The Killing Fields

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Geo: 11.5588, 104.917

One of the reasons my daughter, Laila, and I wanted to go to Cambodia was to see the killing fields. History has always been one of her main interests, but I also wanted to go. There are several in Cambodia, but we decided on visiting the fields in Phnom Penh. We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day; he would wait for us and then take us to the next place we wanted to visit.

Some of the roads in Phnom Penh are beautiful and clean, but the roads our tuk-tuk drove on to reach the Killing Fields were dusty and dirty; the dirt flew up from the road and stung our faces, our eyes. These fields are not far out of the main part of the city; it did not take us long to get there.

We entered and paid the foreign visitor fee, which included $3 for the audio tour, something we usually never take. But this place is special for many reasons, one of them being that there are no buildings left here, everything was destroyed or removed, so the audio tour was necessary to understand what had happened here. The audio started with a Cambodian man telling what his experience had been during this time of Cambodians killing other Cambodians, all the intellectuals, the monks, the teachers and professors, anyone with "soft hands" or people who wore glasses, all were killed. Three million people, in a country of eight million, were killed during these years. The audio tour was very moving; this man told of how many members of his family were killed, and how the ones who survived were not able to meet again for three long years, not knowing if any of them were still alive. The tape held other stories from other victims who survived, all of them heartbreaking. It is astonishing to realize that the rest of the world did not know what was happening, but even the Cambodians did not realize what Pol Pot was doing.

On the tour are stations where you listen to what happened right in front of you, not so very long ago, but all that can be seen are beautiful green fields with indentations in the ground; these were the places for the mass burials. The day we visited the Killing Fields was absolutely gorgeous, stunningly clear blue sky, brilliant sunshine, making the comparison of what we were hearing on this visit even more surreal. What we saw looked like a paradise; what we heard was definitely hell. We saw where the trucks brought the people in at night, heard how they were bound and packed in together in total darkness; we listened to how Pol Pot killed these innocent people: because bullets were expensive they used hammers, saws, sharp serrated leaves from nearby trees to cut and pound and bludgeon them to death. And after they were dumped into the mass graves DDT was poured in on top, to finish off the ones who were not yet dead, and to mask the smell of massive death. Because the Khmer Rouge did not want those just coming in to hear the sounds of those being killed, loudspeakers were hung from the trees, playing loud music to mask the screaming, moaning, and crying. As we listened to our tapes of Cambodians who survived telling their horrifying stories, we walked on quiet paths between beautiful trees, flowers, gentle streams; today this is a place of beauty.

There is a killing tree here too; this was where the Khmer Rouge held the babies by their feet and smashed them headfirst into the tree to kill them while their mothers watched. This plot of ground holds both the remains of those mothers and their babies. Pieces of their clothing are left on the ground, making the understanding of what happened here all the more real. Nearby to the killing tree is a small glass container holding bones that surfaced from the ground during rains; another glass box holds remnants of more clothing that still surfaces. All these are respectfully either left on the ground, or carefully put into the containers so people can see.

The last stop on the audio tour of the Killing Fields is a huge modern 3 storey stupa filled with skulls and bones from some of the 3 million people who were killed in Cambodia during Pol Pot's time. I looked in the window and saw skulls packed on skulls, and was unable to make myself go inside. Laila agreed. The tour was exhausting enough emotionally; we did not need to see more bones, more skulls all packed together to understand what had happened here.

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