The Killing Fields

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We visited the killing fields of Choeung Ek, which are outside Phnom Penh. It was an ordinary farming area until the Khmer Rouge used it as a place to systemically destroy about 20,000 of its real and imagined enemies. Anyone educated or skilled was a major target: doctors, teachers, engineers, lawyers, artists. Pol Pot decimated the Cambodian intelligentsia, and there is still a shortage of skilled workers to this day.

You can still see pieces of clothing and bones sticking out of the ground. In order to save bullets, most victims were bludgeoned to death. I tried not to walk on the bones or graves, but there were so many, it was pretty much impossible.

Some of the graves have been excavated, though many have not, mainly due to lack of funds. Cambodia is a predominently Buddhist country. Since Buddhists cremate their dead (for this reason, graveyards are rare in Southeast Asia), many Cambodians believe that these victims' spirits are not at rest. Therefore, the Khmer Rouge have not only made these victims suffer during life and death, but continue to torment them even in the afterlife.

We also visited S-21, which was originally a high school in Phnom Penh, but was turned into a Khmer Rouge prison/torture chamber. People were kept here in unbelievably squalid conditions and violently tortured before being taken to the killing fields for execution. Even after more than 25 years, you can still see bloodstains on the floor in some places. This is an evil place and the suffering that occurred here is unbelievable.

There were instruments of torture that I could not even come close to identifying. The Khmer Rouge took ordinary farm implements and exercise equipment that you would find at any school and used them to inflict massive suffering.

Of the thousands who were imprisoned at S-21, only 7 people survived. 14 of the remaining 21 prisoners were tortured and killed as Vietnamese troops neared Phnom Penh. The museum has a documentary film with the story of two of S-21's inmates. The film also includes testimony by a former guard and one of the inmates, who survived because he worked as an artist at the prison. His paintings of life and death at S-21 are on display.

I cannot help but compare the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge to the Nazis. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept detailed records of its victims, including photos of all prisoners who passed through S-21: men, women and children. There is nothing extraordinary about these people. They are mostly normal everyday citizens going about their lives, though many people arrested around 1977-1978 were KR cadres who were purged due to Pol Pot's paranoia. As someone once remarked, "The revolution eats its children," and the KR were no exception.

This was a depressing day, but we wanted to see these places to better understand this dark chapter of Cambodia's recent history. This also enabled us to reflect on the dark side of humanity and the capability for evil that each human being has within us, as well as the capacity to choose good or evil every day of our lives.

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Photos

Hallway outside prison cells at S-21
Inside these cells, the Vietnamese found what was left of the Khmer Rouge's final victims at S-21.

Prisoner photos at S-21
These photos were taken after these prisoners were arrested.

Faces of Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge
The numbers on the tags around their necks indicate when and in which zone the prisoners were arrested.

Prison cell at S-21
S-21 inmates spent their final days in shackles in these tiny cells before being executed by the Khmer Rouge.