Phnom Penh

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Capital of Cambodia and home to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and killing fields. Strange city, arriving at a guesthouse the first thing I notice at the reception is that there is a bag of weed lying there. A little while later the guy (Chilli) turns up sorts us out a room and then offers us a joint. Nice and relaxing really and we follow the up by playing pool on the deck which overhangs the lake and then lazing around in hammocks and watching DVD's as well. This country has such a haggard recent history when the Khmer Rouge regime marched into Phnom Penh amidst celebrations from the locals that they were going to be better than the government system already in place. Things changed very rapidly as Pol Pot's people marched everyone out of the city and began it's reign of genocide over 4 years, leaving a fifth of the countries population, (est 1.5 million people) dead through starvation, execution and sheer brutality.


Choeung Ek - The Killing Fields



We first visiting the killing fields where you are 'greeted' by an enormous tower containing 8000 skulls of victims at this camp. Like all of the things we saw over this day, i guess you really need to see it for yourself to understand the emotions you feel when you're in a place like it. Underneath the skulls there's a pile of ragged old clothes that were taken off the victims before they were killed and thrown into the same mass graves. You can get up close to the skulls, in fact there is an open section which in theory allows you to touch some of the skulls (although I really hope no-one would do!), and from this range you can see various indications to how some of the people were killed - skull cracks and caving, bullet holes being the most obvious. This is only the beginning of the what you see and pitifully try to comprehend whilst there.





You walk on to the grass area and begin seeing the crater-like holes in the earth; mass graves, dug up after the regime had fallen. You then start noticing white things on the floor and bits of cloth sticking up through the mud ground. It's then that you think to yourself that they can't really be what you're thinking, but the guide confirms that they are bones and clothes which are still rising through the soil to the surface, 30 years on.

Next up you are taken to a solitary Chankiri Tree (not the one above). Here children were simply held by their legs and swung against the trunk. This or thrown in the air and caught on bayonets. A lot of these kids bodies were thrown in the lake nearby.

Another mass grave that contains only bodies with no heads was next, followed by one that had held approximately 450 people buried in its small space.

Possibly the most horrendous thing for me to see was the last main 'sight'. This is a smallish Banana (like) tree. Here the serrated branches were used to various killing effects. There are carvings on some of the branches still.

As you're leaving you read the board to be informed that about 18,000 were killed here and only 8895 bodies have been recovered.


Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (Security 21 Prison)

This used to be a school, but under Pol Pot's leadership, was renamed S-21 and designed for detention, interrogation, torture and execution by a sadist army of people hell bent on extracting ficticious confessions of imaginary crimes. In Tuol Sleng alone, 7th January 1979, all the evidence here including photos, films, confessions, torture equipment and 14 remaining corpses were collected by the Party and Government. The 14 tombs of these people are the first thing you see once you've purchased your ticket and entered the courtyard. You have a main building at centre-back of the courtyard, and adjacent buildings facing each other.

The first you enter is on the left, building "A". Here there are 6m x 4m rooms with glass windows, used to minimise the noises being expelled from the rooms during torture. They each contain(ed) a metal bed, blanket, pillow, sometimes a shackle and a toilet bucket. In addition to this, there is now a single photograph on a wall in every room, taken by the Vietnamese on discovery of the prison. This photos are gruesomely of the room in the condition it was found by the Vietnamese, every one containing it's mutilated victim. Each cell floor is splattered with the dry blood stains of its former residents and the instruments of torture found still there included petrol canisters and a broken spade. Walking past the final cell, which was locked I looked inside. Lying on the rusty metal bed, the heavy sunlight firing upon it through the bars of the cell, was a cat sleeping.

The people detained in this first building were held under the belief that they were leading an uprising against Pol Pot and his revolution. Often they would end up confessing to being a member of the CIA or some other organisation that most of them had never heard, just so they could finally be executed and put out of their misery.

When you are walking between these cells you can read the list of rules made by Pol Pot, 'The Security of Regulation'. The list is below (borrowed from wikipedia along with the photos as I have lost my camera data cable...):

1. You must answer accordingly to my question. Don’t turn them away.


2. Don’t try to hide the facts by making pretexts this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.


3. Don’t be a fool for you are a chap who dare to thwart the revolution.


4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.


5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.


6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.


7. Do nothing, sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.


8. Don’t make pretext about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your secret or traitor.


9. If you don’t follow all the above rules, you shall get many many lashes of electric wire.


10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge.



