Learning the terrible truth... The Khmer Rouge and the horrofying events that took place in The Killing Fields

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A little from Rach to start...

I have read two books during my 6 weeks in Siem Reap, in an attempt to educate myself about what happened to Cambodia in the horrific and tragic events of April 1975! My knowledge and understanding is not perfect as there are many political aspects I am yet to grasp.

I will warn you now that the information at times is shocking and not pleasant, I've found it at times hard to read.



'First they Killed my Father' is written in the perspective of a small girl who was aged 5 when the Khmer Rouge turned her life from a happy child living in Phnom Penn to a fight for survival, becoming an orphan, it follows her journey until she finally finds refuge in America after escaping to Thailand with her eldest brother.

'Survival in the Killing Fields' is written by a surviving doctor also from Phnom Penn and his struggle to conceal his true identity to protect his life. This book was made into a film where he was offered the lead role to recreate the unimaginable suffering he had endured under the influence of the Khmer Rouge.

I came here a novice with no previous knowledge about why this country suffers the way it does! In some ways I could describe the events to be similar to that of Hitler and the Holocaust. However Hitler thought the Jews were different from him, the Khmer Rouge turned on their own race, killing in a brutal and inhumane fashion, for fun it seemed.

Tom and I looked forward to our visit to Phnom Penn to find out more about the history of the country, I have found myself obsessed with learning more about the awful acts that took place.

It's safe to say our whizz stop tour of Vietnam had left us both pretty cream crackered! Our expectations of a sleeper bus didn't quite live up to what we had hoped! Being squashed together on a bus which decided to turn off its air conditioning was less than ideal! Claustrophobic and suffocated are two words which spring to mind to describe our journey!

We were shocked by the two evident divides within Phnom Penn, driving through the squalor and slum areas where living conditions were evidently very poor and houses could barely be described as such to suddenly enter a very rich and prosperous centre with impressive grand temples and a busy shopping area with a number of chain stores.



Our aim within this trip was to visit 'The Killing Fields' at Choeng Ek and the 'Tuol Sleng Prison' to further educate ourselves about the massacres that took place here under the ruling of Pol Pot during his reign of Cambodia where he turned against his own people.

He kept his identity secret and created an army called the 'Angka' gaining favour of uneducated, countryside people and brainwashed them. Many of the soldiers in the Khmer Rouge were poor rural countryside children as young as 10-12 years old, who were now in ownership of powerful machine guns. They knew little of technology and even owning and wearing a pair of shoes was a novelty. They had become brainwashed into joining the Khmer Rouge Regime.

They wanted equality between the people, as people in the city had much better lives than those who lived in rural countryside! They viewed the city people as almost to be polluted and wanted to be rid of technology, education, slaves and superiority between the rich and poor divide. However the way and means they went about to achieve this goal was horrific, how it was allowed to happen, for 3 years and 8 months and 22 days I will never know!

We will attempt to briefly summarise the shocking and sickening information I have learned...

- The Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penn on April 17 1975, they lied to the people and told them to leave the city for 3 hours... Entering with guns they drove the city people out. Many people left on foot with bundles of clothes, pots for rice and whatever valuables they had concealed within their clothes. They walked for days and days in the blistering sunshine. It was from this very early stage people began to accept seeing death as those who were weak slumped at the side of the road and were left behind. Can you imagine as a child how terrifying images such as this must have been and as a parent being powerless to protect your family from being part of it!

- The Khmer Rouge's main aim was to get rid of capitalism, they believed that anyone with money or education to believe that they were superior. They wanted everyone to become communists and everyone to be equal! Wearing a watch or glasses was a sign of wealth and superiority, these people were to be rid of and those wearing such items, killed!

- Any soldiers of the Lon Nol Regime, or those of education like doctors were asked to step forward. Little did they know they would be heading to their deaths, fed with false information that the new government named the 'Angka' would promote them to highly skilled officers! In reality they killed anyone of military background or education as they saw them as a threat to their new regime and would be too clever to become brainwashed to their new ideas.

- Money no longer became of any value, the only thing of worth was food, many people began to trade to gain food to survive! This however was seen as a crime by the Angka Government as everything was to be shared with communities. If caught the typical punishment was torture and in many cases death.

- Monks had to leave their temples and Buddhism was no longer viewed as a religion, the 'Angka' had created a religion of their own! They attempted to destroy all the temples, beheading a lot of the statues of Buddha. When we visited Angkor Wat many of the statues were headless, it felt good having the knowledge of why.

- The 'new' people (aka city people) were sent to the countryside with the 'old' people (aka rural countryside people who were viewed as pure and unaffected by the old capitalist ways).

- Here they had to burn all their colourful belongings/ clothes and surrender their valuables (although many had sewn jewels to their clothes to trade) even cooking utensils were seen as a sign of wealth and superiority. They were provided with black working robes, and were labelled as 'war slaves'.

