Phnom Penh - Day 3

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Today was the day for the sad stuff. The 2 sites on the agenda were S21 and Choeung Ek. For those that don't know about these places, S21 was a prison the Khmer Rouge used to interrogate their prisoners. Once they had the information they wanted, the prisoner was shipped off to Choeung Ek, the killing fields. So yeah, content warning

S21 started its life as a highschool. In that capacity I imagine it was quite a lovely school. Three large 3 storey buildings surrounding beautiful green quads. But as Pol Pot disposed of all the schools. While he was educated in Paris, it was a privilege he wanted denied to most of his countrymen. Its not surprising really, he recruited his army from the rural areas. Young uneducated, disenfranchised youth. They were poor and they were starving, and Pol Pot picked up the fascists handbook and ran with it.

As I walked into S21 the first building li see must have been the school admin building. I say this because the rooms were small. Maybe 4 x 6m. The cadres, turned these rooms into torture chambers. Above the windows and doors were the old style air vents. You know the ones where the bricks are laid 100ml apart to allow airflow. KR boarded up the air vents and windows. Understand it is hot here, muggy heat! I walk down the street and I am pouring sweat. Now I maybe a fat ol white lady, but I see plenty of skinny little locals walking around, pulling up their shirts, fanning themselves. It's hot! and those cruel buggers turned off the air-con.

The rooms themselves had two items. A bed frame, with shackles welded in and a battery box, used to catch "human waste". There was one black and white photo on the wall of each cell. The photos were of the last prisoners of these cells, found as they were after KR fled the scene. They were very grainy but I suspect that may have been deliberate as they were gruesome. Bodies anchored to the beds, so much blood and bruising I could not makeout a face. Some had been dragged to the floor, or maybe they tried to crawl away. Their ankles were still shackled to the bed.

All manner of torture and indignity was done here. Outside of this building is a large wooden A-frame. It had once been part of the kids playground equipment. The KR used it to hang their victims, not to kill them, just until they passed out. Then their heads were dunked in pots of human excrement until they came to. Other prisoners were stripped and tied to the floor to be whipped and beaten. Weirdly rape was not weapon the KR used, as often happens in these situations. Raping a female prisoner or " unauthorised" killing of a prisoner would land a cadre on the other side of the bars.

As horrific as S21 was, it should be noted it was one interrogation centre in a network of 200. The activities conducted here were kept secret by the high brick walls topped with barbed wire. A two block radius was set up around the centre and only authorised personnel could enter. This seems strange in a busy city like Phnom Penh, but KR had pretty much emptied the city. Before they arrived there were 3 million people in the city, many of whom were refugees running from the bombing in the north of the country, America's secret war. When the KR arrived these folks were overjoyed, thinking the freedom fighters had come. Instead they were shipped of to the country to work in camps. They lived in communes, not even allowed to cook they own food. Instead they had to eat rice soup from the community kitchen administered by KR. Even picking fruit of the trees was considered stealing from the state and got you shipped off to S21 or one of its counterparts. Naturally the cadres got better rations.

Pol Pot wanted to "purify" Cambodian society and return it to a fundamentally agrarian society. Peasants were painted as heroes whole academics and city dwellers were a scourge to be eradicated. Any signs of being an academic would get you killed. My guide at the royal palace told me his brother was buried alive for committing the crime of being a teacher. Wearing glasses or having "soft hands" could get you killed. If your parent, sibling or any family member was of such kind, you could be arrested by kinship. This meant all academics had to go, including doctors and nurses. Interogators were given four months medical "training" which included conducting autopsies, only they didn't see the point in waiting for the corpse to die first.

Amoung the prisoners was a Kiwi by the name of Kerry Hamill and his pommy mate John Dewhurst. Kerry had worked in Australia, helping to rebuild Darwin after Cyclone Tracy. He met Canadian born Stuart Galss and together they saved up enough cash to buy a yacht and go sailing through south East Asia. It was on this trip they met John who joined the in. They made the mistake of sailing into Cambodian waters, weather they were off course or just blissfully unaware or the brutality onshore, I don't know. But they came under fire of a Cambodian boat and were taken prisoner. Stuart was killed in the attack. Kerry and John were transported to S21 were they were accused of being CIA or KGB until they confessed. Kerry confessed to being a CIA agent under the command of Colonel Sanders. He named his CIA comrades, which were family friends back in Whakatane. His rank and file number was his parents home number. They were just a group of young fella, living the dream. What a nightmare

After confessions prisoners were blindfolded and loaded onto trucks. They were told they were going to their "new house". Under the cover of darkness they were transported to Choeung Ek, the killing fields. Early in the KR rule, approximately 50 to 70 people were transported every few weeks. By 1978, shipments of up to 300 people were coming every day. Prisoners were unloaded, signed in and taken to a shed, with two layers of planks on the walls to muffle the sound. There were no windows so they could not see where they were or what was happening outside. All they could hear was the nationalist songs being blasted through loud speaker spread around the site. One by one they were lead out to a ditch where they were hit over the head with a crow bar or plank of wood and their throats were cut. This method was quiet, so the locals would not hear the screams over the music, and saved on bullets.

The locals who lived around here did not know what was actully happening. It was heavily fortified and it was assumed to be a military base. The bodies were covered in chemicals like DDT to cover the smell. By far the hardest grave to bear, was the killing tree. At this site, little babies were pulled from their mothers arms, swung by their legs, their little heads smashed against the tree. Their bodies thrown into the ditch, their mother's were soon to join them. Why the children? Because the KR were not willing to risk them growing into adults and taking revenge.

Many of the mass graves at Choeung Ek have now been emptied. They lay open, the grass has grown through them leaving these rolling green waves, much like the shelling fieds around Vimy Ridge. They say when it rains here, bones still make their way to the surface, as if the dead will not rest. The bones of 9000 bodies have been excavated have been catalogued and preserved. They are now stacked inside a memorial that stands in the middle of Choeung Ek. Over 300 killing fields have been found in Cambodia. Some cannot be reached as they are deep in the jungle and/or surrounded by land mines. The total number of people killed in these places is unknown. Estimates are between 1 and 3 million. Many millions more died of starvation on the collective farms. They starved while the rice they produced was sold to China to buy weapons. (Sound familiar Ireland) And the man who orchestrated it, Pol Pot, was placed under house arrest until his death in 1998. Twenty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, he never faced trial, never went to jail, never apologised for the deaths almost a quarter of his fellow countrymen.

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Photos

S21
Interrogation room

S21
Memorial

Choeung Ek
Memorial

Choeung Ek
RIP