Before walking into the second building you walk past what you to be part of the playground, put was then used as gallows to hang people upside down and torture them by allowing their heads to go in large clay pots full of water. The central building, "C", like the others is 3 storeys high. You are first greeted by the mass amount of barbed wire that covers the exterior, in order to prevent the prisoners from jumping off and controlling their own fates. The ground floor of this old building contains endless tiny bricks cells, all about 7 foot high. Some still contain the increasingly familar dried blood, manacles and leg remain, along with empty ammunition boxes that doubled up as latrines. This place used to be a floor of class rooms, now there are holes knocked between each former classroom so the whole floor is a long line of interlinked crudely built cells.


Standing the back of one of these cells, some of which are still blood stained, is amongst the most sobering things I've ever done.

Later after the tour had finished I went back to building "C" and found my way to the second floor, this is similar except that the cells are made of wood. The top floor I will explain later.

The final building "B" is the memorial to the victims of Tuol Sleng (tranlates as 'Hill of the Poison Tree'). You first see the photographers chair with its neck support to hold the prisoners in place so that they could document everything in this systematic hell. We were entering an area of the world containing thousands of photos of the condemned some before and some after execution. Many of these dead photos facing the cells and places where they were most likely tortured and put to death.

In some of these photos the men, women and many many children try to muster a smile. Some show defiance. Some are beaten and bloody. Some confused. Most have an almost tangible look of fear of the unknown.





Along with the photographers chair is a pile of ragged soiled clothes and photos of the 5 Westerners tortured and killed here, this includes the confession of an American sailor, James Clark.

Some of the photos have names written on them, but almost all of them remain unidentified and unknown now. Another series of prints are found here, naked mutilated victims, the photos to be shown to the next level of heirarchy as proof of success.

Not on display but well reported, the Khmer Rouge kept almost meticulous record of action at the prison and in their haste to escape left most of these documents behind. These included arrivals and departures, torture records, execution schedules and 7000 photograph negatives. Almost as many confessions as there were victims. Many of these people were regarded as 'educated' and were tortured in part to find their other family members so they too could be located and brought to their end. Many of the 17,000 people processed at the prison were taken to Choeung Ek and were made to dig their own grave before being killed by a blow to the back of the head by a hoe or pickaxe in order to save expensive ammunition

Amongst the photos is a room containing more findings. Many items of torture equipment included those for water-boarding. A photo of people in Phnom Penh celebrating the inital arrival of the Khmer's is also present. An old blackboard from the school, still scrawled in Khmer. Skulls deformed in various ways with a simple description of how. After the tour I also left to investigate the 2nd floor here, after witnessed a landing between the flights of stairs up, I retreated as I couldn't bring myself to walk over the amount of dry blood there.

Whilst looking through the final artifacts and photographs our tour guide revealed to us that some of her family included her father with killed by the regime. She had been lucky enough to escape to Vietnam with the other surviving members. I have never seem such an utterly pure look of hatred in a persons eyes as I did when she told us part of her story. I wanted to ask her more, but it just doesn't seem right to. Or maybe it was cowardice.

Another section of the museum has messages from people who survived the regime, included some who worked for them. One of these is as follows:

Prum Set, 42 years old (2002)
I am not regret about working for the Khmer Rouge. no, not at all. I want to have a tribunal because it will prevent us from having such a regime again. Those who committed crimes must be prosecuted.

The last thing I saw was whilst back in the central building and investigating the top floor. This has become a collection of photos and comments from a Swedish man Gunnar Bergstrom. He believed in the VietCong and by relation at the time had supported the Khmer. This is why he along with collegues from the Swedish Cambodian Friendship Association sympathised with the Khmer Rouge and enjoyed the hospitality of the organisation during a 2 week visit to the country during 1978. During this time they were shown a tour of propaganda in order to claim that what they were doing was just and in no way torture. They were shown only the positive side of the revolution, hospitals, factories and also 'happy' and 'healthy' looking peasants. Basically this floor is now dedicated to what the Swedish group thought at the time of the photographs, what they actually said to the Khmer Rouge, what they were told at the time and what they believe now.

The last is an apology to Cambodia for his and his associates misguided beliefs. This was only November 2008.

Better information on this can be found at the links below.

Repentant Khmer Rouge fan returns:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7734749.stm

Ex-Khmer Rouge admirer says sorry:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7735881.stm


At the time of writing I am back in Phnom Penh after spending 9 days at the beach. I am thinking about going back to the museum tomorrow. It seems a place you need to see more than once to really believe.

Normal writing will be resumed soon, lazing at the beautiful beach, drinking 25 U.S. cent beers and lying in hammocks before heading back here and hopefully soon up to Laos (if I've got a visa sorted...)

Best Wishes to all and hope you can read this new blog!

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