Journal Day 28 - S21 & The Cheung Ek Killing Fields of The Khmer Rouge.

---

S21 & The Cheung Ek Killing Fields of The Khmer Rouge.

On my own today and have no interest in having any company because after yesterday's little scrape with the Filippinos.
Tuk-tuk 9am
Statue erected after end of Khmer rouge in 1979.
Indepence monument
Buddha factory

Day tuk-tuk tour
To S21 Toul Sleng Genocide museum.
Once a normal high school, in 1974 was turned into a devastatingly evil place of torture named Section 21. Pol pot was to all intents and purposes a complete and utter bastard and choose the school as a place where professionals, intellectuals and educated people as well as high official Khmer Rouge leaders (who were accused of betrayal) where brought to be tortured for a number of months before being brutally murdered in the killing fields.
I read in lonely planet that a guide is useful to explain the history so I was prepared to pay the expensive $6 for a guide. It became pretty clear straight away that the guide wasn't very good. A friendly Swiss girl Corinne asked if she could tag along and share the guide so we could split the cost. So the guide hurriedly tried to rush us through the rooms and was unable to answer any of out questions so we ended up ignoring her and just taking our own time to walk through the rooms and discussing the horrors of the recent history on display.

The first rooms encountered were for Khmer Rouge officials whose rotting corpses were found. By the Vietnamese troops when they found the abandoned S21 facility. The beds, shackles and toilet boxes are all on display with photos on the Walls of the rotting corpses as they were discovered. Truly grotesque.

The school playground had steel frames designed for gynastic exercise which the Khmer Rouge converted into frames for all sorts of means of torture.
The next few classroom blocks were converted into cells for men, women and children to be shackled and the buildings were covered in barbed wire which was electrified to prevent escape. All means of suicide were prevented as well to stop people taking their own lives. This was a place of torture, not of killing.
The guide was unable to adequately answer our questions as to 'why' all this took place by Pol Pot in the first place do more reading will be required. Her only explanation being that the Khmer Rouge were young boys and girls who were given no choice. It was either sign up and kill/torture or be killed.

However, from my own reading on Angkor Wat I think part of the reason that Pol Pot devised his sick regime was partly by a mistaken understanding of the legacy left by the Kmer kings of old at Angkor.


Killing fields of Cheung Ek.
The killing fields of Cheung Ek are situated about 15km's outside Phnom Penh and after my visit there i feel a lot more informed about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge.
First thing that hit me when walking around the numerous open graves were the many rags of clothes scattered around the graves.
Then little begging Kids behind the perimeter fence next to some mass graves pleading for some money. Gave them a few dollars just before a security guy drove past on a motorbike. The kids were so scared of being seen they leapt into the nearest hedge and after a few moments I heard 'thank you miister! Bye' Coming from inside the hedge! Made me laugh.

Democratic Kampuchea
So from
The point of the communist party of Kampuchea or the Khmer Rouge had a ridiculous ideology to instantly change the entire structure of Cambodia with 4 principles to allow the county to be stripped of any ectenal forces, especially what the semi-colonisation by America:
Pol pot's Khmer Rouge wanted the following:
1- total independence and self-reliance
2- preservation of the dictatorship and proletariat
3- total and immediate economic revolution
4- complete transformation if Kmer social values.

Basically the regime was given the agenda to Immediately revamp Cambodian society through a process of Hard labour mostly through the Mass production of rice. By doing these they strangely believed they could transform Cambodia into a rural, classless society with no rich, poor and therefore no exploitation! They abolished money, free markets, schooling, private property, foreign styles
Religion etc. And destroyed schools, hospitals, cinemas, stadiums, ancient temples etc
They believed that only 'pure' people could carry out the revolution. These were believed to be young, uneducated boys and girls of farming families. And Khmer rouge succeeding to turn these 'pure' innocent youths into heartless killing machines.
Anyone who was believed to be educated in any way was a threat to the ideology, tortured and killed.

Khmer Rouge used farmers tools, hoes, spades, palm knives, axles and axes. Even bamboo sticks. The means of killing babies and children was by smashing their heads against a tree. This tree still stands today at Cheung Ek.

Ongoing trials for crimes against humanity in special court set up along with help from the UN in 1999 which became fully operational in 2007.

The chief of S21, known as Dutch, is currently in court proceedings for his orders to bring the prisoners to the Cheung Ek killing fields. He claims responsibility and remorse for his orders to kill thousands of men, women, babies and children.
So after 30 years some sort of justice is beginning to be served but the main man
Pol pot, never got punished for his part in the genocide atrocities as the complete bastard died under home arrest of malaria in 1998.

Right beside the killing fields is a children's primary school and as I walked toasted the tree where they murdered the babies and children, by smashing tier skulls against the tree trunk, I could hear above all else the laughs of children running about and playing in their playground. It was a very good sound to hear. Things are different here now.

I saw a couple of women crying and wiping away tears nearby at the museum but I didn't feel like crying at all here. I think it's maybe all too much to take in and process and instead my emotions felt completely numb. It was a nice day, the birds see singing, the children laughing and the setting was quite beautiful. As hard as I tried, even with the help of the thousands of skulls and bones o. Display I still couldn't visualise fully such atrocities being carried out here. And I'd really prefer it that way. Because of thus monument at Cheung Ek the world will not forget what happened here. So as to prevent anything like it ever happening again.

As I was looking at the killing tree a young Cambodian man asked me 'so what do you feel about this?' I chatted to him for a while and found out he was a veterinary student who was on holiday and has visited Cheung Ek many times as his grandfather was taken by the Khmer Rouge in the region and still doesn't know where he had been buried. I was suspicious about him maybe starting to try to sell me something but no, it turned out he was actually a cool guy.

Back in Phnom Penh. Walked around the town and looked into craft shops. Found one which sold only handmade sculptures and looked for a long time wondering if I really needed another Buddha. It turns out that I did and this time it's a proper art-piece. A large Buddha head formed from bronze. It's an exact replica of the cracked head exhibited in the nearby National Museum. The sculpture has been aged and cracked to look as close as possible to the original. But it's the cracked effect and elegance of the head that I love. Not cheap but worth it and some day It'll take pride of place in some very visible recess in my home (wherever that may be)!

Had Dinner- beef luc lac: delicious.

---