- The war slaves worked for very little reward under the rule of the Khmer soldiers and were rudely woken by the sound of a bell at 4am and worked long hard hours on the rice fields, digging canals, ploughing fields in the hot sunshine. The only motivation behind the hard work was survival and the promise that they would soon be provided with plenty of rice from their grown produce. However cruelly they were moved onto new projects in different villages before their crop was ready to harvest! The people became used to the constant lies of the Angka.

- Many were in starvation mode as the only food they were provided were from big kitchens where they lined up to receive a small bowl of 'rice gruel'. A watery liquid with some rice substance at the bottom. A lot of people became very ill from the lack of food, sanitation and clean water.

- In the evening they had to attend political meetings held by the leaders where all village people had to chant and show their support of the 'Angka'. They were filled with information about how great the organisation was and how 'lucky' they were to be under such rule.

- Families were separated and often two soldiers would visit the huts of families with a story of lies such as 'a truck had broken down and they needed help' and take the father away. The families knew what this meant, and silently said their goodbyes, many were never to be seen again, taken to prisons or into the woods and tortured by Khmer Rouge soldiers! Knowledge about what happened when people were taken was unknown to the village people as it was very rare that anyone returned and disappearances were not discussed.

- The doctor in the book managed to survive two incidents such as this! He was taken once for collecting food from the forests to a prison where he was tied to a tree and had his fingers cut off and his ankle broken. He was only spared as he gave the two soldiers the power to decide whether he lived or died, for them the satisfaction that he was very much at their mercy was victory enough and they allowed him to live.

- On a second occasion he was taken on the pretence that he was a doctor, being betrayed by a fellow worker! Again he was taken to the prison and brutally beaten, then was tied to a cross and practically burned alive in the hot sunshine, then taken down and a plastic bag tied to his head. Out of the 18 prisoners captured along side him, only 5 survived this brutality, all male. He witnessed many people dying from such acts of cruelty with no remorse on behalf of the soldiers, instead he says they gained a sense of power and almost seemed pleased with themselves!

- He recalls horrifying stories where pregnant women were brought to the prison with their only crime being married to a Lon Nol soldier, he painfully remembers how a soldier slashed the women's stomach and hung the foetus among others to the outside of the prison, leaving her to die and eaten by wild wolves. I apologise for the gruesomeness of this information. I have felt sickened reading it myself but I feel it gives a greater insight and understanding of the suffering encountered in Cambodia as little as 30 years ago!!

- Many children became orphans. However deaths of parents and loved ones was never discussed. The children dealt with grief inwardly and never brought up the sadness they felt or fond memories of their parents. The oldest sibling in Khmer culture is not referred to by their name! 'Eldest brother' is the term used.

- It was strange reading the account of the young girl who on a number of occasions was reunited with her family after long periods of separation as they moved from different villages. She says that she just wanted to hug her brothers, so thankful that they were alive. However in Cambodian culture it is not permitted to hug or embrace, so instead she had to just stand and smile inwardly delighted that that had found each other amongst all the pain and suffering!



- At the Killing Fields trucks with as many as 200 people arrived every few days fed with false stories that they were being taking to a new house or job. They were blindfolded and hands tied behind their back then they were asked to sign a register... Little did they know they were signing off their own execution.







- The Angka believed that everything must be destroyed from its roots, whole families were wiped out in brutal killings. Palm tree leaves were used to slaughter victims, bullets were too expensive! We saw a tree which was covered in colourful bracelets for the women and babies who had been killed there. Mothers were made to watch as their child was thrown against the tree, it is sad such acts of cruelty are humanely possible!



- Many people were forced to admit to crimes they had not committed or make up crimes and plead for forgiveness! Often this lead to severe torture to ensure a confession was made and often resulted in death.

- I read a shocking quote made by Pol Pot "Better to make a mistake and kill an innocent than to let an enemy live"



- At the camps music was played off a speaker hanging off a tree in an attempt to mask the sounds of execution and not raise suspicion.

The whole experience was shocking, heart breaking and difficult to accept. It is unbelievable that such brutality was tolerated. The most sickening reality of all is the lack of punishment for those who orchestrated the whole thing. There was none as such acts of genocide could only be punished if they were commited against a particular ethnic group, so only minimal crimes such as the murder of the Vietnamese could be brought to justice.

To make you even more sick to your stomach, Pol Pot, the evil leader who conducted the Khmer Rouge army was never punished and died peacefully in his sleep aged over 84, how this was allowed to happen I have no idea!

The first hand accounts that I read in the two books I mentioned enabled me to gain great empathy and compassion and I grew a sense of attachment to the individual and their suffering as I read of the great horrors they encountered!

Sadly in Cambodia there are some beggars on the street who are a direct reflection of the pain suffered by the Khmer Rouge, some minus limbs, others without sight. It is difficult to encounter.

This blog is as much for us as it is for you!

This information would be easy to forget, as often we blank out unpleasant thoughts, but I made sure to write down what I learnt so that I can remember and support the people in Cambodia in as many ways as possible.

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