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Published: July 21st 2006
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So today we were going to do the main things people come to Phnom Penh to do, the Killing Fields and S21. So not a happy day of fun ahead.
After breakfast the 4 of us (Andy, Kylie, Jon and myself) walked to S21, Toul Sleng Museum. Straight away we were hounded by tuk tuk drivers, motos and beggers showing off their missing limbs and burnt faces.
For those of you who don't know what this museum is I, Melissa, shall tell you. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. Pol Pot, the guy in charge, wanted to make it a communist country so everybody was equal, but still there became 2 classes, everyone and the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot abolished all money, all food and put the calender to year 0 and wanted to start a fresh. He had anyone who was intelligent, such as doctors, teachers or people who wore glasses killed. In fact he found excuses to kill anyone, not just people who may pose a threat.
Everybody was tricked out of the city to work in the fields. They harvested lots of food but the poeple didn't see any of it. They were lucky if
they got a small bowl of watery rice a day and yet they were working something like 20 hour days!
The main thing the Khmer wanted to do at first was to split up all families and family ties. The children became brainwashed and we heard a story of a young girl who turned her father in because he was saving food for his family, including her, and she knew he would have been killed.
So when the Khmer Rouge came to power they turned Toul Sleng, which was a high school, into the S21 prison and interrogation facility. People were then taken here and tortured for ''confessions" (of what I'm not sure, but they were made up) they were then taken to the Choeung Ek to be killed. Over 17,000 people went through S21 and less than 12 surrvived including whole families, women, men and children.
Almost a third of the population were killed or died during the 4 years the Khmer Rouge were in power. If they weren't brutally murdered they died from disease or starvation.
The ''museum"has been left in the near exact state as it was found in 1979. We were a little nervous about
Some poor victims
In the rooms were cabinets of skulls from prisoners of S21. what we would see and feel, but really wanted to see the horror of what had happened. We got there early so we could see the 10am video showing. This wasn't as bad as we were expecting, mainly just about a love story between a couple during this time.
We then started to walk around, it was strange because this could have been our secondary school, it didn't look any different. In the first few rooms there were pictures and stories from people who had relatives and friends who had never returned.
Other rooms had skulls in cabinets that had been found at Choeung Ek and pictures of the mass graves.
CAN I, ANDY TELL YOU SOMETHING? IN FRONT OF ONE OF THE CABINETS THAT CONTAINED HUNDREDS OF HUMAN SKULLS, WERE TWO GIRLS WEARING HEADSCARFS, SMILING AND STICKING THEIR TONGUES OUT IN FRONT OF THE CABINETS!!!! IT SICKENED ME!!!!. AND I SO REGRET NOT SAYING ANYTHING TO THE SICKO'S.
Later there were rooms that had been turned into cells only 1m by about 2m.
Upstairs were communal cells where the people had to sleep on the concrete floor with their legs all shackled to a metal bar
Some of the many victims of the Khmer Rouge.
Pretty sad and gory eh? We had a heavy day, taking all the terrors of the Khmer Rouge in. in the centre of the room.
In lots of other rooms there were so many photos, there were boards and boards of photos of the prisoners when they arrived, thousands including children and babies, so sad. Some were really horrifc and I was pleased they were in black and white.
In the last rooms we looked in there were single beds in each room which had been used for torturing the people. On each bed was laid the tool used to torture and murder the person and above the bed was a photo of how the person had been found in the room on that bed. That was awful. Those were the last people murdered by the Khmer Rouge and that was how the soldiers had found them.
Pleased to be out and all of us were feeling quite solem, we went over the road, past the tuk tuk drivers and beggers to get a bit of lunch.
Next visit of the day was to the equally upsetting killing fieilds of Choeung Ek, where all the photos of the people we had seen had been brutally killed and burried in mass graves. Some of the graves, which they
Some poor victims
There were walls and walls of photos of people who had been prisoned here and were now dead.
They were photographed in a special chair with a metal rod holding their necks. There were even photos of babies. dug themselves, weren't even covered.
The prisoners were told they were going to work somewhere else, but instead they were driven to this field blindfolded. They were mad to wait by a tree, which had a microphone or speaker or something that would make loud noises so they couldn't hear the screams of the other prisoners being killed.
They were killed on their knees from behind, but not with bullets, as they had to conserve these, so they were battered with various blunt things such as gun butts.
At the killing fields your are first faced with a massive monument which is filled with skulls, hundreds of them and in the bottom are piles of clothes that were found on the victims bodies.
Even though we were stood there face to face with all these skulls and such a herendous event it was still hard to fully comprhend and appreciate how truly awful it was.
Walking around the site there are various marked holes in the ground that had been mass graves, for women and children and men alike. There were lots of unmarked holes too.
As we walked about in the dirt there were fragments of bone, scraps
of clothing trodden in under the surface and little piles of bones and teeth. Another not so nice place.
We noticed there were lots of butterflies flying about, which Andy nicely thought were the people who had been murdered there.
After a long day we headed back, got changed and the 4 of us went out on the internet, to Lucky Burger for dinner and then crashed out.
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Mandy
non-member comment
So awful
Hey - I have such respect for you guys - don't know if I could face all that apalling cruelty and suffering so close to. I'm sorry for my last jokey comment now (tho inspired by the Bhuddist paintings not this) - its too horrible but somehow maybe helps you keep it real too. Look after yourselves. Love you Mandy x x