Killing fields and genocide museum

The Killing Fields are a series of sites in Cambodia where collectively more than one million people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979. The mass killings were part of a broad state-sponsored genocide.

The Khmer Rouge was a communist regime led by Pol Pot that ruled Cambodia during those years. The regime was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 2 million people (some from starvation), or about a quarter of the Cambodian population. The Khmer Rouge was known for its brutality and its radical policies, which included the forced relocation of the entire population of Cambodia to the countryside.

Once in the countryside, they were forced to be farmers. They eliminated all forms of religion and destroyed the country’s infrastructure. Workers in the country were then asked if they had been a professional. They believed they were going back to their jobs. Instead they were interrogated as potential spies and foreign agents and imprisoned and brutalized. Many “confessed” and were asked for family and friends names. There was more than one prison but the one I toured was S21. It is the site of a high school turned into a prison.

The bottom floor of that building held important prisoners who could give information. They were shackled to beds.

When the liberators came, they found 14 bodies still chained to the beds who had been killed.
Each room used to be a classroom.
The regime fled without leaving anyone alive.
The 14 were buried here as a reminder. A gallows made from a school climbing structure and barrels of water for torture were found at the other end.

If one member of the family was suspected of being a traitor, the whole family was tortured and sent to the killing fields. His regime kept meticulous records and pictures of everyone interrogated and killed.

All the photographs were on display. I kept thinking that these children would normally be in school. The sheer inhumanity is unfathomable.
Other prisoners were not as important and chained in a one meter by two meter cell.
The box was used as a toilet. The tiles you normally see in a school made this all the more striking.
This room held roughly 50 people.
They were organized in such a manner.

If they survived starvation, torture, and hard labor, they were trucked to the killing fields. They were not imprisoned there, but one by one taken off of the trucks and killed.

The most well-known Killing Field is Choeung Ek, located just 10 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Choeung Ek was used as an execution site for the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. It is estimated that over 17,000 people were killed at Choeung Ek, including men, women, children, and the elderly. A farmer found the site days after the fall of the regime and pits had not even been covered at the time the regime fled.

Memorial stupa in the background.
In the site are Cambodian palms. The edges of the young leaf have serrations. These were used to cut people’s throats. We were able to touch them and it felt like a metal serrated saw blade.
The location was originally a Chinese grave yard. Many markers still exist.
Pol Pot’s paranoia meant that even his own soldiers could be executed for nothing more than suspicion. Here they were killed and their heads
removed from the bodies.
Bones still evident in some areas. Not all bodies were excavated. Many felt that their souls should be left in peace with no further excavation.

The execution tree at Choeung Ek was a site where the Khmer Rouge executed children. The tree was a large Chankiri tree, and the Khmer Rouge would use it to bash the heads of children against the trunk of the tree. The children were often killed in front of their parents, and the parents were forced to watch as their children were killed. The execution tree was a symbol of the brutality of the Khmer Rouge, and it is a reminder of the horrors that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the people of Cambodia.

This tree when found days after the downfall of the regime had blood, hair, and brain matter on it.
This tree was used to broadcast other noises to not hear any of those being killed. They would be blindfolded and asked to kneel. Then they would be hit from behind until they fell into the pit where a second person slit their throat and belly. The latter prevented body bloat. The bodies were also covered in DDT to stop smell and kill anyone surviving.

Today, Choeung Ek is a memorial to the victims of the Khmer Rouge. The Buddhist stupa contains the remains of over 8,000 victims.

Those excavated were organized by age and sex.
They also can be identified by how they died. No bullets were used and a hoe was a preferred tool.
These are a few of the remains in the stupa.

Visiting the Killing Fields was a sobering experience. It is a reminder of the horrors of genocide and the importance of remembering the victims. It is also a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit, as evidenced by the fact that Cambodia has emerged from this dark period and is now a thriving democracy. Three survivors were at the genocide museum the day I went.

He is 94. He survived as he was an artist and painted for the soldiers. His painting of Pol Pot could be mistaken for an actual photograph.
Here is a picture of him and his wife, who was killed at the prison.
This man was a bit at the time of the regime. The rest of his family was killed.
When the prison was found by liberators, only 7 survived. 2 of these men are alive today.

Finally, it is important to remember that the Killing Fields are just one part of Cambodia’s history. The country has come a long way since the Khmer Rouge, and there is much to see and do in Cambodia today.

Here are a few things those of us on the tour talked about (we had people from S. Africa, Australia, and many European countries). The Khmer Rouge regime and people denying past slavery in the west are similar in a number of ways. Both groups have sought to erase or deny a dark chapter in their history. Both groups have used violence and intimidation to silence dissent. And both groups have been met with resistance from those who seek to remember and learn from the past.

One of the Khmer Rouge’s most heinous crimes was its attempt to erase the country’s history. The regime destroyed libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions. It also killed or imprisoned intellectuals, artists, and anyone else who it perceived as a threat to its power. The Khmer Rouge sought to create a new society, one that was free from the taint of the past.

People who deny past slavery in the west are also seeking to erase a dark chapter in history. These people often claim that slavery was not as bad as it is often portrayed, or that it was a necessary evil. They may also argue that the victims of slavery were not really slaves, or that they were somehow complicit in their own enslavement.

Like the Khmer Rouge, people who deny past slavery are often motivated by a desire to create a new society, one that is free from the taint of the past. They may also be motivated by a desire to protect their own privilege. By denying the existence of slavery, they can avoid having to confront the uncomfortable truth about their own history.

By erasing the truth, they make it easier to repeat the same mistakes in the future. It is important to remember and learn from the past, so that we can prevent such atrocities from happening again.

It is also important to remember that the victims of the Khmer Rouge and of slavery are real people. They deserve to be remembered and honored. We should not let the perpetrators of these crimes get away with erasing their victims from history.

I am also aware that those of us on the tour are privileged and our governments have done horrible things. But we are also a portion of our countries who learn to understand and make a difference rather than ignore it.

One thought on “Killing fields and genocide museum”

Comments are closed.