The Killing Fields

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This blog by Lucas:

Jac and I decided this experience deserved its own blog entry. The Killing Fields is outside of Pnom Penh, and it is here that Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge systemically and brutally executed thousands of innocent Cambodians. The total estimate of the Khmer Rouge massacre is 2-3 million Cambodians in the late 70's (over 20%!o(MISSING)f the population!!)

A soccer-field-sized area surrounded by farmland, the killing fields contain mass graves, slightly sunken, for perhaps 20,000 Cambodians, many of whom were tortured before being killed - impossible to imagine this only happened 30 years ago. This was one of the most powerfully horrible and fascinating things I have ever seen in my life. Here is the sign at the Choeng Elk Genocidal Center, word for word, which does far better justice in words than I could ever attempt:

"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 Pot men with canes, bamboo stumps or heads of hoes. Who were stabbed with knives or swords we seem to be looking at the horrifying scenes and panic. Stricken faces of the people who were dying of starvation, forced labor or torture without mercy upon the skinny body, they died without 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 or swords before their last breath went out. How bitter they were when seeing their beloved children, wives, husbands brothers or sisters were seized and 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 carried upon the innocent people of Kampuchea cannot be described fully and clearly in words because the intention of the invention of this killing method was strangely cruel so it is difficult for us to determine who they are for: they have the human form but their hearts are demons hearts, they have got the Khmer face but their activities are purely reactionary. They wanted to transform Campuchean people into a group of persons without reason or a group who knew and understood nothing, who always bent their heads to carry out Ankors orders blindly. They had educated and transformed young people and the adolescent whose 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 culture, destroyed schools, hospitals, pagodas and beautiful monuments such as Angkor Wat Temple which is the source of pure national pride and bears the genius, knowledge and intelligence of our nation.

They were trying hard to get rid of Khmer character and transform the soil and waters of Kampuchea into a sea of blood and tears which was deprive of cultural infrastructure, civilisation and national character, became a desert of great destruction that overturned the Kampuchean society and drove it back to the stone age.

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Photos

Cheong Elk Genocidal Center
"The Killing Fields"

The Monument
In front of excavated mass graves

Comments

[Valerie]

empty graves
I'm glad you took the extra effort to add this to your blogs. People should know what CAN happen if allowed. These graves are now empty in more ways than one: I tried earlier to send a photo of the 2 daughters of one of our staff in Regulatory. (Is is such a cute picture, but it wouldn't attach.) Her parents carried her out of Cambodia when she was a baby. They were almost killed during fighting several times on their journey and then lived in refugee camps for years. She told me that one of her first memories was of being lifted out of a ground trench into the air with bullets whizzing around her. The Khmer Rouge attacked the refugees while they were camped for the night. Everyone dived for cover into the foxholes they always dug, but in the dark her mother thought that she had grabbed someone else's child. "No, lady, no! That's your child," the woman her mother was trying to hand her to hissed, and Sarah was lowered back against her mother's body. She said she knew better than to make a sound during the time she was exposed to gunfire. She arrived here in Santa Rosa when she was 12. Here at MDT, she worked her way up from the production floor and is now in U Pheonix distance learning classes to earn a bachelor's degree while she's working fulltime. She's one of my heroes.

[Lucas Jacqui]

to Val
Val - the stories from the killing fields are endless. they are still many kids of that generation, now in their 20's, who don't believe this massacre even happened because the families are too scared to talk about it and it is too horrible to even think about it. Some are even worried that they'll get in trouble with the Khmer Rouge leftovers if they say anything. It is so horribly moving to be there you can't even imagine...