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Published: August 8th 2007
One of many torture cells at S-21
With prisoner's toilet on the bed. The photo on the wall is the gruesome discovery uncovered in this cell by the Vietnamese when they over-threw Pol Pot.Again, travelling by public bus, after a 5 hour journey from our beach getaway Sihanoukville (Blog:
Sihanoukville) we arrived in Phnom Penh in time for lunch. Of course, there was the usual mayhem at the bus station as we forced our way off the bus, with Tuk Tuk drivers jostling for business.
Arriving at the bus station, you can't fail to notice what I think is probably a defining building of Phnom Penh; an art-deco, crumbling central market. Sadly, I never got the opportunity to get a good photo of it for being harassed by locals after my money.
The Russian Market Known to the locals as Psar Tuol Tom Pong, this is the place to come to for cheap clothes, CDs, DVD, dodgy PS2 games and much more, including the usual tat. To me it was just like any other market in South East Asia and I couldn't get too excited about it. The stalls start to look very samey. However, with our bank balance diminishing we were in no mood to shop. You get the usual encouragement from the sellers to come into their shop, but they generally took a smile and a "No thanks" for an
The Choeung Ek Memorial Stupa
Inside are thousands of skulls and rags; some of those exhumed from the mass graves of this Killing Field. answer.
We (Doug, Sally and myself) decided to escape outside of this covered market, dodging overly keen Tuk Tuk drivers to find The Melting Pot Cafe, an oasis of calm and cool amongst the noisey, dirty, unbearably humid streets. A nice cold fresh coconut later and we were ready to try to find our Tuk Tuk, with which we'd arranged a return journey. There were so many touting for business, we were never going to find him again. Feeling slightly guilty, as we hadn't yet paid him a Riel/Cent, we were soon fighting them off as we indicated our interest in a lift back to the hotel! Finding that some of the others (from our group, not Lost) had taken our original Tuk Tuk driver back, our guilt soon evapourated.
Cambodian Cultural Evening That evening we returned to the restaurant (sorry, don't recall the name) that donates much of its takings to Cambodian children. The kids put on a traditional dance and music show for us. Now, I'm very cynical about these types of evenings, which seem to be a bit of a tourist trap. I mean, do visitors to England get treated to Morris Dancers? Pity them,
Lotus Flower
The Buddhist flower, seen aplenty across Cambodia. 95% of Cambodians are Buddhist. 95%!o(MISSING)f Cambodians are Buddhist.if they do. However, this show was both colourful and amusing, but above all was entertaining. We all thoroughly enjoyed it.
Tuol Sleng Museum (Security office 21) Albeit with some tredpidation, we'd been waiting for this morning for a long time as we all wanted to begin to understand the horrific and murderous events that took place in the 3 years, 8 months and 21 days (as Cambodian's refer to it) of the Khmer Rouge's rule from 1975. You'd be forgiven for thinking the rule of Pol Pot was far longer as the numbers of people killed during his regime are staggering, as are the number that died from the ensuing famine and return of malaria after he was deposed. It is not known exactly how many perished, but it is estimated to be between 2 to 3 million. We all knew this morning would be a grim one, visiting both S-21 and a Killing Field. I was prepared for a very tough morning. I was prepared for the worst, but it was far worse than that...
We started our tour of S-21 (with a local tour guide) with some background. Pol Pot took
The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek
Each depression in the ground is where tens of people are buried in a mass grave. You may be able to see rags (their clothes) and bone fragments in the paths if you look closely. power on nationalistic promises, after a period of the best part of 100 years of French rule (disrupted by WWII) and then other foreign involvements - not least, the Americans bombing Cambodia as the war in South Vietnam spilled over. It is no wonder then that Cambodians rejoiced on the streets as the Khmer Rouge moved in. However, within hours of taking office, the regime enforced what must surely be one of the biggest migrations of people from the towns and cities to the countryside, leaving Phnom Penh as a ghost town. Why? Pol Pot wished to return this country to it's Khmer Empire agricultural roots; this would be a nation of farmers. There was no need for education, medicine, religion, family or even history. It is Year Zero; the regime/organisation (refered to as Angkar) would be all things to all people.
What no one could have foreseen is the brutality with which this would be enforced. Children were taken from their families and set to work the land, their minds poisoned against their parents by the Khmer Rouge. All would work the land for 12-14 hours a day with only 2 meals of watery rice to sustain them
Pick your weapon
Weapons of torture. The mortar outline on the floor is the foundation to more prisioner cells, giving a good idea of how small they were. the whole day. Anyone who showed any form of resistance were either killed on the spot, or imprisioned and would face a more lingering, gruesome death.
S-21 used to be a school until the Khmer Rouge took office and had a need for prision camps. They used the remains of any old building no longer required for this 'revolution' i.e. S-21 was one of many, although probably the largest. We were shown to one of the many torture cells. On the wall is a photo of the grotesque sights that awaited the liberating Vietnamese troops. Mercifully, the bloody mess is a little indistinguishable, but you get enough of an idea to be utterly horrified and sickened. The prisioners were bound to these metal beds and tortured for up to 3 months. If they were given permission to go to the toilet, they had to use the metal can you see on the bed in the headline photo. They may be allowed to empty these every 3 weeks or so. The scene you see in the photo repeats itself far too many times, in rows of torture cells.
