew nothing of this appart from a vague idea of it until we got here. We all know alot about hitler, but even his regime killed under 2
million. The Khmer rouge killed between 2 and 3 million people. The killing fields were not discovered until it was too late and the last people who died in the prisons were only found months after they died and the building was abandoned. They destroyed these beauiful people for 3 whole years.
The leadrers, the top controllers of the regime have been punished in the smallest way. Pol Pot died on the thai border of a blood pressure problem in I think 1998 and of the 4 men on trial, only one man who is known as Duch shows any remorse for his actions, the rest deny it happened completely.
The people who worked in the killing fields and for the regime, both men women and children, now live amongst normal khmer civilians, some are known for being former khmer rouge some are not, but they are generally excepted as a normal person, some struggle to understand, but even thier priminister is former Khmer rouge.
So we went to the killing fields first which is still very much how it was, a big Stupa was erected to hold the remains of the bodies that were found and the mass graves
are now just dips in the grass, bones and cloth rags are still visible in place around the field.
The museum is in the old Prison, which was before this a school, and now contains evidence found on the khmer rouge. Mug shots of many victims, pictures of the dead that they had to show thier general to prove they were doing thier job and pictures of the young boys who became the khmer rouge throw "re-learning programmes"
I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking, but have a read about it, get teh right facts instead of my fuzzy ones and be amazed at how something so disgusting could happen to such beautiful people only 30 years ago.
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