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Published: December 29th 2006
Whilst Siem Reap offers the opportunity to glimpse the glorious past of the ancient Khmer empire, Phnom Penh (PP) is the gateway to the much more recent evils of the Khmer Rouge regime, under the leadership of Pol Pot. Understanding what Cambodian people have had to face only 25 years ago, set all the emotions going - anger that is could be allowed to happen, the deepest of sympathy that the poeple had to endure such evils and anguish in the knowledge that despite the lessons we've learnt, genocide still continues to rear its ugly head, right now in Darfur, and the world does nothing!
PP's main tourist attractions probably fall into the category of "dark tourism". From our guesthouse we procured the services of two bikers and rode pillion to the Killing Fields at "Choeung EK'. Now it's nothing more than a pitted grassy area - each pit marking another disinterred mass grave of which there are 129. A large stupa serves as a memorial to the site where nearly 20,000 people were executed from 1975-1978. Thousands of skulls fill the stupa - it really brings the horror to reality. Wandering around the fields you can still see bits
Piles Of Skulls
Take a moment to reflect now - pay your respects.of bone and torn clothing poking out of the ground. It's hard not to become emotional witnessing such things - I think I wandered around, silent and shocked at what I was seeing but sickened by what it represented. The information boards almost become unreadable and after paying our respects at the stupa it was time to leave - I couldn't stay there any longer.
Our biker guides then wanted us to go the shooting range to fire off AK47's, Glocks and Uzis. Apparently they receive a nice commission and free lunch if you do - WE COULDN'T THINK OF ANYTHING MORE INAPPROPRIATE! After seeing the destruction and death that man can cause and the inhumanity of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, the last thing we wanted to do was play for fun with the tools of death. Declining the offer put our drivers in a bad mood for the rest of the day!
Our stop was the Tuol Sleng S21 museum, once a school but then became one of Pol Pot's security prison for the detention and torture of suspected Khmer Rouge enemies. Almost all of the detainees here were executed at Choeung EK at a rate
of almost 100 people a day. The bare school rooms have a single rusty bed and a black and white photo showing the scene that was found when the Khmer Rouge were ousted from PP. Simply put, it's very disturbing and stomach-churning to boot. However, the museum is essential to understand the brain-washing and ideology of the regime. An exhibition tells real-life accounts of both victims and perpetrators, their views and personal stories. Many of the S21 workers were children as Pol Pot realised that children could be easily manipulated to commit cruel acts. What's worse, the more they perpetrate the more they become desensitised and the nastier they became.
A whole section of the prison shows the photos of all the victims as each person's file was kept by the regime. It really hits you when you see the faces of the people - some of which show terror, some a steely sense of resolve, some plain shock - which are now the skulls lying in the stupa at the Killing Fields site. It's easy to be shocked by the sheer number of people who died under the regime, almost 2 million in 4 years, but this makes
it more than a statistic. The people are not faceless....
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