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Published: June 21st 2017
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Geo: 11.5705, 104.929
Be warned, this entry is not for the faint hearted…
I have kept this separate from my Phnom Penh blog as it really is quite horrendous, The Killing Fields and S21. I've debated whether to even include this in my travel blog but it is such a huge part of Cambodian history that really I couldn't leave it out, even though much of my blog is a fairly edited version of events and this is my own recount from memory so maybe not 100%!b(MISSING)ut not far from it.
Between the years of 1975 – 79 and straight after the Cambodian Civil War, the Khmer Rouge regime came into power, it's leader, Pol Pot. It is estimated that under their rule around 3 million out of an estimated 8 million population at the time were wiped out by mass genocide. Camp S21 and the Killing Fields are not the only sites in Cambodia; there is an estimated 20,000 sites of mass graves throughout the country containing the remains of men, women and children alike.
The Khmer Rouge executed everyone suspected of having links with the former government regardless if they had or not. Phnom Penh was cleared, everyone was told to leave to go back to work in agriculture in villages they had come from and left it like a ghost town. People walked and walked and many died through starvation, only to be then sent from areas they settled, on again with the cycle continuing. People were arrested on the pretense they were involved with the former government and they were tortured in the camps and made to lie until eventually they had dug their own grave by admitting to all sorts.
The camps were torturous affairs, from nails being ripped out, to being strung up, upside down with your head being dipped in filth, teeth pulled out, electric shock treatment, isolation with a box for you feces, starvation, beating, strapped into shackles, and much much more before ultimately being loaded up, blindfolded and sent out to the Killing Fields. Here they were often made to dig their own graves but near the point of starvation when they had nothing left, many of these graves were extremely shallow.
Men and women were subjected to death by poison, or stabbed with sharpened bamboo sticks, struck with spades and shovels, battered with clubs and all to save bullets, while infants and children
were grabbed by the feet and their heads battered off a tree trunk. This tree, now known as the 'Killing Tree' was beside a mass grave full of women and children and is simply the most horrific gut wrenching part of my visit, one survivor describes the blood and brains left behind and it takes me all my strength not to vomit. Their ‘reasoning' for murdering these children was so they couldn't grow up to take 'revenge' for the slaughter of their parents.
There are many mass graves here, with bones, fragments and pieces of clothing etc. still coming to the surface when the heavy rains begin, one of these mass graves is said to have 166 remains all with their skulls removed, and another with a staggering 450 bodies and so it goes on. It is estimated that 17,000 remains were found in this one site near Phnom Penh alone, in which now stands the huge Choeung Ek Memorial which houses 5000 skulls. Looking at them you can see the lack of teeth, the broken noses, cracks and holes where they were beaten and bashed which was likely the cause of death, it's a deeply disturbing place to see.
It is
part of Cambodian history which still haunts so many people today, everyone here has their story of families, friends, neighbour's who were murdered or of their opinions of the trouble and war in Cambodia's history. Personally I can't believe how recent these events took place, and the fact that they actually happened in my life time… unbelievable and heart breaking.
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