The Killing Fields and S21

Cambodia was home to one of the brutaliest war crimes since World War II. Between 1975-1979 Pol Pot ordered the mass slaghter of between 1-3 million (pop 8 million) innocent civillians as he and his generals "re-educated" the Cambodian people with the Khmer Rouge army.

Targetting intellectuals and anybody who wouldn't do what they were told he brought them to a secret camp such as S21 in Phnom Phen where they would be tortured, questioned (sic) and disposed of in a mass grave now known as a Killing Field. One of these fields is 15km outside of Phnom Phen.

Sitting on the back of Raine's moto we setoff for the Killing Fields, a bumpy and dusty ride. When we arrived I paid a small fee and entered the site of the Killing Fields.

Looking around at first, its difficult to see how gruesome it must have been as although there are the holes left from the mass graves, the grass has grown back. If you look closer you can still see a few bones littering the ground in and around the graves. Plus there is a stupa which is there to remember the dead. Inside the monument, skulls fill the middle column and looking at the skulls closely you can see holes and slices of bone missing from the skull. Not because they have been dropped or damaged in the graves but because people were blugened to death with hammers, axes .. its all pretty horrific.

Trying to avoid all the kids asking for money is difficult but if you can you can explore the site which stretches quite a way behind the stupa. However pretty quickly I left as its not the most uplifting of experiences.

Next was S21, after being dropped off I was approached by 2 beggars one in particular had lost a leg and his face had been really deformed by something or someone. Walking in to S21 there are three main buildings, the first on the left has been left pretty untouched to give you an idea of what the rooms looked like and what people had to go through. The second building is where the cells are kept (bricked cells with just enough room to lie down in). The third building holds an exhibition on the people who worked there with their experiences and stories. Some of the pictures have Khmer scribbled over them and I am sure that some people think them as cowards as they joined the Khmer Rouge in order to survive. However their lives were in jeopardy as much as the prisoners they were guarding and many of them were killed when they didnt follow their superiors orders.

More information on the Khmer Rouge and Killing Fields can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_Fields

As soon as we finished it was time to get back and watch a funny DVD...