Hi there,
The last week that I was in Phnom Penh, I took a motorbike in the country to the “Killing Fields”. I don’t want to get into the history of Cambodia in this blog. In summary, less than 20 years ago, a group called the Khmer Rouge came into power. This happened shortly after America’s aggression into Vietnam and their unlawful bombing of the Cambodia border. Cambodia was a neutral country in that war.
When the Khmer Rouge came into power, they had the ideology of creating a “pure”culture that followed their rules. The KR basically drove everyone outside of Phnom Penh running to the country side. They began a process of genocide where any one with learned skills (i.e. doctors, lawyers, business men) were executed and children. The estimate is that the KR exterminated around 3 million people in Cambodia.
In the country side is a place where many of the executions took place. It is now called “”The Killing Fields”. There was a movie prepared about this time in Cambodia that can be rented at most video stores.
I walked onto into the very place where the many executions took place and where people were buried. It is a huge area of land all covered by green grass. Walking through the fields is like walking through an area that was bombed. There are huge holes dug up all over the place. Some are smaller holes and other holes are very large. You have to watch your step as you walk among the many holes dug in the ground. The holes are the places that were dug up as mass graves. Many of the holes have signs that tell you the number of people and the age of people’s bodies that were found is each massive grave. There are holes where the children are buried. There are holes where people were found that had no head, likely because of decapitation. there were holes everywhere in this huge country field.
In the middle of the field there is a tall monument that was built. The monument is many stories high. Walking into the monument, you realize that the entire height of the building is filled with the skulls of humans that were found in the graves. The whole building was full of skulls. These were all lined up on different levels and the shelf often had a reference to the age and/or sex of the people that were executed and found in this spot.
I can’t explain the feeling I got standing in the middle of all these massive graves. I tried to imaging the bodies that were thrown into the holes and the way it would have looked at that time. There are some pictures that on display that show the horrors. Many people here say that this genocide was equivalent or even more brutal than the genocide of the Hitler regime.
I also went to the place called “Tual Sleug”. It used to be a large school house. When the KR took over power they converted the school to a torture and death camp. I walked through this earie place and it’s hard not o imagine the sufferings that occurred. The class rooms were all divided into small areas by brick walls. The brick walls were high to the ceiling and were used to trap the prisoners alone. The walls still stand today. There is wire fencing around the entire school complex. A way of torture in that time was to hang people up by their feet from a big structure. They then lowered them so their heads would drop into a hug bucket of chemicals. This would bring them extreme pain, but not kill the prisoner. The structure that was used to hang the prisoners was still there and the large buckets were there in front of me. There were many horrible pictures displayed that I could tell showed the very place, structure and buckets that I stand there and touch. On the walls in this place are the pictures of thousands of people killed at that old school house. It is a dreary feeling to walk among the thousands of pictures and faces of people killed. Many of them were children. There is picture of a young girl that caught my attention. I could not stop looking in her eyes as clearly seen in the picture. For some reason, I felt that she was still there in that place. It was a very disturbing feeling I had as I kept looking over at her. This picture was taken just before she was exterminated.
I talked to many people that said they would never return to this place. I talked to many people that didn’t want to hear about the horrors of the past in such a graphic manner. I believe that learning about this past is important in understanding the present and future.
The average age of the population in Cambodia is said be be around 16 years old. Many of the older people were exterminated. This country has been left open to extreme poverty and abuse of it’s many children. It is a very sad history.
Cambodia is getting to be addictive for me. The people here are nothing short of amazing. I may never leave this place. Or, it will never leave me. The future holds may paths for those that seek.
“It is a land where the depth and beauty of the people and culture are matched only by the depth and enormity of the people’s sufferings.” Amit Gilboa
Love Gerry
I will add my pictures to flickr tomorrow.
