We left early to get to the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh. We were fairly sure that the trip would be confronting but unsure of how we would feel.
When we got to the genocide museum we were given headphones and audio sets and head off to learn about the atrocities that had taken place in the not to distant past. The audio set the scene by retelling stories from people who had come to the killing fields and worked there. There was the story of a boy enlisted at 14 to become a soldier of the Khmer Rouge. He tells how his name was called out in the village and just weeks later he was assigned to listing the names of those who were to be killed there. The people were brought to the killing fields in trucks and misled to believe that they were being taken from the torture prisons to a relocation depot. They were taken off the trucks and horribly executed. Initially the trucks brought 30 or so people a day but towards the end the number of people arriving daily reached 300. They could not physically murder that many people in one day so they made make shift houses. The stories are horrendous Pol Pot would not waste the money on bullets so the weapons used were chains, machetes, mallets or just smashing in a skull with a pick axe all to the never ending sound of propaganda songs blaring out from speakers hung in trees and the drone of generators used to light up the fluorescent lights that illuminated the executioner's tasks. All to masks the hideous sounds of people dying. This took place just outside of the city near people's houses.
We listened to the stories and walked through the fields in silence truly affected by what we heard and were looking at. The fields themselves continue to spew forth the atrocities from under the earth with clothing teeth and bones constantly rebirthing from the earth they were buried in. As if to say don't forget us. Never let this happen again.