The Killing Fields...

The Killing Fields was a ubiquitous term used to apply to many, many areas around Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge killled there own people indiscriminately and dumped the bodies.  The ostensible reason for this genoicde was to rid the population of dissenters and those plotting insurrection but this was the flimsiest of reasoons to slaughter indiscrimanely.

We hired a Tuk Tuk and headed to Choung Ek, the Killing Field on the outskirts of Phmon Penn that ended up as a dumping ground for the dead taking from the truly evil Toul Seng (S-21) torture centre in th emiddle of the City.

Choung Ek
This visit was the first and hardest,

Signage at front

the area is bland to look at, you know the mounds of earth are where they exhumed 1000's of slaughtered Cambodians.  Armed with only a modicum of knowledge of the history of what happen here, my throat started to constrict when we turned off the main road with a little sign on a pole indicating Choung Ek was at the end of the road, it seems surreal riding in the back of a Tuk tuk through outer suburbia towards a place where once true evil lived.  As you arrive you notice the Stupa dominates the skyline,

Stupa

Sign on the Stupa

you initially think it's a memorial to the people killed here, and it is, partly. the rest, the middle, is simply storage... 4 or 5 stories high,

 the middle is a glass box with the skulls,

DO NOT FORGET ME !

1000s upon 1000s of the slaughtered,

of all ages, from babies to the aged, are remembered by having their beaten skulls displayed for the World to remember the atrocity.

Looking up from inside

A World that has largely moved on and cares little for this recent history, a World that continues to allow the same atrocities to be repeated.  It was hard walking in, tears streamed down my face, Toni could not approach in the first instance, the memorial has an incredible emotional effect.

You walk around the area,

Poignant !

an Orchard and Chinese Cemetery in a previous life, seeing glass boxes of bits of bones and clothing that have been brought up over the years as the wet season washes some of the dirt away, items are still being bought up today, Toni spotted the mandible of a jaw and some clothing near the base of a tree.

Evils living witness

There is bits of bone collected in some of the mass graves and just pushed aside, some of the mass graves are sign posted, the tree where the babies had their heads based against to kill them has a worn out sign to indicate it's use, the babies were killed as those in charge feared their attempts at retribution when they grew up, generations of Cambodians were annihilated, roughly 2,000,000 where killed country wide.

Toul Seng (S-21)
Urban evil incarnate,

how does on describe a former school, that was used by Pol Pot's regime to incarcerate, torture and kill some 17,000 Cambodians ?

 Words fail me but many have tried.  Supposedly David Chandler has an excellent book on the subject,  somethign I plan to buy and read.  I don't think any words can explain why, all they can do is explain the how .   How 17,000 Cambodians were arrested, tortured told to confess to crimes they mostly made up and then slaughtered when they did.

The conditions  they were detained under were atrocious, the barbed wire that still exists was there to stop them jumping off the balconies to kill themselves, reading the stories of the handful of survivors is heart rendering, sitting amongst the frangipani trees in quite contemplation, it seems you can still here the screaming of the lost, with nothing to offer them except tears for their tortured soul.

We leave this place, this truly awful place that stands in the middle of Phnom Penn, mocking the survivors with still no understanding of the why, I don't think I will ever understand why.