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The Killing Fields
Entry 10 of 26 | show all | print this entry |
No matter what I write here, I don't think I'll ever be able to fully express how I felt today when I visited the Killing Fields and the Toul Sleng museum.
Some history" from 17 April 1975 through to 7 January 1979, the ultra-Communist Khmer Rouge regime led by Saloth Sar under his code name Pol Pot, controlled the whole of Camboduia. During these years it was known as 'Democratic Kampuchea'. During these four years, between one and two and a half million Cambodians perished, some killed outright; others dying from disease, malnutrition, neglect, and mistreatment. What I saw today was some of the remnants of this horrific regime.
Throughout Cambodia there were about 115 detention centres and over 300 killing fields, and it was in the latter that many of the Cambodians who died ended up. The Killing Fields were ad hoc places of execution and dumping grounds for dead bodies during the Khmer Rouge regime.
Today I visited the Choeung Ek Memorial, some 15km southwest of Phnom Penh. I've done my research into Cambodia, I've read books, I've seen the film, "The Killing Fields", but nothing, NOTHING, prepared me for this! The memorial is in the form of a stupa that holds the bones of thousands of Cambodians and 9 foreigners. It's a tranquil place, and most of the tourists I saw there were quiet, in varying degrees of shock. This particular killing field is the site of the brutal execution of more than 17,000 men, women, and children, most of whom first suffered through interrogation, torture, and deprivation in the S-21 Prison (Toul Sleng) in Phnom Penh.
The memorial stupa is a beautiful Khmer structure, but its contents are a testament to the brutal Pol Pot regime. It's 15 layers high, the first elevent contain the skills of many of the victims of the Khmer Rouge. The top levels contain the bones and clothing. Laid out on four sides, there are hundreds of skulls. I lit an incence stick before I went in as a tribute to the dead. When I went in, I was struck dumb by the horrific reality that lay before me. Rows of skulls laid out neatly at the bottom, then increasingly jumbled and piled up as the layers got higher. The tears just rolled down my cheeks, there was nothing I could do to stop myself. The true horror and brutality of the Khmer Rouge was right there before my eyes and I felt sick to think that Western nations ignored all of this while it was happening, and deeply shocked at the level of depravity of the Angkor. I sat on my own for some time and decided not to look at the rest of the Killing Fields where bones still stick out exposed in the ground.
There are rumours that the Government want to cremate the bones so that they no longer bear witness to the Khmer Rouge. There are rumours that the monks want the bones cremated because the spirits of the dead will never be at peace. I don't know the reasons why they remain, but they're a testament to the dead.
On the bus back to Phnom Penh everyone was silent, locked into their own thoughts. For me, it was emotionally draining but not an experience I'm sorry to have. I wish that the mass genocide of the Cambodia people had never taken place, but it did and I'm glad that I can bear witness in some small way. My testament and that of other visitors and Cambodians will ensure that there can never be a cover-up about what happened - it will be impossible for revisionist historians or politicians to distort or deny this ever happened.
Next we visited the Tuol Sleng museum, the detention prison S-21. the Khmer Rouge were keen on codes, choosing numbers and noms de guerre for everything. Housed in the former Tuol Svay Prey High School, in 1975 Pol Pot's security forces turned the school into Security Prison 21. It was the largest centre of detention and torture in Cambodia. Almost everyone held here was later executed at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Detainees who died during torture were buried in mass graves inside the prison grounds. This is why it's impossible to ever know exactly how many Cambodians died.
I cannot begin to imagine how humans could contrive to come up with such horrific torture methods. Inmates of the prison were housed in one of the school blocks' classrooms. Each classroom contained a metal bed frame and foot shackles which would be attached to the ankles. Hands were secured with a chain. There was no opportunity to even more around in the cell. They had a plastic bottle for urinating and a metal box for defecation. They had to empty these into large pots under a wooden frame that had been used for exercise when it was a high school. Prisoners would be interrogated, hung upside down on the former school's exercise arch. When they lost consciousness, their interrogators would lower their heads into the pots of urine and excrement to wake them up. Other torture methods included placing the victim in a large wooden box. As each was questioned, the tank was filling with water. Don't answer correctly or fast enough- you would have the water covering your face, stopping you breathing.
Why were all these people arrested? I think it was about control and fear. It made me afraid just being there as a visitor. Many were accused of working for the CIA; Pol Pot was terrified of the Americans and saw them as an enemy of the Angkor. Others were accused of being rich, they were the educated people like doctors, lawyers and teachers who Pol Pot wanted to eradicate from his vision of Democratic Kampuchea. It wasn't just adults who were taken to S-21 and other detention centres; men, women, children, tiny babies, entire families were destroyed. All were interrogated, almost all were killed. When the Vietnamese entered Phnom Penh in January 1979, there were seven survivors at S-21.
I know the Khmer Rouge are not the first to visit such brutality on their countrymen, and it's still going on today elsewhere in the world. But here in Phnom Penh is where I have witnessed the horror and depravity of man. Today has changed me; I can't go back to indifference or political ignorance about what oppressive regimes do. I don't know where to start, or what good I can do, but I can add my voice to others', I hope it'll make a difference.
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