Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Trailor on Tour
Before I tell you about these 2 places, I think it's probably time for another history lesson!
After taking Phnom Penh in April 1975, the Democratic Kampuchea or Khmer Rouge regime, under their leader Pol Pot, implemented one of the most radical, brutal revolutions the world has ever seen. It was ''Year Zero" and during the next 4 years, hunderds of thousands of Cambodians, including most of the country's educated people, were relocated to the countryside, tortured to death orexecuted. Thousands of people were branded parasites and systematically killed solely because they spoke a foreign language or wore spectacles - and this was less then 30 years ago. Pol Pot, born Saloth Sar in 1925, learnt about radical Marxism in Paris and very few people knew of him until he emerged as the public face of the Khmer Rouge towards the end of 1976. He died on 15th April 1998.
Hundreds of thousands more died of mistreatment, malnutrition and disease. Almost 2 million Cambodians died as a direct result of the policies of the Khmer Rouge.
At the end of 1978, Vietnam invaded and in the subsequent chaos millions of Cambodians set off on foot to find out if family members had survived, leaving crops to wilt in the fields and a severe famine swept across the country killing hundreds of thousands more in 1979 and 1980.
In 1991 the warring sides signed a peace accord and despite the first parliament being hardly a triumph for democracy, it did signify the slow death of the Khmer Rouge. The organisation was decimated by a series of mass defections and was finally defeated during 1998 - a mere 6 years ago.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum - In 1975 Tuol Svay Prey High School was taken over and turned into Security Prison 21 (S-21). It soon became the largest centre of detention and torture in the country. Almost all the people held here were later taken to the extermination camp at Choeng Ek and were executed.
S-21 is quite small in size and belies that fact that approximately 17000 men, women and children were totured here between 1975 and 1978. Parts of the exterior are still enclosed by two folds of corrugated sheets covered in tangled barbed wire, which would have been electrified.
All the classroom were converted into individual cells measuring 0.8 x 2 metres, mass cells or interrogation rooms. All prisoners were shackled at all times and torture methods included water torture, gallows, beating, whipping and electric shocks. Many of the implements of these methods of torture are still present today, as well as the beds the victims were shackled to. Interrogators often had no idea why inmates were being tortured and would continue until a satisfactory "confession" was given.
S-21 was kept a secret from the population and in order to maintain this, whole families of the prisoners were taken en masse to be executed, including new born babies and children. Pictures of the victims line the walls, as they were all photographed upon entering the prison. None of them had any idea of the nature of the place they were entering and as such there is no terror in the faces in the photographs. There are also pictures taken during interrogations, as the Khmer Rouge kept very detailed records, many of which have survived.
The Killing Fields at Choeng Ek - This lies 14km outside the city and prisoners from S-21 were transported here to be executed. Many were bludgeoned to death, to avoid wasting precious bullets, with children often being swung against trees.
The remains of 8985 people, many of whom were found bound and blindfolded, were exhumed from mass graves in 1980. More than 8000 skulls, arranged by sex and age, are visible behind the clearglass of a Memorial Stupa erected in 1988. Less than half the mass graves have been disinterred and when wandering around the pits you are stepping on fragments of bone and bits of cloth.
It certainly serves as a horrific reminder of the brutal past of this beautiful country. The people here live for today, as not so long ago there was no tomorrow.
The pictures are now uploaded and this is one of them, but you may decide not to view them.
- comments