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Published: October 17th 2007
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After a long bus journey from Seam Reap via a stop over to buy some of
Cambodians delicacies (cooked tarantula...part one and two above on vid clip... apparently they come
from up to 90 kms from all over just to get them while they are hot...
Getting off the bus was crazy...
a serious culture shock......everyone descends on you immediately and won't let you breath or figure out what it is you actually want to do....eventually we took the nicest tuk tuk driver and got the hell away from everyone, booked into a ..I won't call it a hotel... a.. emm... no words come to mid to describe..I'm sure they are lovely places but we went for cheap and ...well just cheap I guess!
We held on to our tuk tuk for the remainder of our stay, he took us up to the
killing fields which was haunting but not as upsetting for me as I thought, approaching the glass house where hundreds of skulls were laid out and clothes from the victims was eery, very sad and to
see where and how they were tortured was so inhumane, made be question the big man above and ask how something like this could have happened.
THE MOST TRAGIC Even in this 20th Century, On Kampuchean Soil, The Clique of Pol Pot Criminals had committed a heinous Genocidal act. They massacred the population with atrocity in a large scale; it was more cruel than the genocidal act committed by the Hitler fascists, which the world has never met.With the commemorative stupa in front of us, we imagine that we are hearing the grievous voice of the victims who were beaten by Pol Pots men with canes, bamboo stumps or heads of swords, we seem to be looking at the horrifying scenes and the panic stricken faces of the people who were dying of starvation, forced labour or torture with out mercy upon the skinny body, they died with out giving the last words to their kith and Kin.
How hurtful those victims were when they got beaten with canes, heads of hoes and stabbed with knives before their last breath went out. How bitter they were to see their beloved children, wives and
husbands tightly bound before being taken to the mass grave! While they were waiting for their turn to come and share the same tragic lot.
The method of massacre which the clique of Pol Pot criminals was carried upon the innocent people of Kampuchea cannot be described fully and clearly in words because the invention of the killing method was strangely cruel, so it is difficult for us to determine who they are: They have the human form but their hearts are demons hearts. The have got the Khmer face but their activities are purely reactionary. The wanted to transform Kampuchean people into a group of persons without reason or a group who knew and understood nothing, who always bent their heads to carry out Ankar's orders blindly,
They had educated and transformed young people and the adolescent who's hearts are pure, gentle and modest into odious executioners, who dared to kill the innocent and even their own parents, relatives or friends.They had burnt the market place, abolished monetary system, eliminated books of rules and principals of national culture, destroyed schools, hospitals and Pagodas and beautiful monuments such as Ankor Wat Temple which is the source
of pure national pride and bears the genius knowledge an intelligence of our nation.
They were trying hard to get rid of Khmer character and transform the soil and water of Kampuchea into a sea of blood and tears which was deprive of cultural infrastructure. Civilization and national character became a desert of great destruction that overturned the Kampuchean society and drove it back to the stone age of year zero.
Above is from the information board of the killing Fields.......
Afterwards our tuk tuk driver took myself and Damo to the firing range....(not entirely appropriate) to fire an M60 ...........Damo like a child with a new toy... couldn’t hand over the money fast enough.....apparently your man knew his shiite...that rite damo??????
The Next Day our tuk tuk driver came for us to show us the S21 museum and after that we would go shopping and visit the Kings palace...........but the museum was so heartbreaking...it really upset me and we didn't stay long there at all, looking at the thousands of pictures of panic stricken faces awaiting their faith was too much ...some you could see were crying in the pictures... that
took up most of the rooms
The others were just a tiled room, still with he blood stains in the floor, a steel bed with no matress and some shackles that lay on the bed, then to your left was a full size blown up picture of a body on the bed that you stood next too with their face hacked off.....brutal as it sounds it was much much worse to be standing in the same room.
We left after that as we just didn't want to see anymore to be greeted by a handful of homeless people with no limbs begging for money and a guy there that was burnt from heard to toe....
Shopping was off the agenda and the mood very very sombre for the rest of the day..I wouldn't advise anyone to visit that muesum, its too gruesome and too real...
Passage from the information board at S21
Toul Sleng Genocide Museum AKA S21 In the past Toul Sleng was one of the secondary schools in the capital called "Toul Svay Prey".After the 17th April 1975 POL POT Clique had transformed it into a
prison called S21 (Security Office 21) which was the biggest in Kampuchea Democratic.
It was surrounded with a double wall of corrugated iron and surmounted by dense barb wire.The classrooms on the ground and the first floor were pierced and divided into individual cells, where as the ones on the 2nd floor were used for mass detention.Several thousands of victims (Peasants, workers, technicians, engineers, doctors, teachers, students, Buddhists, monks, Ministers, Pol Pots Cadres, soldiers of all ranks, The Cambodian Democratic Corps, Foreign etc) were imprisoned and exterminated with their wife’s and children.......
There is a lot of evidence here proving the atrocities of Pol Pot Clique: cells, instruments of torture, dossiers & documents, lists of prisoners, names, mug shots of victims, their clothes and their belongings.
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