11th Nov - The Killing Fields

People usually think of vacations as a time to have fun, but they are also opportunities to learn: perhaps about the local culture, or the local history.  Today was a sobering day when we learned a lot about the recent history of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge regime.  Much of what I will talk about in this blog entry is disturbing - so decide for yourself if you'd like to skip to tomorrow's entry.

There are over 300 sites in Cambodia that have been identified as killing fields, but most have simply been cordoned off and left untouched. The one we visited was the closest to Phnom Pen, and over 8000 bodies have been exhumed from the mass graves there - although there are still many graves on this site that have not been excavated.  It's hard to comprehend the scale of the genocide.  The estimates are that between 1.3 - 2 million people were executed in the most brutal ways at these sites. China gave the Khmer Rouge guns for free - but the bullets had to be paid for.  So rather than being shot, most victims were beaten to death with a bamboo stick, or killed with a knife.

When you add in the people who were worked to death in the fields, starved to death, or simply succumbed to disease because they were so weak and malnourished, the tour guide put the figure at nearer 3.5 million people who had died. This, in a country which had a population of only 7 million at the time the Khmer Rouge came to power.

I thought long and hard about whether or not to put photos in this blog entry.  It seems disrespectful somehow to show pictures of the skulls of the victims piled high in the Stupa at the site. In the end I decided to provide photos of the thing that had affected me most - which was the clothes of the victims still protruding from the ground where they died.  Every year the monsoon washes away more topsoil and more bones and clothing appears.  It's amazing to think that this happened so recently that the clothes themselves have not rotted away yet.



Later in the day we visited S21 - a notorious prison where the Khmer Rouge had tortured anyone who spoke English or French - accusing them of working for the CIA or the KGB. S21 was a former school and the photos below show the "cells" that were constructed - 11 cells in one classroom.  Believe it or not, the people in these cells were the lucky ones.  The cell is tiny, but when the prison started to become over-crowded, people were simply chained to the ground in rows - 50 in each class room.  



I was privileged to meet Chum Mey, one of the last survivors from S21, who is now 87 years old.

There is no justice for the millions who died. The government in charge of the country today is made up of ex Khmer Rouge members, and politics influences what "facts" are recorded.  For example, modern Cambodian books do not mention China's backing of the Khmer Rouge - because the current government wants investment from China.  Cambodians do not enjoy freedom of speech, so the least I can do is share this information, but I can't do it justice in a single blog entry.  I encourage you all to look up the backgrounds of the people who currently govern the country.  Also, what the facts are about which countries backed the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam - and how the USA, backed by the UN, continued to recognize Pol Pot's regime as the "legal" government of Cambodia for 10 years after Vietnam ousted him, purely because of their hatred for Vietnam and its Russian backers.