Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre
Choeung Ek is the most well known of the 300 killing fields throughout Cambodia. It encompasses the barbaric and cruel crimes committed by the ultra communist Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979). Around 20,000 people were executed/murdered here and the 129 mass graves and around 8,000 human skulls at the sight (roughly the size of 2 football pitches) bear testimony to this unspeakable crime!! I'm going to take you on the tour as I did it! So....if you can't make it here yourself you can understand the horror the Cambodian people lived through and remember those that suffered here!
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge- marched into Phnom Penh on the 17th of April 1975. They implemented a radical and brutal restructuring of Cambodian society with the aim to transform Cambodia (renamed Democratic Kampuchea) into a peasant dominated farming co-operative!Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) wished to eradicate anything that had come before! Within days the entire population of Phnom Penh and the surrounding areas (sick,elderly and infirm included) were marched into the countryside to work as slaves for 12-15 hours a days. Intellectuals were wiped out. If you wore glasses or spoke a foreign language this was enough reason to be killed!Cambodia became a vast slave labour camp. Meals were watery rice porridge twice a day! Disease quickly spread in the work camps! Things such as malaria and dysentery! the most accepted estimate is that 1.7 million people perished at the hands of Pol Pot in the 3 years,8 months and 20 days. That's 1 in every 3 Cambodians!!
Truck Stop-trucks from Toul Sleng prison (S-21) and other places stopped here! They would arrive 2 or 3 times a month or every 3 weeks. Each truck held 20-30 prisoners who were frightened and blindfolded. When they arrived the victims were led straight to be executed at the ditches or pits or held in the prison nearby. After the 7th of January 1979* one truck remained but has since been taken away.
* Khmer Rouge brought to an end by Vietnamese liberating Phnom Penh.
Dark and Gloomy Detention-if people in the trucks were not killed straight away they were held here! This is because the number of victims increased to over 300 a day! The detention was made from wood with a galvanised steel roof. It's walls were built with 2 layers of flat wood to darken and prevent prisoners seeing each other. This was dismantled in 1979.
The Executioners Working Office-this is where the executioners station permanently at Cheung Ek worked. The office and Killing Fields were equipped with electric power to conduct executions at night and to read and sign rosters accompanying the victims to the sight.
Chemical Substances Storage Room- Chemical substances such a DDT were kept here. Executioners scattered these over dead bodies of victims to 1)eliminate the smell of dead bodies which may have aroused suspicion among workers nearby and 2)to kill off victims who were buried alive.
This was followed by 2 mass graves. The first held 450 victims- the 2nd held bones and teeth fragments. i personally saw a tooth. Apparently with the rain teeth and bone fragments,blindfolds and clothes work their way to the surface and are collected every month. This was disturbing enough for us...the Cambodians believe those who are not buried properly never rest peacefully therefore they believe that the bone fragments etc coming to the surface is the victims way of showing they are not at peace!
Next you can walk around a lake and your audio tour provides you with the choice of listening to survivor stories -loss of an infant,rape leads to shame and witness to a killing. I stopped at this point and it all got a bit too much!
Next is another mass grave- 166 victims without heads. These were people who had asked for help from neighbouring Vietnam or Khmer soldiers who had deserted. They were headless because they were believed to be Cambodian bodies with Vietnamese heads by the regime!
The Killing Tree-A huge tree with yet another mass grave containing only women and children. The women and children would be led here in the dark and placed under a spotlight. The women would then watch as their children's heads were smashed against the tree and their bodies thrown into the pit. They would then be possibly raped and killed themselves.A man stumbled across this mass grave when he was searching for potatoes and noticed the small as well as baby hair and brain on the tree.Truly shocking and heart wrenching!
The Magic Tree-not as nice as it sounds- SURPRISE! This is where speakers were hung that played music so that people could not hear the cries and screams of people being murdered! The audio tour played this mixed with the sound of the electricity generator- it was sooo eerie and unsettling!
The Memorial Stupa
The Memorial Stupa displays more than 8000 skulls of victims. It is a beautiful building! The design including the dragon and serpent (enemies together) symbolises peace! In Cambodia bodies that do not receive a proper burial can not be at peace- this is what haunts victims families still therefore this is as fitting a memorial as is possible! It is also a nice place to pay your respects to those that suffered here! It also succeeds in bringing home the fact that as a tourist you are not just wandering around a peaceful,shady former orchard!
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
This was formally security office 21 during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. S-21 was created on orders of Pol Pot on the 17th of April 1975. It was designed for detention, interrofationcompund is surrounded by 2 rows of corrugated iron fence covered with barbed wire. It wqas a former primary school. Classrooms were turned into small cells (0.8x2m) and the front building was covered in a fishnet of barbed wire preventing prisoners from committing suicide by jumping down! There were 4 Buildings in all!
Building A- detained people accused of leading the uprising against Pol Pot. Their cells were furnished with a bed,blanket,cushion and mat! An iron bucket or water container was provided to use as a toilet!
Buildings B,C and D- these were different the bottom floor was divided into small cells using brick walls. The first and upper floors were used for large cells where many prisoners were crowded together.
A wooden pole int he front garden was used as a torture machine. Both hands were tied behind prisoners backs and they were flipped upside down untill they lost consciousness. They were then dipped in filthy water and shocked back into consciousness and tortured some more (usually for a false confession to give a reason for sending them to the Killing Fields).
On the 7th of January 1979 the corpses of 14 victims were discovered by the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea. They were unidentifiable due to decomposition. They were carried out and buried in the front of building A.They were the last people to be tortured and killed in S-21. The UFNSK collected all the evidence in S-21 such as photos,films,confession archives and torture tools and there on display as you walk around. The research gave the following number of inmates from 1975- June 1978 not including Children killed by the Khmer Rouge this estimated 20,000. Imprisonment in S-21 lasted 2-4 months. Political prisoners were held for 6-7 months!
1975 = 154 prisoners
1976 = 2,250 prisoners
1977 = 2,350 prisoners
1978 = 5,765 prisoners
This place is seriously eerie and upsetting. The only hope is that it displays the inhuman regime of the Khmer Rouge publicly and will hopefully play role in preventing a new Pol Pot from emerging in Cambodia or anywhere on earth!