We then learnt of the torture techniques used, which were truly
Some of the victims
A snapshot of a few of the thousands tortured and executed at S-21. barbaric and horrifying, usually involving prolonging the pain in any way possible, often with acid. School fitness equipment was turned into a linch to hang prisioners head first into water to the brink of drowning (and often beyond the brink). They were usually brought back round to be given further excruciating pain. There were no easy deaths to be had here. We later saw some of the basic torture and killing instruments - basic because technology, including guns, were banned.
Faces were then put to the thousands of victims. We saw rows upon rows of 'mug shots' of those imprisioned here. Almost every person here met an awful death either here or later in a killing field and we were looking them in the eye. You could sense the fear in them, but in others you wondered if they really had any idea of the horrific death that awaited them. Some already had physical signs on their faces of being beaten. Worse still, were the photos showing mothers with their child. Neither of them had a hope of getting out alive. The same fate awaited all relatives of each prisioner.
So what exactly had these people done to
deserve this? Put simply, whether they be monks, teachers or doctors, they had no future in the new Cambodia and neither did their families.
It was a truly shocking, stomach churning, depressing morning which raised the obvious questions : Why? How? The only conclusion you can come away with is that we must not ever let this happen again. And yet, it has and does. It makes you question humanity. It must surely be the same feelings of those that visit the concentration camps in Germany. There are many parallels, but even Hitler didn't turn on his own people with torture.
The Killing Fields During the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia was turned into a mass of killing fields. We visited the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, a short drive outside Phnom Penh. The first thing you see is the impressive Memorial Stupa. It's not until you get closer that you notice its grisly contents; the skulls and rags of thousands of exhumed bodies. Prisioners from S-21 were often brought here to be executed or buried alive in mass graves. We saw many mass graves. You could even see bone and rag fragments in the pathways we walked around.
The killing techniques were basic and barbaric, usually involving a blow to the head or a slit throat. Not from a knife though, but maybe from bamboo or the saw-like edge of nearby plants. just when you though things couldn't get any more cowardly, we were shown the baby killing facilities here : beating them against the tree was one way. I had seen enough and felt no desire to actually enter inside the Stupa to see all the skulls, it would serve no purpose.
The Khmer Rouge cast a shadow over this country even today, over 30 years after the Vietnamese drove them out, although it has dimmed further since Pol Pot's death in 1998. The Khmer Rouge continued to intimidate and kill after they were forced to flee to the jungle and employ guerilla tactics. Unbelievably, none of the former Khmer Rouge leaders have faced justice. Even more beguiling is that a number of them are in the current Government.
Lunch at Friends Although none of us really had an appetite after the darkest of mornings, we headed to Friends for lunch - where I soon found my appetite when I read the menu! This is
A Mass Grave at Killing Fields of Choeung Ek
Containing over 100 torsos. The heads thrown into a lake behind the killing field. a restaurant for disadvantaged kids, who learn their trade at the cooking school here. Many go on to be top chefs in Cambodia; and it is no wonder, the food was superb.
History Museum Contained within an impressive looking building are many pieces from Angkor, including Angkor Wat. The collection mainly consists of stone and some wood carvings. Sadly, the museum looks woefully underfunded. We struggled to identify the exhbit with where it had come from and its significance. Having already been to the temples, we wanted to be able to put exibits in their place. An hour or so was enough here for me and too long for Sally! After a young Buddhist Monk in training approached both me and Gareth for money (alms is one thing, but money?!) it was time to go!
Royal Palace Seeing a thunder storm heading our way, we hot footed it to the Palace. Very similar to the Grand Palace in Bangkok, but less impressive and extensive. If you've seen the Grand Palace, it probably isn't worth visiting here, was our conclusion. Even the main draw card, the Silver Pagoda, was a let down. The extent of the silver that gives
it it's name is actually restricted to the floor tiles, which are largely covered up from trampling tourists' feet by carpet - so you can't see that much of it.
Sadly, but a couple of days earlier, we'd missed a bizzare ceremony here that sees an Ox choose from some foodstuffs and water. Whatever the Ox chooses gives an indication of a good harvest or not. Unfortunetely this year the Ox wasn't that interested in anything, signaling a disasterous harvest and sending many farmers into depression.
Teaching English The local guide that had shown us around S-21 and the killing field that morning, kindly invited us all around for dinner with his family. We would have to earn our meal though; he teaches English to kids from poor families and we'd have to help! This was superb and tested us to the limit trying to think of ways to get our message across to them in English - of course, we didn't know the Cambodian for the words! The little boy both myself and Gareth took on was about 10. We ended up teaching him colours and shapes from a chart on the wall. He was able to
A method for killing babies
Killing Fields of Choeung Ek repeat most of the shape words perfectly, although remembering them when tested was a whole new challenge! It wasn't too long before we'd earnt our dinner, but we were tired out!
The dinner was amazing (the best since our homestay with a Cambodian family, Blog:
The Homestay), there was so much of it. Being the only veggie, Sally got specially cooked dishes to herself. In fact, she got many to herself - and they kept coming. So if you think she looks like we're expecting our first child, think again!
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